She seemed nervous as he made his selection, and Daemon, after a moment, decided it must be a trait shared by all craftsmen when their work was examined, unless they were very experienced traders. He bobbed his head as he picked, humming tunelessly before he gathered the dies, and then brightened considerably as she chose one--but made no move to acknowledge his carving. He set the jar aside, away from the others, and chose other, more completely finished belts to show off the tooling. Several of them had patterns painted over the dyes, and one in particular had branches and leaves carved into it, the leaves painted light and dark green with yellow veins--something he'd done to amuse himself. It was also, in a way, an offering of his paints; he had all sorts of colors, from black to gold to white again and blue to red, mixed himself and thickened with gelatin-like saps and other substances.
He was mostly setting things aside to begin working on, as he didn't believe he could finish her belt while she was waiting--and he didn't particularly like having people watch him, so he couldn't have her wait. That, and dying, tooling and painting could take well over a day, and he wasn't willing to have her wait that long--something proprietary in him didn't want her in his house for that amount of time. He could have Fion help him with most of it, but the carving he would have to do himself--Fion could barely make a straight line. Not that those were often needed in tooling, but that wasn't really the point. Daemon preferred to do the important parts himself.
Plans already circled through his head, places he knew or had passed that might hold a bucket in which to dye the leather--he preferred to soak them, rather than brush the dye on, although that was an option, too. He knew he should have picked one of those up when he had the chance, but his masks were, usually, painted; the dyes he almost never used. That would change, he thought, the more he traded. Some people weren't interested in masks.
Image courtesy of Watchsmart@Flickr; table by the Mentors!
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