Chapter Text
Navani’s daughter was born with almost everything you’d expect babies to have, perfectly formed--a cherubic face, ten perfect, tiny toes, smooth and flawless skin, all those things people said about babies.
Except for one missing thing.
Two, actually.
Her arms.
--
“I’m making her arms, Gavilar,” Navani said. “She needs arms.”
Her husband rubbed his forehead, an annoyed expression on his face. “Yes, of course she does,” he said irritably. “But anything you make her will be, what, stiff imitations of them?”
Navani drew herself up to her full height, managing to look down at Gavilar despite being several inches shorter. “I am an artifabrian, husband,” she said. “The arms I make her will not be imitations. They will be workable. And if I sacrifice some beauty for them to work, I trust that will not be a problem.”
Gavilar raised his eyebrows at the threat in her tone. A spark lit in his eyes. Fortunately, not the embers of anger--no, if Navani was reading this right, she’d just reminded him of why he loved her.
“Of course not, wife,” Gavilar said.
“You’re making arms?” said the ardent.
“Yes, for Jasnah. Do try to keep up,” Navani said absently, shifting a gemstone carefully into its housing.
“She’s a girl . Why are you making two? She doesn’t need a left arm.”
Navani turned slowly in her chair. “Almighty help me, if you say anything like that again, these pliers will go somewhere they aren’t supposed to. Got it?”
The ardent paled rapidly and nodded. “Yes, your highness.”
Navani smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.
The arms were works of art.
They may not have been aesthetically beautiful, but that didn’t matter.
Smooth, seamless, Soulcast wood flowed into aluminum housings for gemstones on the shoulders and at the joints, moving with a range of motion that, while perhaps not fully human, would certainly suffice for Jasnah.
...It really was a shame her two year old child would probably outgrow them within a few months.
“Alright,” Navani said, looking at Jasnah as the toddler examined her newly fitted arms with her usual strange intensity. “I admit I may not have fully planned this out. But I did it once, I can do it however many times I need to.”
Jasnah looked up her silently and smiled, waving her arms. Navani’s heart swelled, and she wasn’t sure if it was love for her child or pride in her work.
Well. Those two things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“Jasnah,” Navani scolded. “What have I told you about messing with your arms!”
Jasnah, now nine years old, looked up innocently from where she was cutting a hole in the middle of her left arm to put a ruby from--was that one of Navani’s prototypes sitting dismantled in the corner?
“Not to,” Jasnah answered primly, “but Mother, I can light things on fire with this!”
Navani sighed. “Lighting things on fire with your arms isn’t going to find you a husband or teach you the skills you’ll need in life.”
Jasnah scowled at the floor. “Setting men who want to be my husband on fire sounds like a good life skill to me,” she muttered.
Her mother hesitated. “I mean, it probably is,” she admitted. Jasnah sat up triumphantly. “But that doesn’t mean it’s safe for a nine-year-old.”
“Mother,” Jasnah said in what was clearly meant to be a reassuring tone, “I am very smart. I know what I’m doing.”
“Your arms are made of wood,” Navani pointed out. Jasnah looked slowly down at them.
“...Actually, I had some ideas about that,” she began.
Navani knew this was a tactic to distract her. If she let Jasnah talk, she would be inevitably distracted by her daughter’s ideas and end up forgetting to lecture her.
But for all that she knew that, Navani couldn’t help being curious.
She’d ask right after she was sure Jasnah had gotten the point.
Jasnah looked at the ruby vein on the inside of her arm. It ran along the length of her forearm from a central gem set in the bend of her elbow, ending at her index finger. If this went right, she planned to add other gemstone veins to her other fingers. She wasn’t completely sure what they would do yet, but she did, after all, have ten fingers to experiment with. One for each of the Essences. She was sure she’d figure out something, and then maybe move on to experimenting with combinations with different fingers activated…
But first, she had to make sure this worked. Jasnah pressed the ruby in her forearm. A moment later, a soft red light ran down the vein, and the piece of paper she held between her thumb and index finger burst into flame.
She grinned. She was going to have fun with this.