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oftenderweapons · 3 years

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Mold Me New (3) — Taehyung

A Small Town Swoons Story

Pairing: Taehyung x reader (nicknamed Frog — for now)

Wordcount: 3.7k

Genre: ceramic artist!Taehyung, divorced!reader, Strangers to Lovers, Fluff, Angst, Slice of Life

Rating: 18+ (for future smut and explicit thoughts)

Hello to my readers!!! Welcome to the Small Town Swoons Universe! 🥰✨

In this episode: Terry has given very generic instructions to Frog about how to retrieve her birthday gift. A more then welcome surprise follows.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: None. (Wow. I’m shocked.)

Once more let me thank potter supreme @joheunsaram (I’d be wandering in darkness and despair without you. Lob U)

Here is my complete masterlist and in case you need it, here’s the Spotify music companion.

Navi: Chapter 1 — Chapter 2 — Chapter 3 — Chapter 4 — Chapter 5 — Chapter 6 — Chapter 7

“Hello?”

You felt deeply embarrassed venturing into the backyard of a stranger.

“Excuse me? Hello?”

The heavy sound of something slamming against the floor of a garage had you slightly worried. You were ready to run away when the door opened. The neighbourhood wasn’t familiar to you and Terry’s refusal to tell you anything about the specific address she had given you scared you even more.

You feared you’d end up at one of Terry’s friends with benefit’s house.

You changed your mind, however, when you recognised the man standing out of the door.

“Frog? Is that you?”

“Taehyung?” You said, recalling the name of the man. You had met him only a couple days before, spending a good time with his friends while your own had ditched you.

“Hello Frog!” He exclaimed, incredibly happy to see you. “Are you here for a four pm meeting?”

“All I know is that Terry told me to be here by four. She gave me the address but,” you laughed, shaking your head and touching your hair nervously. “She didn’t mention it was you. She didn’t say anything. She only said it was a surprise.”

Taehyung’s laugh exploded suddenly, deep and loud. “That explains many, many things.” He nodded to himself, waiting for you to get closer. “Welcome to my studio,” he said, letting the door open a bit wider.

The space inside was bright and airy, with a wall that resembled a glasshouse, while the others were made of brick and lined with shelves. In a corner you noticed a strange contraption, like an iron cauldron, and an unfamiliar machine close to a basin. There was also a large table all along the glass wall, like it was waiting for plants to be hosted, but none were found.

“With me you’ll learn the humble, raw art of modelling clay.”

You turned to him with a furrowed brow, completely confused. “Clay?”

“Yes. Clay.”

“You model clay?” You asked, giving him an amused look.

“I am an artist,” he stated clearly. “I also model clay but that’s not all I do.”

“So that’s my gift? A clay lesson?”

“Ten clay lessons. I’ll make you an intermediate.” Taehyung reached a wooden cabinet, opening it and taking out a large block of clay, grabbing something from his apron and detaching a smaller part before putting the clay back in the cabinet. “But first, let me get you an apron.”

You felt your eyes blink in confusion. “You teach?”

“Art should answer anyone’s calls, in my opinion. I help people learn how to call.”

You were positively impressed. The quiet, if a bit Darcy-esque man, seemed relaxed and talkative in his natural habitat.

Taehyung reached a coat hook on the wall, giving a good look at you before choosing a garment suitable for your height. “This should do,” he said, offering it to you and letting you put it on.

You appreciated the independence he allowed you, allowing you to wear it yourself. You hung your tote on the now free hook and slipped your arms and head into the different loops before closing the tie around your waist in a cute ribbon.

“You'll want to fix your hair before your hands get messy,” Taehyung suggested, watching you carefully get it out of harm's way, since the last thing you wished for was dirt in your hair.

“You didn’t mention you teach art the other night.”

He smiled shyly. “The night you introduced yourself, I remembered I had gift lessons booked under your name. I wanted your birthday surprise to stay a surprise.”

You were entirely endeared at the thought. “That’s very sweet of you!” You exclaimed, watching him collect the piece of clay he had previously cut.

“It’s not a big deal,” he murmured, looking away as his cheeks blushed.

He was eager to watch you learn. He already felt like your hands could have so much potential. He had studied them all night after he met you, watching the sinewy fingers arch and straighten and hold and curve. “Okay, let’s start from a little bit of theory.”

He moved to the table by the window, “Would you mind grabbing a bowl with some water, there?” He pointed to a large utility sink in one of the corners, where you found a bowl and filled it halfway with water.

You made a careful work of walking to the table, placing down the bowl and sighing in relief once you realised you had caused no issues so far.

“Two questions. Have you ever used clay before?”

You snorted and shook your head. “Nope.”

“So you supposedly know nothing about it?”

“Exactly.”

He chuckled and bobbed his head. “That’s okay. All you need to know so far, is that clay is a mineral, and it can have different compositions which make it more or less difficult to model and to cook. I’ll have you use very generic clay, which is suitable for beginners, isn’t too picky about cooking and will look a bit plain, but is also pretty easy to shape. You’ll thank me later.”

You raised your eyebrows and smiled.

“It’s easy to work with, it cooks at low temperature and is also cheap, which will make it better if you ever choose to continue this hobby,” he explained. “It will take a fairly long time for you to master several techniques with this one, so no use spending money on fancy stuff. We’ll keep that for when you’re an upper intermediate. All cool?” He asked, checking in on you with his beautiful, dark eyes.

He had very pretty eyes, you noticed.

“Yes, got that.” You confirmed, startling when he slammed the clay against the table.

“Cool.” He replied with half a grin. “Let’s start from zero.”

Once more he extracted a tool from the pocket of his apron, showing it to you. “This is a wire. You’ll find one in your apron too.”

You rummaged in the pocket and found it. “This will help you with step one — Wait. Lemme start from very very zero.”

He walked back to the cabinet and dragged a block of clay out — the one he’d cut a piece from a few minutes ago. “This is called craft clay or potters’ clay. It’s ready-made and you can buy it in any diy shop. Some artists make their own mix, but let’s start with this since it’s specifically made for learners.”

