Carving Lessons

[Claudius Aston]

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[/html]The sap and fat mixture dried quickly enough and Claudius was able to remove his hands. At the same time, Hadley searched through his bag for a delicate bone knife to gently scrape away the excess. Claudius gingerly peeled back a few of the leaves to inspect the mixture and was pleased to see that it hadn't seeped through the crack too much. That was good news because now he wouldn’t have to spend as much time cutting away pieces from the outside of the bowl. He was sure he could have devised some means of containing the fluid to only the crack, but it would have likely been long and complex and he didn’t want this to take all day. He was nonetheless quite pleased with the results.

He accepted the knife from Hadley and held it in his right hand for a few seconds, weighing it in his palm. He held up the bowl in his left hand and considered it for a few seconds. In the time that had passed, perhaps ten or twenty minutes, it had dried well.

He slowly began to cut away the larger pieces of the mixture and then set to removing the smaller chips. It was slow and laborious work, but after twenty minutes of turning the bowl, cutting, and turning it again, he had cleaned it up quite well.

“Thuh-there,” he said. “Nuh-now you mi-i-ight want to… harden it… somehow. I-I do-on’t know too-oo much about… that… but it could work… fine as i-i-it is now. Congr-a-a-atula-a-tions, Hadle-e-ey, you’re… done.” Claudius grinned, handed the bowl to Hadley, and then wiped off a few pieces of the mixture from his knife. It felt good to be done and the bowl looked fantastic. He was confident that Hadley would agree; their work had certainly paid off! [html]

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