Day 130,

Melaina stopped by after classes today.  She wanted me to come take a look at the blackboard to make sure it matches what I had in mind before she hauls it all the way over to the library.  I invited Cass to come along too.  I was inordinately excited enough about this to put off the cleanup and prep for tomorrow for later in the evening.

It turned out to be an even more intriguing trip than I expected.

Rather than the large workshop doors that I’d seen last time, Melaina led us to a smaller (well, normal-sized) side door that opened into a room that seemed to be somewhere between an office and a storefront.  A counter bisected the room, and on the other side of it lay a cluttered table with stools and a staircase that I inferred ascended to Melaina’s house.  On our side - save a space for a door to the workshop - the walls were lined with shelves filled with various smaller woodworking products.  While we took a few moments to hang up our cloaks and dry our shoes (puddles in the workshop were a safety hazard) I had the chance to examine the contents.

They ranged from the practical items like cups and cutting boards to more decorative pieces like statuettes and wind chimes.  Noting my interest, and perhaps remembering my outsider status, Melaina explained that these were mostly practice pieces carved and assembled when she didn’t have more important things to work on but occasionally other villagers will take a fancy to them.

Sufficiently dry, we soon sallied to the shop.  Workshop.  Got caught up in the alliteration opportunity there.  Melaina proceeded straight to where she had the blackboard propped up against a table, giving some sort of explanation about her process working on it.  Something about deciding on the proper level of roughness to leave the surface at, I think.  I was frankly far too distracted by the rest of the room to pay proper attention.

 While I had expected handsaws and hammers - and, indeed, these and other such tools were present - I had not imagined I would find machinery.  Here, a tablesaw, there, a drill press, by the wall, a lathe.  Not to mention other devices I lack the woodworking expertise to name or properly guess their use.  All of them crafted of metal shaped with a precision not even the most skilled blacksmith could achieve, but then scratched and worn and stained from years, perhaps decades, of use.

Realizing that Cass and I had stopped paying attention to her, Melaina made the archetypical move of clearing one’s throat for attention.  The two of us apologized, chagrinned, and she said that she tends to forget people who haven’t been in the workshop before aren’t used to the equipment like she is.  Although most of them find the machines strange and offputting rather than enticing.  Then again, she’d always heard outsiders like weird stuff.

When I started to ask where it all came from the carpenter, sighed, cut me short, and went into an explanation, doubtless practiced on every prior new visitor to the workshop.

A long time ago, several generations before she was born at least, an outsider with an interest in woodworking started hauling these machines back from expeditions into Cloud Tower - maybe with help of friends, maybe with an artifact of some kind.  When he - or maybe they were a she - eventually didn’t come back from one of those expeditions, the new Village carpenter was left with the machinery.  Yes, it all looks strange at first, but really not fundamentally different from traditional tools and just as safe if you treat them with the same respect and care.  Yes, there were concerns about keeping them at first, but they were judged safe and too useful to get rid of.  No, we don’t know what keeps them powered and running on their own.  No, we haven’t tried opening them up to examine their inner workings because there’s no way to do that without damaging, possibly breaking them and they’re not replaceable.

Picking up that Melaina was tired of answering questions about these machines long before I ever even showed up, I held my tongue on further inquiries.  Although I do find myself with a renewed interest in going into Cloud Tower someday.  It just feels so far down the list of things to do with more mundane day-to-day concerns in front of me.

Like the blackboard.

In overall form, it was much as I’d pictured; a black-painted rectangle about as long as I was tall, and half as high with a tray jutting out and running along the bottom.  Melaina handed me a chunk of chalk (or something close enough to it) and urged me to try it out.  I had to press harder and with more resistance than I expected but I was able to write a quick “Hello, World” on its surface handily enough.  Cass looked unimpressed, but I passed her the chalk and started waxing poetic about the usefulness of being able to write examples large enough that all the students could see and follow along with at once instead of relying on my own paltry verbal explanations.  Before I got too far into that, Melaina handed me a damp cloth that I’d been too distracted to notice her retrieve and I took that as my cue to try clearing the board.  Again, it took more effort than I expected, closer to scrubbing than the wiping my otherworld memories told me was the ideal, and there were certainly ghostly traces left behind if you looked for them, but it would get the job done more than well enough.  Just might need a new coat of paint every now and then (some sort of mixture of eggs and charcoal I think Melaina mentioned).  Still easier than working with the wax tablets.

Cass and I thanked Melaina - myself more excitedly than I ever expected to be regarding a blackboard - and she told us she’d get some help and bring it by the library the next time the rain let up.

I wonder if the children will be half as excited as I am about this?