“It looks very tough,” you commented, testing the small amount he’d cut before, prodding it with your finger.

“It just needs some love,” he explained, pouting sadly. “Clay is so misunderstood. It needs to be firm. But it’s pliable, as long as you treat it appropriately.”

You arched your eyebrows. “I just thought it was softer. Messier, somehow.”

“It is once you wedge it and moisturise it.” Taehyung acknowledged. “Clay contains platelets. Platelets make it solid, but also plastic as long as it’s not dry. Right now you have two enemies. Shape memory and air.”

Taehyung’s hands got on the piece instinctively. “Today I’ll only manage to explain wedging and centering. So be careful and pay attention. If you mess up wedging, your life will get ten times more impossible on the wheel. Let’s start.” He brought the main block back in the cabinet. “That one needs to stay fresh.”

Once at the table he settled beside you. “What’s wedging?” You asked, staring at your piece of clay.

“Wedging is your starting point. As you saw earlier, ready- made clay comes in blocks. Which means square. On the wheel, you’ll always start from a cute soft ball. Which means round.”

Taehyung’s hands massaged the clay for comfort. He felt somehow uneasy at the way he was going to interact with you. “Basically clay holds memory of the shape it was in. You want to erase it to make it more pliable. Like… When an introvert is in their comfort zone for too long and you need to get them back in society and you just… force them in several different social circumstances to warm them up, make them more versatile. More sociable.”

God, he felt ridiculous. He was using his inner turmoil to explain pottery.

He was going to defenestrate himself.

“Okay,” you laughed. “I got the introvert thing. I like the parallel.” You smiled and for a second you thought about all the years you’d been there, shaped like a block to fit inside someone’s life — or to fit them in yours.

You could use some wedging too.

“We usually wedge on plaster, or concrete or wood, because they get the extra water out of the clay. You want it to be a tiny bit humid. But not wet.” Taehyung spread his large hands over the small disk in front of him. “You want to make it more homogeneous. Uniform. For today let’s use the ram’s head method. It’s basically like kneading dough.”

His hair fell over his eyes as he bent down, leaning towards the table. “We have a small amount of clay, since you’re starting. You basically want it to become a thick block first.”

He bent the disk in two, turning it in a thicker, longer rectangle before placing his hands to the opposite sides and pressing, making the clay become more compact.

“Okay, try,” he invited you to do the same.

You mimicked his actions, focusing on the cold, solid feeling of the material under your fingertips.

“Use your palms. Don’t be afraid to get your whole hands on it. You’ll need all your strength.”

You nodded and followed his lead, the cold expanding to your palms, the feeling amplifying beautifully. It was somehow reinvigorating after the initial strangeness.

“Good. Now. Ram’s head.” He inhaled and regained his position. “These,” he said, wiggling his fingers, “and these,” he explained circling his hand around his shoulder. “That’s where you want to focus. All your strength resides there. You won’t feel it right now, but you will once you work with larger pieces.” He steadied himself and placed his palms on the sides of the piece. “Palms on the sides. Your wrists will do all the work. Your thumbs wrap around the top of the piece. The other fingers on the back of the piece. Focus on the wrists. You want to push the clay downwards first, then outwards, to the back of the piece. Okay. Position your hands.”

Taehyung stood straight up, allowing you to see his clay, on top of which he was previously bent over.

“I’m not…” You frowned and tried to feel the clay under your hands, trying to recognise the different sides.

“It’s okay. May I?” He asked, bringing his right hand close to yours.

You nodded, waiting for the contact.

It was chalky, somehow, almost dusty with the way the clay was already drying up, but it still held some cold dampness.

He corrected your fingers, staring at them and giving them a slight twist. “This way your wrists should reach just fine.”

He stood at your side, respecting your personal space even though his hand touched you. The smile on his face was the gentlest, most exciting thing you had felt in a while.

“Okay, mirror it with your left,” he told you as he stepped back, regaining his own space.

“This feels nice,” you admitted, giving the first twist of your wrist.

“Let’s see if you still think so after wedging for twenty minutes,” Taehyung chuckled.

“Twenty minutes!?” You said, already worried.

He giggled and shook his head, his curls brushing against his forehead, which you didn’t notice, because you were too busy focusing on the clay under your hands.

“Ten, usually. Twenty if you need very pliable clay. Like if you’re doing hand-building. But we can use something a bit rougher.” Taehyung helped you get out of the position your clay body was stuck in. “Help it with your fingers. Bring it back, yes,” he encouraged you once the position was right. “And now your wrists. Exactly. Look at you. You’re learning!”

He looked excited when you turned to look at him. He was literally shining with the meek sunlight coming from the window.

“I’m learning!” Your excitement mirrored his own.

“Okay, now, watch. This is why it’s called ram’s head.” Taehyung showed you the spiral on the sides, and the elongated triangle on the front.

“That looks fancy!” You said, feeling curious about the shape.

“Keep going and yours will be just like this!” He spurred you on, making you work harder and faster, which eventually led you to the ruthless burning that possessed your arms afterwards.

With his elbow, Taehyung pointed at your shoulder blade. “Just push your body weight into the clay. The whole motion should mimic a wave,” he showed you how. “If your hands are positioned right, you only need to lean in to wedge— Just. Like. That! Good job, Frog!”

You smiled and went on, paying attention to his corrections, and his gentle advice, enjoying the gentleness with which his pinkie finger pointed to a specific direction, or a finger that was in the wrong position, realigning it.

“Nice! Now, tuck the corners in in a cute fluffy ball. See how soft and warm and round it feels now?”

You nodded enthusiastically. There was something in menial tasks that always made you happy with yourself. Seeing the results of your efforts and hard work always made you feel accomplished, productive.

And it’s been a while since you felt that rush, except for seeing an organised shelf in your shop, with books neatly aligned and rated.

“Okay. I’ll show you how to work the wheel. We got little time left, so maybe I can show you the groundwork and then you can toy around with the body I centred, so you can get familiar with the feeling.”

You agreed.

