Ito sighed as she watched her partner struggle with the most basic of artistic tasks. It wasn’t even that complicated, just reproducing a raven in white, using some basic embroidery techniques. Sui knew these in principle but was unaware of how to combine them properly to allow for a picture to take form.

So, Ito took charge. First, she tapped Sui on the hand for attention, and when that didn’t work, she bit down lightly, slowly increasing the pressure until Sui actually noticed. To Ito’s disappointment it required her to actually draw a small amount of blood from Sui’s hand before she noticed anything was wrong at all.

Once Sui’s attention was on her, Ito started to perform a series of complicated gestures to explain what needed to be done. About half way through though, it was clear, that despite Sui’s ability to understand Ito in most situations, explaining artistic concepts over such rudimentary communication was doomed to fail.

Sighing again, Ito started to instead direct Sui to just follow her instructions. It would have to wait till a later time to ensure Sui learned at least some modicum of artistic design, but for now, Ito was more than willing to pick up the slack.

First, she got Sui to properly scrap everything. A simple application of Sui’s power was enough to pull the threads from where they were sewn without damaging the outline. Still, Ito knew that everything else would need to go before she got started. Once the main mass of thread had been removed and separated into white and black thread, Ito directed Sui to make a few changes to the silhouette.

Sui had been trying to show off too much of the bird, it meant if it were real, it would have been contorted, so that it showed off its legs, wings and head the way Sui had it laid out. Because of this, Ito chose to focus on a side on view, with the bird facing towards the person looking at it. This just involved slightly repositioning the body, and removing the second wing from view.

Ito also, made it so the main wing that could be seen was folded up against the raven’s chest. It was still visible, and Ito made sure to insist the outline was still thick and noticeable despite the change when Sui tried to ask what the point was. “If it’s just going to be part of the chest, why do we need a proper outline for it?” is what she said.

Ito let out a long sigh, and didn’t know what to say. It was likely another one of those things that would be too hard to communicate with her limited vocabulary. They only really got any sort of understand because they were so closely connected, and complicated ideas were much harder to translate.

Nonetheless, when Sui saw that Ito was really putting her eight legs down in protest, she didn’t put up too much of a fight. The next step after that was… to just do the eye again, same as before.

“Really?” asked Sui with a pout on her face

Ito nodded.

“But you just had me take all the thread out of the raven. If you wanted the eye as it was, why did you ask me to bother with that part?” asked Sui confused.

Ito sighed. First, she ran her legs along the neck of the bird, then pointed at the eye, before shifting herself around. After this she tapped the body, and traced the changes that had been made. Sui actually got the message this time. ‘If we needed to move the neck instead of parts of the body the eye would’ve needed to go, and before we made any changes it was hard to say what needed to be done’

Sui was easily willing to accept this and got ready to return to work. With practiced ease and a picture in her mind, Sui got to work and restored the eye as per Ito’s instructions. Once she did that, Ito instructed her to build up the black thread in between the two halves of the beak. Following that, Ito got Sui to place strips of silk running the length of the beak.

To make sure it wasn’t overly bunched like the original, Ito got Sui to simple place the silk where it needed to be threaded. There were a few strands that bunched at the end, before Ito started instructing Sui to spread it out a little more, before mirroring it on the other side. Once this was done, the pair actually had a good-looking beak. The lines made it look like it had grown naturally, and the slight spread prevented them all from bunching up right at the point. Ito had instructed Sui to have a very slight curve when she stitched it into the dress to give it more definition.

Once that was done, Ito instructed Sui on how to get started with the head. She was a little tempted to get Sui to follow the strange circular design Sui had before. Truthfully, Ito thought it might be the most artistic Sui had ever been… but at the same time, it would also cause it to be a massive pain when they got to the body of the raven.

Shelving the idea, perhaps for another time, Ito got Sui to make small sections of ‘feathers’ by first blocking off the neck section to make it clear what area they were working on, and then started at the eyes and working their way out. Ito got Sui to pull the silk in a repeating up and down pattern through the dress, making sure that when it came back up it was slightly offset from the previous area.

Ito got Sui to repeat this for roughly half an hour to get the head done, making it seem like it was a collection of small feathers, giving it exquisitely lifelike detail with a slightly ethereal look to it, as it still didn’t look exactly according to reality, but Ito was fine with that. This wasn’t real in the end.

Once the head was fully fleshed out, Ito showed Sui how she wanted the body to be done. It was similar to the head, in that it would be a series of ‘feathers’ but this time, Ito wanted there to be a series of feathers, that looked to be cut off at around the two thirds mark and covered by another ‘feather’. It actually took some explaining and demonstration with Sui for this part.

Sui kept defaulting by making the feathers too long, or too curved, and more than once, she tried to place the central ‘bone’ for the feather across the wingspan. Ito was surprised at the care she needed to put in to direct Sui in this part, having assumed Sui would quickly be able to picture the final outcome.

In the end though, it seemed that the complex layering of feathers Ito was after, wasn’t quite so easy for Sui to picture. Ito was unsure of why that was exactly, but she chalked it up to lack of experience, and continued to get Sui to outline the bones with a double line of black thread on either side and a triple line of white silk in the middle. In the end, this did still make each black section larger, despite the fact that Ito’s silk was thicker than, a much smaller spider, it still wasn’t quite as thick as the thread Sui had used for the dress before it was split up.

Once the feathers were sorted out, both on the body and the wing, Ito instructed Sui on how to do the vane of the feather. Ito decided it would be best if Sui pulled the silk through at the middle of the feather, and edge of the vane, before bringing it around underneath, and letting it come out the other side and connected back to the central rachis, or bone, of the feather. This was the best looking in Ito’s mind, and Sui was able to do this part easily.

Once she had the first feather done, the rest fell quickly into place. The hard part was the differing lengths and slight variations of shape Ito had introduced in the planning stage. Now that everything had been outlined Sui was more than capable or abusing her sewing ability to quickly fill in the missing spots.

Finally, they got to work on the legs. Ito let Sui handle these, as they were another aspect that Sui had managed to do well the first time around. It didn’t take long before they were taking shape and the outfit had been completed.