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Myrika is by me!
For her age, Myri was terribly naive -- she hadn't been completely isolated from social contact as a youth, and she had developed some social skills, but as she'd developed, she'd been ostracized more and more for her gangly appearance and apparent ugliness. Following this, there were the long months of travel, the Pacrel family and Thamur -- Myri was not incredibly experienced in the ways of the world, and in many ways, she herself still felt very much an awkward teenager. She frequently felt as though she hadn't grown up at all since those days in the abandoned shack where she'd spent so many months fretting over Inferni.
It was for that reason she remained silent regarding her own history of finding Inferni. It was fraught with cowardice on her part, and Myri did not think upon it as a kindly tale. Instead, the mahogany-haired woman grinned and nodded. It'd be my pleasure to show you sometime, she offered. The horses would make for quick travel, and Myri would be glad to visit either city -- time in the city meant a possible encounter with books. To her question, the russet hybrid nodded, moving toward the rear of the room. She picked up a finished piece of leather, holding it out toward her companion.
You got it -- this makes something very stiff, and I've also shaved it quite thin, she explained. If you want to make something suitable for clothing, well -- essentially, you need brains, she said, tapping her own skull and making an apologetic face. Usually, you'll want to use the same animal you killed for the pelt -- less waste, she said. And, the best reason, too -- you get exactly as much as you need to tan the hide. So, you mix the brains and water, heat it up and make sure it's well-mixed and mashed. Then, you rub all of that into the hide. Both sides -- or just the one side, if you're leaving the fur on.
After that's done and over with, the hide gets soaked in water, and you use the scrapers to get all the water and whatever else out of it. She moved to pick up a small stick tool, only a few inches long, but rather thick. One end was carved into a round end, worn smooth. You work at the hide with this. This is what makes it so soft and flexible, so it's probably the most important step in making clothing. The same goes for this -- similar tools, but they both need to be used, in my experience. She picked up a smooth rock and handed both the rock and the stick to Emmanuelle. Keep these both, to start you off, she said, smiling. They weren't exceptionally rare tools, but it could take some time finding a river stone of just the right smoothness and size, and the point of the graining stick could not be too sharp, else it would tear the pelt and ruin it for many uses.
The drying process is more a smoking process, my way -- you hang the hide over the fire, far enough away that it won't catch fire, and close enough so that the smoke gets into the hide. Different smokes produce different effects -- dark smoke, dark leather, she said, grinning. That's all of it, explained. There were other methods, different ones entirely -- some produced stiff leather that was still workable, useful for sheaths and book covers, even. This was a basic method, and could be accomplished with no extraordinary effort on Emmanuelle's part. The russet-haired woman peered toward her companion anxiously, expecting questions from the dust-furred woman.
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