Taehyung gave a few more twists to your clay body and brought it to the wheel. “Okay. Here we go. Forget Ghost, this thing is a lot more difficult than that. And forget all that water. Too messy. Bowl?” He asked.

Your forehead creased as he pointed to a small stand with a basin. It looked like a short version of a vintage stand for those porcelain bowls used in bedrooms.

You moved it closer to him.

“Thank you,” he smiled and caught the clay body, throwing it on the middle of the turning plate, currently still as he hadn’t yet activated the wheel.

“You can aim for the centre. There’s an indentation to show it. See,” he pointed to the plate. “There are all these circles to show you if you’re actually following the shape.”

He dipped a finger in the bowl, letting the extra water drip down, until it was just slightly damp. “You run around the base to seal it. That way you don’t need to slam it down and you don’t risk watching it unstick and mess around with you.”

“Okay. Great!”

“Now. Position is very important. With your legs you hold the holster and the wheel. Don’t worry about getting too close. Check three things. Knees around the wheel. Elbows braced on your thighs — that will stabilise you. And your torso leans forward. Not angled but perpendicular to the wheel. You need to be right on top of it, so your weight sinks down. Not across.” He showed you the correct position, his lean frame protecting the ball of clay like a hen defends her chicks.

Watching him become so tactile and connected with the material under his hands was endearing, but also fascinating, especially with the way his hands wrapped around the body.

“Okay, let me centre it for you, then you can try. It’s a procedure that can go back and forth, so I’ll have you doing this over and over for a few times. It will help you familiarise with it.”

“Thank you,” you replied, watching his fingers sink in the water. “Now, trick. You wet your hands. Let them drip down just a little, so you don’t drench your piece. If the piece is drenched, the platelets will loosen and the walls of your cup, bowl, vase, whatever will collapse. And we don’t want that, right?”

The way his head snapped towards you with an inquisitive look made you shake your head and reply readily, “nope.”

“Exactly. So, we sink our hands in, rest, and— one, two three, drip and—” he moved his hands over the clay body, letting a few tens of droplets fall onto the material. “Nice and wet. Not sodden, of course. We don’t want that, remember?”

You blinked and nodded as his hands started moving.

Taehyung grinned as he noticed your captivated gaze. You were learning. You were curious, interested, completely amazed. It was the most satisfying look he had ever seen. “This is your treasure now. You curl yourself around it and protect it. Like a dragon hoards its gold.”

He leaned down into the piece, his foot looking for the pedal and pressing it down very, very delicately.

“Your pinkies and ring fingers are doing all the work right now. They seal around the base, reinforcing the sealing we did before. Once you gave enough spins around the base — oh, feel the plate with the side of your pinkie and palm!” He reminded himself, showing you the part of his hand and securing it around the wheel once more. He corrected his position. “You will feel the clay push you up. That’s when your palms close in. You want to make sure it goes up.”

The wheel suddenly stopped and Taehyung showed you the result. “See. Cute mushroom shape. A two inch stem, and then the round hat.”

You bent down to check and studied the way the table started spinning slowly again, showing you the consistent shape.

“More water. Same technique.” He repeated the dip-drip process. “Now. Pinkies stay in. Lots of pressure. And your palms are going to push the hat of the mushroom up. You want it to turn into a cone. So once the hat disappears, you’re gonna keep your hands steady, with a lot of pressure, and drag them up, slowly. And bend them inwards slightly, into a tip.” He followed the process with his hands, his fingers steady and his veins thicker at the effort and the pressure. The way his elbows braced against his hands brought even more blood to the back of his palms.

Still, you didn’t let that cloud your focus. You stared at the process, especially once he stopped the wheel and took his hands off.

“Now we’re bringing it downwards with the thumbs. We’re helping it regain the center. This,” he prodded the ball of his thumb, the soft part where the finger could sink, “is the part that gains the centre. You push it down, while your fingers lean over. Like you’re projecting energy from your palms.” He finished showing the procedure, showing how the ball of clay was a perfectly round dome, placed in the exact middle of the wheel.

“Now you take the lead!” He turned to you with a grin.

With a shy blush you watched him stand up and gesture to the seat elegantly.

You settled down and fixed your position around the wheel, following the instructions he had given you previously.

“That’s nice. Closer.” He corrected you helping your seat closer to the holster of the wheel.

“Now we’re ready to go. Wet your hands—” he directed you, helping you count the dip and drip. “Steady.”

You placed your pinkies tightly around the base, feeling the dome a bit too large for your hands. That’s because it was shaped for his large hands.

“Yes. Steady,” he encouraged you. “Go.”

The taglist is open!

Navi: Chapter 1 — Chapter 2 — Chapter 3 — Chapter 4 — Chapter 5 — Chapter 6 — Chapter 7

#taehyung fluff #taehyung x reader #kim taehyung fanfiction #thetruthuntoldnet #thebtswritersclub #Taehyung strangers to lovers

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kyidyl · 3 years

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Kyidyl Does Archaeology - Part 5

(as per usual, all these posts are collected under the KyidylCL tag)

Pottery and shErds

So, what are we talking about today? Well, I think the next thing is gonna be pottery. This is where we’re gonna talk about time, space, and dating a site. Because most people think that the only way to date an archaeological site is via C14. That’s not true, and actually we don’t always do it. C14 dating can have some problems, including that the wood used in the fire is likely older than the time in which it was cut down and burned. It also only goes back 50,000 years, so anything older than that won’t have any carbon isotopes (it’ll have all decayed), and we have to use other things that are more expensive. And c14 testing itself is expensive - we sent in 2 samples and it was around $500/sample so we spent about $1000 on testing. Instead, there are other ways to date a site and one of the most accurate is pottery.

See, like all other kinds of material culture (AKA, stuff people leave behind. Non-material culture is like...song and story and stuff like that.), pottery follows stylistic trends and trends in how it was made. And it does this both regionally and chronologically. Which is great, because if we find bits of one type of pottery we know is made in one place in a settlement in another place, then we know the two people traded with each other. But I have to explain something else so that determining a date from pottery makes sense.

