Sometime Beth hadn’t actually internalised until she was in this the 10th Trial of the cycle was that she actually enjoyed the jewellery work. Sure it was fiddly in places and she knew she didn’t have an eye for the design aspect the way she imagined Harri would have. However, she could follow instructions and was good at making the small details consistent with themselves. Plus she enjoyed it a lot more than she expected given it was all about the job rather than finding something to care about.

Much like what she enjoyed with butter churning was it was something she could work on independently with obvious discrete steps and a quantifiable outcome. At least she found it quantifiable, she wasn’t the type to fiddle forever to make it just right, when something was finished she stepped away confidently and moved on to the next task. Plus it was slightly more varied than the butter churning, although it didn’t have the familiarity she had with that type of work.

None of the bracelets had been as complicated as those she had worked on with Dom after getting familiar with the mechanisms and procedures. She put her finishing touches on what was the last of the desired bracelets, and they had all been bracelets, and was pleased to find she agreed almost entirely with the Trial’s analysis of her mistakes. She was beginning to get an eye for when she had made mistakes which helped her minimise them. Unfortunately as a medium it wasn’t the most forgiving so while most mistakes were slight and as such not problematic there was nothing to get done to undo any errors made.

Completing the Trial and returning back to her room in her inn she was more than a little pleased with herself. She was on her way. Officially she had begun her journey being a real jeweller. In fact she wasn’t content yet the adrenaline in her system wasn’t going to remain as is and she wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway so she flexed her Trial taking skill once more and paying the three credit cost once more began to complete Trials. Trails that should push her over the edge and into level 3.

These Trials however were a bit different. They were set up identically but they weren’t bracelets in fact one required Beth to make a necklace and the other a ring, the size of which would fit a human finger. These didn’t follow the standard formula of the others either. The ring one required 10 rings and gave a tight 4 hour deadline while the necklace one (the second of the pair) required only one and gave the same 4 hours to complete. It did warn however the standards it would be held to would be significantly higher than previously.

Despite the change in circumstance and the fact she hadn’t worked with the metals or type of jewellery that was now being expected Beth didn’t struggle. After all the process was still clearly outlined and the techniques used were identical, just on a slightly different scale. She also found when focusing on the required steps it was much clearer to her what had to be done. Small stuff like when she placed her saw down to cut the metal to length it landed exactly where she was expecting, her hands were a little bit more stable and the metal more willing to twist the way she desired. Finishing the jewellery pieces she was also more aware for the faults, for the most part it didn’t help a huge amount for the individual pieces but it helped with the rings to attempt to avoid repeating mistakes between attempts. Beth was more than a little ecstatic when she returned from the Trials. It was early morning the next day and she had a shiny level 3 in her skill. She pulled up the window.

Metallic Jewellery (common): Level 3 (15 Trials Credits)

Having created a variety of pieces of jewellery from a selection of metals you are now better at handling the material creating better products.

Your hands are 15% steadier when attempting to create metallic pieces of jewellery. You also find it 5% easier to manipulate the material into the shape desired.

She just stared at it for a while. Taking in her achievement. Dom would be proud, not that she imagined he’d express it in any way. She wouldn’t draw attention to the level 3, after all given she’d never done it before the last month she shouldn’t be able to reach level 3 anyway. Normally she would worry about Dom asking questions but she got the impression he knew anyway and as long as she didn’t highlight it too much he wouldn’t question further. She went down to grab some food, technically she should have been at work but she decided she needed to eat first and then take a small nap, she’d return just after lunch. She hoped Dom would understand and allow her to make it up later.

Beth woke with a start mid-afternoon, her nap had taken significantly longer than she’d intended but she woke feeling well rested, an anomaly for her. She ran her hands over the outfit she had slept in, attempting to appear as presentable as possible before heading over to Dom’s shop.

Beth approached the door of the shop and reached to open it when the door swung open for her. She stepped through hesitantly and there stood Dom, a huge toothy grin on his face.

“I hear congratulations are in order. Level 3 already. You’ll be overtaking me in no time.” He said with a good natured chuckle.

Beth laughed too, out of obligation more than genuine mirth. He placed his hand on Beth’s shoulder the hand still trembling slightly even as the three fingers gripped her shoulder. “He looked her directly in the eyes. “You won’t be ready for the full 10 Trials next month. I want you to get one Trial away then leave. That’s important. I’ll then tell you when to take that last Trial. Getting to level 5 I’ll consider the Trial proportion of your obligation completed. Plus then.” He raised his eyebrows and for the first time Beth saw his eyes, a deep purple that shone out of him. “Then the real fun begins.

“First though You’ll need some gem work. We also should touch on some wooden jewellery you know just to get the skill on the board as it were.” His eyebrow winked and if Beth wasn’t sure before he knew all about her Trial Taking skill she was sure now. But as long as they kept dancing around the topic she wouldn’t spell it out either. She could however take a hint. It did seem wasteful to not save up the Trial but a contract was a contract. She’d have to do it a third time at some point to push her max value higher. That was no longer associated with walking as she couldn’t exactly walk at the moment. She wanted to see how far she could push her butter churning too and her Trial Taking obviously, plus her communication and mental fortitude and half-staff use. In fact if she boiled it down everything seemed useful. But that was how she got into the situation in the first place she guessed.

