Rajit: Level 19: Stained

There was a different appreciation that went into the work that you did than the work you observed. Rajit’s part in the Trihedral wasn’t particularly complicated, nor was it particularly difficult for someone with her meticulous stubbornness: she made glass of the same thickness and color. She then tapped scoring lines into it using labeled paper patterns which indicated the color, all produced by the artistically inclined who knew the bigger design. Rajit’s small hands would tap away at the chisel with just the right angle and force to permit a clean break at the end when the excess was snapped off, before melting it down for recycling and starting over. In the end she was left with a bunch of colored bits and pieces to which she’d affix the paper pattern with a bit of glue and send it back to the artisans doing the framework.
 
Rajit would see the panes slowly come together, suspended across multiple workbenches with great care. It didn’t make a lot of sense to her at first, like a jigsaw puzzle without the final result clear, but the work wasn’t hard to do, and she was learning quite a bit about working glass in with a number of chemicals. The results would likely prove useful in the lab in the future anyway, so she just kept at it, trusting the others would know what they were doing. Sometimes an alchemist had to trust in the power of combination, or cooperation in this case.
 
The day the first window was polished and lifted to the light was one that Rajit happened to be present for almost by luck. As the members of Hyssop Home began to hoist the stained glass pane vertically and the sun began to trickle through the vivid colors, Rajit suddenly felt very small. Not even 3 feet tall she stood in the lengthy painted shadow of this nearly 30 foot tall work of art. Unconsciously she took a step back as if the looming giant would tilt and fall over onto her, but it stood, held steady by the ropes, gently swiveling as it settled. “Oh…” She uttered as she settled back on her feet.
 
“You made that, my child.” Quinton spoke from her side as he walked up behind her. “A job well done.”
 
“I didn’t make that, I just made pieces of glass. I didn’t even know it would look like that! Besides how many other people worked on the leading and the design and…” Rajit sputtered, suddenly incredibly self conscious of looming glasswork.
 
“It is often thus, my child. We all can see but the small pieces we ourselves have wrought with our own hands. Oft times we are not even sure of their purpose. In that way we learn faith. You believed in the purpose of the glass, otherwise why would you have made it?” Quinton uncharacteristically smiled down at the top of Rajit’s head, the young woman still not having looked away from the window.
 
“I… well, I believed in you. You said we needed it, and well, I thought I’d learn something from it.” Rajit turned to look up at Quinton, gritting her teeth as she is wont to do when thinking too hard.
 
Quinton nodded and smiled. “I hope you did learn many things, my child.” Quinton turned to the watch the pane as it was being carefully lowered back onto the workbenches, the test-hoist having been a success. “Imna and I believe. We believe that each of the children, each possessed of different color, and of different shape, will one day be as the glass you’ve worked, a part of a greater whole. Just as you knew not how this pane would be, none but the gods may know what pattern our lives will join. We pray for their benevolence, and for the chance to grant even the oddest shaped and most unusual colors of personality a place.” Quinton clasped his hands before him, the red cords of Ilmater dangling, and Rajit followed suit in reflex mimicking the gesture.
 
“This is just the first right?” Rajit asked, turning back to the window. “There’s still so much glass left to cut…”
 
Quinton began to walk forward, towards the workers, but spoke over his shoulder to the blonde halfling. “There is always more work, my child.” With a thin smile he turned back and approached the workbenches, to discuss the stonework needed to mount the pane permanently.
 
Rajit walked back to her glass workshop absentmindedly, considering what she had seen. The image laid into the stained glass window was that of Saint Natan of Tethyr, a long dead paladin of Ilmater who had given his life fighting off three wereboars to protect this newborn child. His dying wish had been for a temple of Ilmater to be built in his name, which had become a famous orphanage and monastery. The man had given his life for another, and he had wished only that others like his child come to no harm. Rajit could see the simple logic of illuminating the figure in glass, even though she thought he had not been a man of great prowess or accomplishment. Perhaps his idea though had been something greater? While his life had accomplished no great deeds, what others had done in his name had been profound. To an alchemist the spark may be of little substance when compared to the reagents, but it was certainly critical.
 
Rajit ran her hand through a bag of clean sand, the grains running through her small fingers. Sand was a simple stuff; practically dirt even. With the right heat and refinement though it became something greater, something pure. She let the last grains slip from her hand before gently gliding her hands across a plane of violet glass, likely to be chipped into blooms for hyssop flowers, she imagined. If sand were dirt, then glass may as well be rocks, and simple shards may as well be pebbles. But she knew that this was something different; this glass was the bloom of a flower. A flower that meant something greater, because others had given flowers ‘a language’ just as much as that flower also had medicinal properties she was intimately familiar with.
 
Value was a funny thing. She had always been keenly aware of her value since growing up dirt poor with her tenement farming family. She may as well have been dirt, with how quickly she was swept from home by her parents, at such an early age. Too many mouths, they had said. They had hoped she’d find her own way, and they sent her on her way. Alone. She had been dirt.
 
The last few years she’d thought that the only way to be anything better was to ‘transform.’ To find the magical method by which she could transmute herself from the humble life and person she was to something great, a familiar concept to any burgeoning alchemist. She had tried to turn lead to gold. Maybe she’d really just been like this sand though, the dirt of her upbringing burning away in a crucible, trying to make gold when really all she would have ended up was glass. Empty, colorless glass at that…
 
Rajit grit her teeth as she thought about it. It took manganese and cobalt to get this particular shade of violet for the glass, something she had learned through trial and error and many many test batches. Rajit looked at her hands, the her blue veins clear through her pale skin and her thin bony hands. How many ‘test batches’ had she tried on herself to see what would have worked? What color was she stained inside?
 
Rajit thought back to Quinton’s words and exhaled sharply through her nose. “No matter what color and shape they’re in, huh? I guess what really matters is what pattern I’m a part of… and trusting in someone who can see that?” Rajit glanced skyward as she really considered her faith critically. Her faith in Ilmater had been something borne of desperation and at the worst of times had been something that was lip service at best. Despite it all things had gone better for her this way, despite all the suffering she had endured. An inside joke she shared with Ilmater.
 
Alchemy wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the only way to learn. It had taught her that transformation has limits, and that combination could lead to truly amazing things as well. Her teamwork with Gilbert, and with the other adventurers in the field had shown her that. Perhaps it was time to let others in a bit closer; maybe it was time to admit she didn’t have all the answers and she may never figure them all out. In the end there might be someone looking out for her and helping her find a place to fit in after all. For the first time in a long while Rajit felt less lonely.
 
Rajit sighed to herself as she turned to look back at the sand. “You know, I would’ve liked to have been ‘gold’ just once. See how it feels to be pretty and wanted.” She sunk a wooden scoop into the sand and lifted it, carrying it towards the furnace. “But I guess in the right light dirt can have a charm all of its own.” Rajit grinned as she thought of the beautiful shades of painted shadows cascading through the stained glass.
 
***Rajit reaches level 19, taking her 14th level in Beast Conclave Revised Ranger. Her continued work with glass has given her greater insight into optics, and she has developed the ability to be overlooked more easily in the midst of combat gaining the Vanish feature. Her faith has been deepened by her work on Hyssop Home and she has continued to distance herself from self-destructive behaviors in an effort to transform herself.***