Every area of the country has what’s called a “type site” for a given period of time. In undergrad I was lucky enough to actually get to work on the type site for the Safety Harbour period, which is Weedon Island....ironically enough there’s a Weedon Island period and Weedon Island isn’t the type site for that period so uuuhhh...yeah it’s weird lol. Anyway, a type site is a site that is considered stereotypical for a given time and place in history. Usually they’re large and well-preserved, and they’re often the first sites found in that time period/area (but not always, which is how the above weirdness happened.). And so what happens is we dig ‘em and analyze the finds and do testing on those finds. So now we know “hey, this kind of pottery comes from here and it is X years old”. Now you know when you find it in other places where and when it comes from. This is all a very generalized explanation, but I think any more is like extraneous detail you don’t need. Just know that things like type sites help us determine where and when stuff like pottery was made. Lots of literature usually exists for type sites, but I actually can’t remember the type site for this area for this time period.

We also use a term called “diagnostic”, which is used much as it is in medicine. If we find a certain thing that was only made during a specific time period or in a certain place, then it’s diagnostic. IE, a certain kind of pottery is diagnostic of the late, middle, or early Woodland. The pottery we have at our site is diagnostic of the late Woodland. Some of the lithics we thought might be a bit earlier, but honestly I think that was just misidentification by the site director bc we were in the field at the time. Lastly, identifying pottery has a few components. Color and decoration I think are easy to understand (they didn’t have glazes, but you can make different colored pottery by varying the composition of the clay and the temperature at which it is fired.). Paste and temper are the other two. IDK how modern pottery is made, but old ass pottery is made with paste - the main body of the clay, the matrix that contains the temper - and temper. Temper is stuff they’d crush up and mix in to help it not break during firing and heating during normal use. So we combine these factors to ID the pottery and thus the age of the site and trading habits of the people in question. One last thing you need to understand about pottery - ancient people used pottery the way that we use disposable things. They didn’t think it was like an important thing that had to keep safe. They’d use it until it broke and then toss it in the garbage pit and make a new one. So it’s really common and we find it all over the place, but TBH in the future pottery *won’t* be diagnostic anymore because our ceramics come in such a wide variety that we couldn’t possibly hope to narrow down time or place.

Alright, so who wants pictures? You, of course. Who *doesn’t* want pictures? Here’s some of the pottery we found:

This is the larger shard that I found in the features I’ve talked about in previous installments. You can see where I accidentally broke it. >.> Anyway it’s kind of unique bc of the light color outside and the black inside. It’s like...idk, 4 or so inches long.

This is a rim piece that I happened to find two matching sherds of. I always check the rim pieces because the patterns on them usually make them easier to fit together. Honestly I’ve got hundreds of pot sherds from this site and I don’t have the sanity to try and make pots from them.

This is the outside and inside respectively of the largest piece we have. TBH taking this thing out of its box and handling it makes me nervous because of how large it is - about the size of my hand, but I did include my earbuds for scale. The black is charring from both firing and subsequent use, and it came out of the pit feature I’ve been talking about. And do you wanna know the cool thing about the inner surface of pottery? Because they didn’t use glazes, the surface was porous and retains the unique chemical traces of what was made in them. However, the vast majority of the time those kinds of tests aren’t done because archaeology as a whole is extremely underfunded and trace chemical analysis of pot residue is an expensive test requiring expensive equipment and expensive scientists. Funnily enough I probably could do some of this testing bc I used to be premed and so I’ve taken a lot of chemistry and know how to read a mass spec thing, but I don’t have access to the chemicals or tools to do these kinds of tests. Plus, they’re often destructive...which....I mean...there’s so much pottery that it doesn’t really matter if one piece gets destroyed but like you do still have to be careful *which* piece you destroy.

Anyway, you also can see the striations on the outside piece, and that’s decoration on the pot. It probably also helped with gripping it. This is a piece of Shepardware, which is diagnostic of the late Woodland period in the Shenandoah valley. Here’s some more cool pottery:

This is a random assortment of the kind of stuff we regularly pull out of the ground when it comes to pottery. The most common kind we have is the orange on one side black on the other (3 upper rt pieces), whiteish (upper left 2), orange on both sides (lower left 3) and totally black (lower right 3). All of ‘em are some variety of shepard or pageware. You can see the texture on a lot of them, too. We have a good mix of textured and untextured, and that’s why the composition of the pottery is more diagnostic than the decoration. Frankly, people can and will put whatever design they think looks cool. But they made that particular design by wrapping twine around the end of a flat stick and pressing it into the surface of the wet clay. I also chose those two upper right pieces because they have really visible temper. Here’s a side shot of one of them:

You can see how big the bits are compared to my fingers (yeah, there’s dirt under my nails....I haven’t taken some tweezers to them yet after working on the car.). And...wait, I WAS going to try to describe this to you but then I was like “no, they deserve better” and I broke out my DSLR and my macro lens and took some pics. Here are some macros of the temper:

The white balance is a little off on the top one...the bottom one is more true to color (they aren’t the same piece of pottery, but they are a similar color). So you can see that it’s crushed up limestone. Pardon the depth of field on those...I had to open the aperture pretty wide to get one that wasn’t blurry bc I don’t exactly have bright lights in my room.

Anyway....so that’s the pottery we’ve gotten at the site and what we can learn from it. It’s going to take some time before we can start determining patterns and whatnot in regards to style, but we do have some evidence of trading here because some of the pottery we have is from the piedmont culture....

...wait, let me explain what that means. When archaeologists need to describe a group of people who existed in a given place in a given time based on similarities in material culture regardless of ethnic and social grouping we call it a culture. This is different than the standard meaning of the world culture, or even the way a cultural anthropologist would use the word. So when I say the piedmont culture, I mean people that lived in the general area of the Piedmont plateau during the late woodland. They were of varying tribes, languages, etc. And we do this to describe the extant boundaries of cultural influence of particular trends in physical objects and not the social groupings of the humans in question. So, for example, lots of people are familiar with the Clovis culture. When archaeologists use this term we mean “these are the boundaries of the places we are finding physical objects in the group we’ve named Clovis” not “everyone in this area was a Clovis person”. Like no, obviously, they weren’t. There were tons of social groups, tribes, etc. that were all distinct and different. It’s a way of mapping cultural influence via physical objects to see how far they spread and who was using them.

