Now that Sui had settled on the idea of a bird, she started thinking of various birds that she recognised. It was a shock to her of course, when she realised, she just didn’t remember all that many at all. Huh… I guess I really wasn’t paying attention at all… to like… any of these… well bother.

I can only vaguely remember the things I’ve seen in the local area like magpies, and crows… and those little birds with long tails… wow I don’t even remember what they are called… did I deem that information so unimportant?

Sui thought for another second. It was unimportant though. This is the first time in my entire life, it’s been important to tell them apart with any great distinction… Hmm, ok, I guess I’ll just have to improvise…

What can I do with those four? Well… nothing? I guess… none of them are particularly proud or even that nice looking but… hmm… maybe a Raven? I mean, apparently, they look a lot like crows so… I can just use that as the base right?

Sui tried picturing a crow, and then gave it a sharper beak in her mind, made the eyes slightly larger and called it good. She didn’t know enough about birds to guess if this was even close to a raven, but considering she was using white thread for a black bird she wasn’t too concerned about the reality of the piece.

Of course, this was just the first in a long line of mistakes Sui was about to make… as skilled as Sui was, most of that came from sewing talent and ability to copy and mix designs from all sorts of clothing. Taking the time to make something unique and original using artistic skill was not something Sui had properly attempted in the past.

If she had access to the internet, she could have found a picture of the bird she was after, or if things weren’t so crazy, she could go for a walk around outside to look for a model. As it stood though, she took some risks that would not end up paying off.

The first thing Sui did, and the only thing that worked out long term, was winding some silk around some of the leftover thread from the dress. Once they were wound together, she threaded them through the dress and used it to mark a rough outline of the bird she was picturing in her head.

It was actually quite well done, a slight mix of colours, but clearly separate from the dress itself. Some of the details were already in place. Sui had decided to angle the bird, so that it was a standing raven looking behind itself with the wings spread out, as if it was about to take flight. Had Sui simply left it at that, she would have had a somewhat abstract, but exceptional bird embroidered onto Trina’s dress.

The beak and the eyes were quite special, as for the beak Sui had added an extra line consisting of only spider silk to sit around the outside of the mixed thread. This gave it a sharper look, and made it almost glint slightly in the right light. For the eyes, Sui filled them in with some more black thread, bordered by a ring of silk, that made it look like roughly cut onyx, and gave the impression that the bird was always looking at you as you moved.

Of course, Sui would never allow herself to be satisfied with something so simple. This meant that she kept working… and didn’t stop to properly consider, how she was going to do the feathers. The first thing she did, was the beak. She filled it in with lines of silk that sprouted from the tip and made their way to the edge of the beak where Sui folded the fabric through and around twice to add a slight bump further separating the beak from the rest of the bird.

It was… passible. There was no separation for the two halves of the beak, making it look more like, one solid piece sticking out of the bird rather than a proper beak. Additionally, because the point was so sharp and Sui made ALL of them start there without even tapering the start position a bit. As it stood, there was a massive bunch of silk at the end which ruined the deadly point she had made with it turning into more of a blunt point.

Still, Sui wasn’t paying that much attention, now the beak was ‘done’, and had started working on the head. She had a decent idea going here. Spiralling around from the edges and into the eye, extenuating the good work she had already done with it and marking a clear line between what was considered the raven’s head, and the rest of its body. It was a quick job and Sui was able to move the threads in concert as she swirled them around each other till their final destination…

The issue was this clashed horribly with the beak, its straight lines somehow becoming an abstract spiral into the eye. This made it look like two separate people had been assigned the task of drawing a raven rather than the single artist who worked on it in reality, three if someone considered the expertly done outline a separate produce as well.

Sui of course, wasn’t really paying attention yet. She had a project to finish, and so she set to work on the body. She started from the neck and worked her way down, creating and outlining each of the feathers individually, running the threads from the top of the feather, out around the middle, and then back together at the bottom bunching them up before moving on to the next feather.

This might seem fine at first glance, but closer examination would rapidly reveal the issue. Instead of creating feathers with a strong centre that branched out to from the structure, Sui had simply worked her way down dragging the string as she went. There was no central structure, simply an absence of string down the very centre, and the veins of the feather ran downwards instead of out from the centre as you’d find in a real bird.

It took Sui a good while, to butcher the presentation, of the rest of the feathers before moving onto the legs. She actually had a good idea with them, which was to thread them in a spiralling down pattern to make it seem like the legs were solid and built up a bit without going too far overboard. For the legs, Sui had wrapped multiple sections of silk around each other as well, to make it much thicker compared to the rest of the bird, giving it some much needed definition, even if the legs themselves were mostly obscured by the rest of the picture.

Satisfied, Sui let her control over the thread drop, and felt a weight lift from her mind. Sui took in long breaths, trying to circulate oxygen better through her body, as she found herself feeling slightly lightheaded after the work. She’d been at this for a good two hours without interruption, and Sui was always taking extra care to make minute changes.

As the whole picture needed to come together neatly, Sui hadn’t been able to simply do the whole thing in her auto-piloting trance like normal, and had to make sure that each and every feather was done right. Of course, the cruel reality was, despite all that work and attention to detail Sui had overlooked one important thing. She was doing the details WRONG.

When Sui finally looked over her newly finished raven, her smile faltered and turned into a frown. It was a mess. There was no other way to describe it. Sure, it vaguely looked like a raven, and you could tell it was a bird without prompting… but so much of it was wrong that Sui could already feel herself itching to redo the entire thing.

Now that she was looking at it, as a whole with her eyes alone, it was clear that she’d messed up. Much clearer then when she’d been sewing… but Sui still wasn’t quite sure how to fix everything. The main body and wings were simple enough, she just had to design them like real feathers… if she could recall what those looked like exactly. She was pretty sure she remembered at least that much…

But the head, and the beak would be tougher opponents. Sure, she’d seen standard bird feathers on the ground before, and she thought she could make them fit together well enough… but what sort of feathers, coat a normal bird’s head? And how should she make the beak seem like one… er… two solid pieces of cartilage like it was in reality?