Dom didn’t allow for further celebration and ushered her into the He had shifted focus away from bracelets now, not that she was a master just that he was ready to move on. Now he was focusing them on pendants. Necklaces themselves were fairly simple and weren’t always metal, in fact among the town leather necklaces were much more popular or even woven. But they still often had metallic pendents or things that had the very least had something embedded within the pendant.

Beth still hadn’t reached the point where Dom was comfortable teaching her to embed gems or other accessories but the pendants presented plenty of challenge to Beth. Dom once more talked her through the process, watching her handle the tools steadily with something approaching envy. Unlike with the bracelets the pendant size Beth would wear was the same as the locals would wear as their extra size wasn’t that influential. Some of these proved particularly fiddly as most expected shapes that Beth wouldn’t naturally be able to produce.

By the end of the week he set her her hardest challenge yet, she actually had to from memory and knowledge produce a pendant based on the rabbits in the area. Dom provided her with a sketch of the rabbits. A detailed reproduction that didn’t offer any hints into how to turn such a creature into an artistic pendant. Not that she needed it; the fluffy bastards image was permanently scribed onto her mind. She used it anyway, after all she wasn’t one to turn down resources and he clearly provided it for a reason. Dom allocated her 3 days to work on the thing, which in theory was more than enough time but Beth really struggled. She wasn’t built for such a task, the creativity required not being something that came naturally.

She spent every waking hour of those three days thinking about the blasted rabbit, considering shape and weight and size of metal, where to attach the hoop. She was constantly sketching and re-sketching until eventually the time limit was reached and the minute it hit sun down Dom reappeared in the workshop and approached Beth’s bench.

Dom picked up the pendant, Beth would hesitate to actually call it a bunny. It was vaguely rabbit shaped having two blobs that resembled ears and a larger body blob. The attaching loop wasn’t centred as Beth hadn’t had the material to experiment causing it to sit at an angle. It was a complete failure, Beth couldn’t even try to sugar coat it. Even without the experience she had Beth would have been able to identify the flaws. The metal was way too thin in the ‘ears’ while the body had a bulging thickness.

With all of this in mind Beth wasn’t shocked when Dom shook his head and threw it in the waste bucket.

“Again” were his only words before departing but Beth felt more than a little hurt by them. She’d failed and she knew it.

The next three days Beth doubled her efforts. She couldn’t bare a repeat of her failure, she sketched and re-sketched, she even shaped practise models considering other designs and techniques, no longer fearing for wasting materials. If it didn’t go well she would put it straight in the waste bucket. It was emptied regularly so she imagined it was reused somehow. She needed this to go well and that meant asking forgiveness rather than permission.

In the end she found taking the full profile of the rabbit wasn’t working nothing she did made the shape clearly the rabbit as well as well balanced and properly weighted. In the end she had a breakthrough when she realised the full rabbit wasn’t exactly necessary or requested. Instead she sketched it’s face. It’s symmetrical easily shaped face. It still wasn’t easy easy but it was huge strides forward even if she ended up using a tool she had minimal experience with.

In general the tech she had seen had seemed none existent, it was much closer to home than Harri’s home that was for sure, but here and there were things approximating devices, such as lights that weren’t oil. One of the devices in the workshop was this kind of thing. It was a small handheld drill that Dom had explained how to use. Appearing from who knows where the minute Beth began fiddling with it and trying to work out how to use it.

It required a small glowing rock in the back but the drill head rotated at such speeds it could be used to slice a groove within the piece of metal. In this case providing the extreme convenience of allowing features to be outlined. A particular triumph of this was to be able to add the whiskers, a feature Beth had previously abandoned as too thin to properly convey with wire unless the pendant was unfeasibly large. As Beth was adding her finishing touches to the piece and selecting a necklace type that would best suit the pendant Dom let himself into the workshop.

It hadn’t been the full three days yet but he didn’t seem too put out by that fact and held out a trembling hand for Beth to pass over the pendant. Beth did so and stood with bated breath as he examined it. She couldn’t quite see his eyes so she couldn’t be sure how he felt but after a couple of tense moments he began pointing out the flaws.

Beth was relieved and almost missed the start of the feedback. He hadn’t even bothered with that with the last attempt was she felt confident in saying she’d passed the test. After he finished outlining the changes he began to reach out to hand it across to Beth. He fingers instinctively went to the necklace she shared with Harri, she didn’t want anything to do with those cursed rabbits anyway. Dom’s hand continued and he tossed it directly into the waste bucket making the movement fluid enough Beth couldn't have said that wasn’t his intention in the first place. He then walked through to the shop leaving the door wide open. Beth cleared her workspace and headed out too, seeing the main door open she locked up early and headed back to the inn, looking forward to the extra time off.