So, we have some piedmont stuff despite not being in the piedmont area, so we know that they were trading with those natives. If you’re interested in more detail here, this is the VDHR resource I use for IDing pottery. It looks like it came to visit you from the late 1990s, but the info is good and it’s easy to use.

Anyway, that’s it for tonight. Tomorrow is gonna be rocks and weird stuff, depending on how much I end up saying about rocks. Probably not much bc we know how I feel about rocks. ;)

#kyidylCL #archaeology #science #pottery #native pottery #native americans #anthropology

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

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Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Part 1/? - A Meeting at the Palace Part 2/? - Curry Talk Part 3/? - Princess Sitamun Part 4/? - Not At Rest Part 5/? - Dead Men Tell no Tales Part 6/? - Sitamun Rises Again Part 7/? - The Curse of Madame Desrosiers Part 8/? - Sabotage at Guedelon Part 9/? - A Miracle Part 10/? - Desrosiers’ Elixir Part 11/? - Athens in October Part 12/? - The Man in Black Part 13/? - Mr. Neustadt Part 14/? - The Other Side of the Story Part 15/? - A Favour Part 16/? - A Knock on the Window

Nat and Sir Stephen follow Neustadt home in the hope of getting some clues.

Neustadt returned to the train station, and took transit southeast to the Neapoli district, an area of dense apartments and narrow streets below Mount Lycabettus. Natasha and Sir Stephen followed him, hiding behind newspapers or a group of young soccer fans, and watched as he descended a flight of steps from the sidewalk on Doxapatri to enter a building. Nat pulled her phone out, and made a note of their location, then sat down on the curb to wait.

“Are we not going inside?” asked Sir Stephen.

“We’re being spies, not warriors,” Nat told him. “We’ve learned everything we can from him verbally. Now we want to see what’s in his home. We’ll watch, and we’ll wait.”

So that was what they did – and about an hour later Neustadt reappeared, dressed in a suit and tie that must have been hideously hot, even now that the sun was down. A taxi pulled up, and he got in. It headed south, and vanished around the corner.

“All right,” said Nat. “Now we go in.”

Like every other space in Athens, the apartment foyer – small and dim, with the tile floor cracking – was tiny and cramped by the standards of somebody who’d lived and worked in America. Europe was a small continent, and people there didn’t feel the freedom Americans did to spread out and take up space. There were no plants or furniture, since there wouldn’t have been room for any, and an ‘out of order’ sign on the door of the elevator. The only person in the room was a nine-year-old girl sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, playing a hand-held video game.

“Good evening,” Natasha said to her in Greek. “Did you see the man in the suit who just left?”

The girl nodded.

“Does he live here?” Nat asked.

The girl just shrugged.

“Have you seen him before?” Nat insisted.

“Sometimes,” the girl said. “Not very often. He visits the apartment across from my mother’s.”

Nat managed to get from the girl that her family lived on the third floor, and then thanked her and gave her a couple of Euros to buy herself a treat. Since the elevator was out of order, Nat and Sir Stephen had to climb the stairs to the third floor, which was not in any way pleasant. By the time they got there, Nat’s hair was stuck to the back of her neck from sweat, and even Sir Stephen, who was normally almost immune to environmental discomfort, flapped the front of his shirt in the effort to cool himself.

The apartment the man was supposed to have visited turned out to be number 304. Natasha knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

Nat knocked again, counted to twenty just to be sure, and then pulled out a paperclip and bent it open to pick the lock. The apartment beyond was a surprise – it was empty.

It was a tiny place, just three rooms: a bathroom, a kitchen, and a bedroom. Each had a couple of items placed in front of the windows to make it look as if somebody lived there – some jars or books, curtains, or a framed painting on the wall opposite. Beyond that, however, there was nothing. No dishes in the kitchen cupboard, no food in the fridge, no towels in the bathroom. In the closet a few sets of clothing were hung, and the shorts and t-shirt Neustadt had been wearing earlier were folded on the floor next to his flip-flops. This wasn’t his home, just a convenient place to change clothes.

On an empty kitchen cupboard was a pink post-it note, on which somebody – presumably Neustadt himself – had written the words, one atop the other:

MISSED ME IN

“Missed me in Athens?” Sir Stephen suggested.

“Maybe,” said Nat. Although if so, why hadn’t he cut the message short? Had somebody interrupted him? He hadn’t looked like he was in a huge hurry when he’d caught his taxi. Nat reached up to take the note, then changed her mind and took a picture of it instead. “It’s not for us. We didn’t miss him,” she observed. “It’s for somebody else… maybe Desrosiers.”

“We did indeed miss him,” Sir Stephen said, annoyed. “In that you wouldn’t enter until he’d left. What shall spies do next, then?”

“Search the place again,” Nat decided. “And be very careful to put everything back exactly where you found it. Bang on the walls, stomp on the floors, look for secret cupboards or hidden spaces, anywhere you could store something you don’t want anyone to find. And then we wait, because if he left this note then he must be expecting somebody to come here. If it’s Desrosiers, we need to talk to her, too.”

They searched the apartment from top to bottom, and found nothing. Natasha knocked on the doors of 303 and 305, both of which were inhabited by apparently normal people: 303 was home to an old man who lived alone with a small terrier, and 305 to a family in which both parents worked while also raising four school-age children. Neither could remember ever speaking to their neighbor in 304 but they were sure somebody lived there – or at the very least watered the plants on the balcony.

Nat rejoined Sir Stephen in the bedroom, which did not contain a bed – just a small bookshelf and chair in a place where they would be visible through the window curtains. The books were a random assortment of trashy best-sellers from about ten years back, of no interest at all. She’d flipped through them, and they were all real books, rather than hiding places.

