25th of the Last Seed, 4E 201
Location: Ivarstead
Time: Morning to late afternoon
Weather: Clear and humid
Her head felt like someone had stuffed it full of sharp stones and then kept throwing her skull against the wall of the inn whole night long. If that had been all, Asturia would've called it a day and bunked up in her bed; alas, it was not to be. In addition to having drunk way too much the night before, the Redguard had gotten into a fight. Had someone asked her, she would've vigorously denied having anything to do with the brawl. If, however, they inquired about it with someone else, it would become apparent she was the culprit. Even if that still wouldn't have been satisfactory, the glaring bruise around her visible eye would be a dead give-away.
The Redguard moaned at her fate for a good measure and directed her limited vision to the work in her hands. At her side, there were neatly arranged rows of relatively straight sticks, all stripped of bark and protrusions; next to them, there were meticulously aligned partridge feathers, soft brown and white-specked in color. In her hands there was a thin, razor-sharp knife which, albeit short, seemed to fly when her fingers started to move. To a layman, it would've looked like she was doing some kind of artisan crafts, when she was in fact making a new batch of arrows for herself. Even someone as skilled as her was never able to retrieve all of the arrows, even if they tried; so every now and then, where there was a dry spell in the murky contract waters, she'd collect the necessary materials and get down to business.
Most of the feathers had already been split in half and their quills reduced properly, now ready for fletching. Of course, there was always the option of going all the way up to Solitude and actually buying new arrows, but it was very unappealing to the Redguard. First of all, the fletcher up north wasn't much good – at least for Asturia's standards – and she had no intention of paying for things she was perfectly capable of doing herself. And in any case, there was no way that the man in Solitude would make her arrows exactly to her specific requirements, which would probably result in one very angry Redguard and one very scared craftsman. Besides, she'd have to enter the city in order to that, and she was never a fan of so many people in one place.
To her left, there was a couple of dead rabbits, both their bellies opened and most of their hide already flayed and cast aside; after all, she needed only the sinew. The substance in question had been collected into a small wooden bowl beforehand, and lay now balanced on her thighs. In her hands she was carefully holding a new arrow shaft, this one – like all the others in this batch – carved out of black ash. The woods available across the land of Skyrim (and Hammerfell, on her occasional visits) were diverse and of varying properties, but if it was an option, Asturia always used some type of ash; it made for extremely durable and heavy arrows, the shafts becoming almost impossibly straight once she had learned not to bend but rather cut the wood into proper form. One advantage that the black ash had over its other relatives, though, was its color; the arrows were almost impossible to spot, since the Redguard preferred nighttime for her hunt. Sure, they were harder to recover, but seeing as they almost always hit the target, that disadvantage had been nullified.
Slowly and with care the assassin poured a few droplets of water into the sinew in the bowl on her knees, watching in delight as the two substances gradually merged, the second one melting and diffusing the other. After her 'glue' had become sticky enough, she applied it to the shaft between her fingers, careful to use as little as possible; she really didn't feel like going hunting with her head pounding like the feet of Imperial legion. With a shudder, she picked up the first fletched feather, checking with her keen eye the cup of the feather; having fletches with different lean to them resulted in reduced speed. And so it went on, one shaft, sinew, three fletches, rinse, repeat. By the time she was done with forty new arrows, the sun was already soaring high in the sky. With a sigh, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and placed the half-finished weaponry on a wide slab of a stone beside her. She lay down slowly, wincing at the pain in her lower back that always appeared when she stayed in hunched position for too long. When she was finally resting with her body straightened out, a thin smile wound its way to her lips, curling them up in the corners. The warm rays of late summer caressed her bruised skin as she lounged on the heated rocks just beside the joyful stream that ran through Ivarstead.
After awarding her hard work with a peaceful meal at the Vilemyr – the maid from the previous evening obviously covered only night shifts – she returned to finish her careful work. With hand well practiced at the action, she cut the thin, durable string into smaller pieces, tying the now-adhered fletches to the shaft of the arrows. The soaked sinew threads served to further standardize her arrows; it made her life easier if she didn't have to change her shooting style for every particular arrow, after all. The string was pliable from its long water bath and just pleading to be tied to the ash wood. After having fastened all of the loose ends and drawing the string through the nock, she wrapped the remainder of the sinew around the vulnerable parts of the fletching. With a satisfied smile, she set down her last piece of work and stopped to observe the shiny new killers with pride in her eye. There was only one more thing left to do.
With her trusty knife she trimmed the feathers to a rather uniform shape, finalizing the difficult labor. Giving herself a mental pat on the shoulder, Asturia sat down in the late afternoon sun and started carving her bow yet again while letting the last of the sinew dry a little longer; it never hurt to have sturdy, long-lasting and nigh indestructible arrows in her line of work.