“This is just a front,” she said, sitting down on the floor beside Sir Stephen. “It’s a place he can hide and maybe get his mail delivered to, but I don’t think he spends any more time here than necessary. Possibly he used to store stuff here.” There wasn’t much dust on the floor, which suggested it had either been recently cleaned or recently covered. “If he did, he’s taken it away now.”

“So we have learned nothing,” groused Sir Stephen.

“We’ve learned a lot,” Nat told him. “We’ve definitely learned enough to pretend we know more than we do, and we might be able to use that to get something out of Desrosiers.”

“And what if we wait here all night and she never comes?” Sir Stephen asked. “We will have spent the night sitting around uselessly, while Neustadt flees!”

He might be right, but Nat wasn’t going to admit it as long as he was using that tone. “I’m going to call the others,” she decided.

Sharon answered the phone, and sounded relieved to hear from them. “Where are you two?” she asked. “We’ve been waiting at the hotel for hours.”

“We’re at an address in Neapoli,” said Nat. “I think Desrosiers may turn up here.” She explained what they’d seen, and how Neustadt had left. “Did you talk to Fury?”

“Yes,” Sharon said. “He’s gonna see if he can get us a copy of the Voynich manuscript, although he’s not sure it’ll do us any good. The smartest cryptographers in the world have been trying to decode it for a hundred years, and nobody’s managed it yet.”

“I guess there might be something else in there we could use,” said Nat, although she wasn’t hopeful. It wasn’t just Americans who were interested in the manuscript – the Russians, too, had tested their best code-breakers on it and come up with nothing. “Anything else? What about the address in Australia? Or Kotor?”

“He’s going to call somebody in Australia to ask,” Sharon said, “but as far as we can tell from a quick check of Google Maps, it’s a shack in the middle of nowhere. As for Kotor, he says that’s a trap. I told him we know it’s a trap, we’re trying to figure out whether it’s worth springing it.”

“All right, let me know,” said Nat.

“One other thing,” Sharon added. “He says he’s got copies of those Newton writings, and he’ll courier them to us. We should expect the package at the hotel tomorrow morning.”

“Then call me when they get there,” Natasha said. “We’ll stay here, and if Desrosiers doesn’t turn up by the morning, we’ll come back.”

There was an air conditioner in the room, but it didn’t work. Nat and Sir Stephen, sitting in the middle of the bare floor, had to try to keep cool by fanning themselves with papers or their hands while they passed the time by playing a couple of games of Beat Your Neighbour. The cards were a pack bought from a souvenir vendor in the street – they had erotic scenes from ancient pottery on the backs, including a very improbable picture of a satyr balancing a cup of wine on its erect penis. Sir Stephen won both games, and then sat back and yawned.

“Sleepy?” asked Natasha.

“It’s this heat,” said Sir Stephen. “It makes one want to sleep at the same time as it is likely to render sleep impossible.”

“Having to sleep on the floor isn’t going to help,” Nat agreed. “So who takes first watch?” One of them would have to stay awake to see if Desrosiers, or somebody else, showed up. The question was who.

There was a rap on the window.

Nat jumped, and she could see that Sir Stephen did too. For a moment she thought it was intentional, then she remembered they were on the third floor… who’d be knocking on the window? Could it have been a bird? Then it happened again – three knocks. That was definitely somebody trying to get their attention.

She caught Sir Stephen’s eye. He took up a position next to the window, and picked up the wooden chair from under the bookshelf, to use as a weapon. Nat pulled the curtains back and raised her flashlight. There was a man on the balcony, blinking in the light and raising his hands to show that he was unarmed.

It was Jim, with his long hair and black t-shirt. He squinted to see who was holding the flashlight, then recognized her and looked surprised – had he, too, been expecting Neustadt? He knocked on the window again to be let in.

Nat undid the catch and let him inside.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Jim admitted. “I just knew this was the place to come.”

Maybe he’d been here before, and Neustadt had ordered him to forget about it, Nat thought. Or maybe he’d been told to come here but not why. Or maybe he did after all know more than what Neustadt had told him – maybe he’d somehow picked up some things Neustadt hadn’t meant to transmit.

“What do you want?” Nat asked. Behind her, Sir Stephen slowly set down the chair he was holding.

“I… I’m not sure of that, either,” Jim admitted. “I want help, but I don’t know if you can help me. I don’t know if anybody can help me – he says he can’t, but maybe Mrs. Flamel can… but I don’t know if she wants to.”

Nat had a good idea of what the problem might be, but she wanted to hear it from him. “Explain.”

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov #bucky barnes

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aananduniverse-blog · 5 years

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Blog Post 4

Solid Clay

This material looked and felt smooth, but also dull without shine. It had no reflectivity of light. The clay we used were white and grey. The emotions I could observe in clay was flexibility and adaptability, taking whatever form the sculptor wanted, and adjusting to the environment as needed. This material, like earth, is very natural and shapes made from it could very easily exist in nature as stand-alone objects or can appear very man-made.

Paper

The paper I used appeared smooth on both sides, but like the clay, had no reflective property. It was very opaque. Paper, for me, ascribes a certain ability to create value. While it wasn’t flexible like clay, I was able to fold the paper in whatever way I wanted. However, fixing the shape into what I wanted was difficult.

Resin (for 3D printers)

The resin 3D printers produce objects that seem to have a smooth surface and texture. This is true both to the look of the material and to the touch. The material was available in different forms and colors. Such as flexible resin, tough resin, and regular resin. I used white, grey and black colored resins to create the 3D forms, and the textures across the forms were relatively similar.

Casting

We used alginate and silicone to make our own casts. Furthermore, we had different premade casts available, and I used multiple of them to create forms. The alginate had a visual texture that appeared rough, however it was very smooth to the touch. The silicone looked and felt soft. Both felt very weird, though; especially alginate. Once, I even shuddered when I was ripping off alginate off an object I had created.

Plaster

Plaster created both smooth and rough surfaces, depending on whether they were on the open end of the casts, or the closed end. The plaster created a surface that looked and felt smooth to the touch on the enclosed sides. On the open end, there were rough bumps that stuck out due to unevenness. Plaster seemed cool to the touch and reminded me of the summer months in Nepal where leaning against an indoor concrete pillar always helped cool the back of my body!

Silicone

As described above, silicone both looked and felt smooth. It was also heavier than I assumed it would be, and stronger than it looks. Not very stretchy as a solid form! This simply brought my attention to my chemistry classes in high school, when I was working with various compounds that had silicone in its structure and the formulas I had to memorize!

White Urethane Plastic

Urethane plastic is a light weight object and looks plaster-like from a distance. However, the texture is different. It looks very smooth, too, like plaster. However, I don’t seem to be able to describe the texture very well, due to the age of the mixture I used which led to a slightly unique formation of the object. The object I made was ‘leaking’ from one spot, and was almost ‘melting away’ at another, which gave the object a slightly less rigid look.

Pigment

Using colors to change the monotone that making objects out of (white) plaster was a good experimentation. They turned out well for me, creating nice contrasts and contours. The different colors created different colored intensities on plaster, with red turning to pink in plaster, red pigment separating to create a ‘dotted’ feature with urethane plastic, and blue remaining a deep blue despite being mixed into plaster!

Monster Clay (Liquid to Solid)

I attempted monster clay as my last venture in this phase, and it was a hard material to work with, with the casts I tried to use. Because the clay didn’t really harden that well, my casts disallowed the forms to be removed from the cast intact for 2 of 4 that I created. The other two were very soft to the touch in texture and looked soft too. The material was very dense and wouldn’t reflect light in any way. The piece I created, a shot glass I believe, reminded me very much of pottery.

Of all the materials I used and described above, I prefer working with silicone. This is because of the potential it has for color and texture, as well as being both a material to create a cast out of as well as a material to create forms out of. I would want to experiment with this further either in this class, or outside of it!

I would want to create more objects through the 3D print process that will add to my theme from earlier phases. Through phase 4, I have slightly drifted away from my theme because the process of creating was so intriguing that I wanted to try each step as best and uniquely as I could. Furthermore, there were restrictions to my abilities as to what I could replicate through casting. By getting a few more items 3D printed, I will be able to align the objects I casted along with what I previously had, so that I am able to bridge the gap. I am still thinking as to what I need, but I should have a cleared idea through the next few days.

Some important things I learned from the article on Materials and Texture that I couldn’t integrate into the above summary is followed below:

· Materials have numerous possibilities, and sculptors need to be aware of them

· Nothing a sculptor does is neutral – everything has meaning

· It is a 3-way conversation between sculptor, material and viewer

· Creating forms transcend the material with which they is made

· Constantin Brancusi’s Torso of a Young Man in wood and brass

o The dullness of the wood

o The shininess of brass

o Marks left by tools for wood; nowhere for brass

o Parts of the torso could be invisible depending on the light setting, for the brass piece

· Cellophane-wrapped candies – sculptures can be made of anything!

· Arcadian Cluster by Shinique Smith – again, anything can be considered materials for sculpture since mid-20th century

· Each material has its own life:

o Cannot make something out of marble that you’d make out of wood and such.

· Surface quality observed by hand, eye or both.

· Actual texture – touch

· Visual texture – look

#Experimentation Clay Plastic Art Silicone

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drtanstravels · 7 years

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I just realised I hadn’t published anything for the entire month of March, mainly due to the fact that we haven’t traveled anywhere in the last couple of weeks. Today has been a slow news day, thus I’ve finished all of my work, and I’m waiting to pick the dog up from the vet from being spayed so I thought I’d have a look through the photos in my phone and try to piece together the final days of a journey that took place almost nine months ago. It will be pretty brief because I’m just relying solely on photos and the results of looking for something similar on Google. I’ll get Anna to have a look through this piece too before I publish it to see if she can shed any additional light, but I am really just tying up the loose ends of our South American adventure.

Thursday, June 30 We got up on time to catch our flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in order to return to Lima, Peru, did the stinky drive past the favelas to the airport, but when we went to check in they had no record of us being on that flight. The woman at the counter apologised profusely, said it must’ve been a booking error, however, there were some business class seats available on the flight we were trying to board that morning, so she gave us a free upgrade as compensation for the hassle. Man, I wish that would happen on long-haul flights. We made the most of our luxurious five-hour flight and touched down in Lima. It was definitely nice to be back. We loved it in São Paulo, enjoyed Rio, but we definitely felt a lot safer in Peru.

Anna really loved the tiles at our new hotel

We caught a cab from the airport to our new hotel in Lima. Rio is three hours ahead of Lima so it wasn’t time to check into our room yet, but we thought we would try our luck anyway. We approached the desk and asked, but when the man looked up our reservation it turned out they weren’t expecting us until the next day. What a strange coincidence! To make up for their little boo-boo the hotel upgraded our room, but we would have to wait an hour or so for it to be ready. That wouldn’t be a problem, we left our luggage at the hotel and went to get a bite to eat. On our way I started thinking about what had happened with both the plane ticket and the hotel room and how both occurrences had been way too much of a coincidence to be possible. “Anna, you don’t think we accidentally left Rio a day early, do you?” She checked all of the bookings and confirmation emails and it tuned out we were still supposed to be in Brazil for another night and weren’t really deserving of those upgrades and improvements. I guess anything is possible if you believe strongly enough in what you are saying. That definitely explains Trump’s election, anyway.

The weather wasn’t particularly great, but it was still nice to walk around, checking out the neighbourhood, so that’s how we spent most of our first day back in town:

An abandoned house near where we were staying

Anna wants a gramophone now

Peruvian Food is so good

These birds were everywhere and getting up close wasn’t a problem

Anna HATED the crow statues

Nothing much, just walking the pig….

Not sure where that parachutist is going to land…

Dinner

…with a traditional, Peruvian band

Friday, July 1 We were staying in the Miraflores region of Peru, an area known for having cool shops along with great bars and restaurants, but it is also close to Pueblo Libre, home to the Larco Museum, described by Wikipedia thusly:

The Larco Museum (Spanish: Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera) is a privately owned museum of pre-Columbian art, located in the Pueblo Libre District of Lima, Peru. The museum is housed in an 18th-century vice-royal building built over a 7th-century pre-Columbian pyramid. It showcases chronological galleries that provide a thorough overview of 4,000 years of Peruvian pre-Columbian history. It is well known for its gallery of pre-Columbian erotic pottery.

There are several permanent exhibitions at the Larco Museum, such as The Gold and Silver Gallery, a collection of crowns, earrings, nose ornaments, garments, masks and vases, wrought in gold and decorated with semi-precious stones. But that’s not what we were there for — Spending a Friday afternoon in Peru looking at erotic pottery could be both interesting and amusing so we went to see what all the fuss was about. They weren’t kidding either, the pre-Columbian civilisations of Peru were pretty damn explicit when it comes to their crockery.

Sorry the side is cut off, but you get the general gist

Don’t worry, this is not of what “erotic pottery” consists

Just sitting here, thinking of dick things…

Next on the agenda was Iglesia de San Pedro (Church of St. Peter) one of the more famous of Lima’s landmarks. We hadn’t actually planned to go there initially, but we were nearby and recognised it when we saw it. We attempted to enter past all of the heavily-armed guards, but it was too much of a hassle, so we decided to take a look at another cathedral across the road. Neither of us can recall the name of the place, but it was pretty cool, lot’s of carved wooden sculptures and a bunch of tiny caskets inside. These things were really small! From there we took a walk around the area until it was time to grab a drink and something to eat so we pulled up a seat in a bar where you sit in wheelbarrows.

Sights like this almost bring a tear to my eye, I always wanted a beetle!

Anna inside the church

One of the carvings inside

These caskets look a lot bigger from a distance

Barely as long as my arm

Looking at Iglesia de San Pedro

In the town square

Iglesia de San Pedro

Town square again

Beers in a barrow

Anna drinking something green

After a couple of wheelbarrow-bound drinks it was time for dinner, which meant going to ámaZ for Amazonian food. Ranked as one of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World, ámaZ is described on theworlds50best.com like this:

Amaz head chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino may have learned his craft abroad but this menu is pure Peruvian pizzazz. With extensive knowledge of the Amazonian region and a tireless approach to fresh, traditional forest ingredients, the US-Italian chef adds wild jungle touches to classic Latin American dishes such as ceviche, tacacho (fried mashed green bananas) and cecina (dried pork).

This second 120-cover restaurant pitches such hearty gems as chorizo oil-drizzled snails, lime and raw fish, and garlic Amazon peppers. Drinks are not forgotten either, with the cocktail menu also featuring rare and unfamiliar fruits from the Amazonian larder. At once colourful, intriguing and democratic , Amaz wholeheartedly celebrates its food’s rainforest roots.

That sounded pretty damn good, especially those snails, so they were among several dishes we order and the snails, which were of the river variety, were huge! The ones we received came with some sort of roe and the egg we ordered was of some specific Amazonian bird served on a particular bark, but unfortunately I can’t remember what species either was. The menu changes all the time so I am unable to find out what they were. Anyway, it all tasted pretty spectacular:

River snails

Mmmmm…..

Maybe it was snails in those caskets earlier. I’m just glad there was no dress code

Egg

After dinner we walked around to find another bar for some Friday night drinks. All we really came across was a dodgy looking reggae-themed bar that was relatively empty. Still we made the most of it, but we couldn’t have a big night; we were flying out tomorrow.

Bob Marley statue with a real joint in its mouth

Don’t worry, they gave us the pen to do it

Saturday, July 2 It was our last day in Lima, it’s not a particularly big city and we had seen most of it, both over the last couple of days and when we were first here two weeks previous, so we decided just to spend the day wandering around, trying to find new areas we hadn’t stumbled across already. We also wanted to return to some of the places we liked the first time around. First stop — lunch.

I can’t recall the name of the restaurant, but the place where we went to eat did meat in an exceptionally big way, as well as bunch of local fare and we decided to make our final non-airplane-food meal count so we grabbed a bite to eat. Most of the dishes they served, especially the meat dishes, were obviously intended for sharing. We got some sandwiches, as well as some mixed pig intestines and vegetables. Always goes down well.

I wasn’t kidding about the meat

Part of our lunch

Anna and her meditating monkey coaster

For the rest of the day we just walked around, unsuccessfully trying to find new areas to splurge in and also for Anna to find a ring, just like she buys in every country we go to. She managed to find one, however, unfortunately for her it broke not long after. We also saw some cool street art and even cooler cars.

I had never seen a kombi-ute before

A beetle in slightly better condition than the yellow one

Smokey and the Bandit have fallen upon hard times

You know you’re getting old when this looks appealing

Before long it was time to return to Jorge Chávez International Airport and make our way back to New York City. We had had a great trip and some interesting experiences over our two weeks in South America, such as eating guinea pigs and shitting in shopping bags. I also managed to grow an excruciatingly painful pimple on the side of my nose that even hurt when my t-shirt brushed against it as I got dressed each morning and was still there with a head toward the end of September, regardless of how often or how hard I squeezed it! It may not have been necessary to stay overnight in the Andes in order to arrive at Machu Picchu, but it was worth any hassle to get there and take in that view. We already knew that trek through the Andes would be painful at the time but would turn out to be something we would appreciate in hindsight and that is most definitely the case. We loved São Paulo and didn’t mind Rio de Janeiro either, but I would definitely suggest that everyone go to Lima at some stage if they’re ever in South America, even if it’s just for the ceviche. Seriously, it doesn’t matter if you’re allergic to seafood, that would be the way I’d like to go. Still, we have so much more of Central and South America that we haven’t explored yet, so we’ll definitely be back.

Now all we had to do was to make our way through all of these wheelchairs to get on our flight back to the United States and hopefully scam some more free upgrades…

South America, Pt. 5: The Scam I just realised I hadn't published anything for the entire month of March, mainly due to the fact that we haven't traveled anywhere in the last couple of weeks.

#amaz #Andes #art #church #Flying #food #larco museum #Miraflores #pottery #scam

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