"Of Fire Spinner Silk," by Fire Spinner Taahmi

Preserved in ancient oils, this curious ivory scroll has withstood the test of time. Despite the stiffness marking its age, this scroll is neither fragile nor frail to behold. Indeed, even the calligraphy upon the parchment looks fresh as the day it was inked. Most intriguing perhaps are the strange indentations beneath the script, intended to be read by hand. Yet visually drawing the reader's attention is an artist's exquisite rendition of a Fire Spinner dancing upon the header, her flames curling about the scroll in a border of sunset red.
It is entitled "Of Fire Spinner Silk" and the author is listed as being Fire Spinner Taahmi, Dancer of the Fiery Sands. It is written in the common tongue.
It weighs 12 ounce(s).
It has the following aliases: scroll.

----

"Of Fire Spinner Silk", By Fire Spinner Taahmi, Dancer of the Fiery Sands (Page 1)
I have always dreamt of being a Fire Spinner.

From my first days as a hatchling, I remember crowding the marketplace
square for the Longest Night, the processions of shouting adults, the
ringing of bells, the shrilling of flutes, the clamouring from the
processionals of minstrels spilling towards the Palace of Pleasure. The
gleaming powders of emerald and sapphire shone bright as the oil lamps,
and well-dressed Illuminati and Templars marched, shouting out to
receive the accolades of the citizenry. So too were their merchants in
their silks, and the chill of the desert air challenged by great burning
braziers into which mendicants threw powders.

It took my clutch time to find such things. One had to run from stall to
stall through the market. It took parents distracted by thrown gifts of
okorushi from the litters of the dreamers for us to slip away. Then we
could dodge behind and between the legs of the others, flee in the
shadows like thieves, and find the forge. We could boost each other up
to the chimney, then to the next roof, and jump between laundry and
rooftop gardens, past cactus-weed-fuzzed lovers, who shouted
good-natured insults at us, to the lottery building.

In the plumes of green and purple smoke, we could see the Palace of
Pleasure and the great courtyards filled with smoke. Gem-laden
companions dressed in silks turned painted faces and bosoms towards
would-be clients and patrons, eyes painted with long plumes of gold and
kohl, glass gems flickering from their scales. But most of all, we could
see the dancers - and their spinning fires.

They moved like the sand itself, whirlwind dervishes of silk and gold,
sashes flashing with gems and fine silks. Their lips were painted red as
blood, their hands moved like the songbirds who mate on the wing. And
while my brothers could point and laugh at the companions and their
bared bosoms, I had eyes only for the spinning staves, the golden flames
spinning like gossamer through the Longest Night.

And then I could creep away from even my siblings, dangerously through
the crowds. I was small then - but few in the City of Freedom will harm
a small girl. Alcohol flowed freely, and I, painted in stolen paint,
dressed in patched silk, could be unseen.

That night - the night it happened, I was unseen. I crept all the way to
the edges of the revelers, packed tight into the square. And there, in
the great courtyard of the Palace, spun the Fire Spinner Saahami, the
Queen of the Fiery Sands, the undisputed mistress of the art itself.

She was young. So very young, and so very beautiful. She wore powdered
sapphires on her cheeks, and topazes the colour of the oasis pools on
her scales. Her sash was but a translucent skein of golden that mimicked
the sunrise itself in pink embroidery - it concealed naught. So too was
she dressed in something like smoke itself, a simple shift of silvery
brocade that concealed everything and revealed nothing.

I tell you now, there has never been a more graceful dancer. In her
hands, the great flaming stave swept vast phoenix wings in the Longest
Night, great sparking feathers of flame erupting like veils, sucking the
air from the chamber. There were shrieks, there were gasps, but she was
the fire itself - she dared to challenge her fellow dancers, they say.
They say it was not the first time. But who could begrudge the Queen of
the Fiery Sands her right to dance, her right to call out her challenges
to the flautists, to the drummers.

Faster and faster she swirled, until it seemed she would take flight,
and at that moment, the strap of her sandals, those stilts of gold and
sandalwood, broke, and the phoenix came tumbling back to earth.

There was shocked outcry, even as the flautists squeaked last notes and
the beat faltered, and it was cruelly silent as, with an all-too-mortal
cry, the Queen of the Fiery Sands fell, her legs and ankles twisting,
and the staff faltering, striking her face. Her sash unwound as she
spilled across the pavement, unspooled like a bolt of cloth herself. And
then her attendants were shrieking, shrieking and running.

The sash caught the wind, and few noticed.

The sash caught the wind, that skein of golden took flight, and in my
shock, I believe I was one of the few to see it. It scattered its way up
over the courtyard, born on a cold desert wind, one of those cruel jokes
of the normally warm Skarch. Like a kite, it soared, and like a
moonstruck fool, I pursued, pushing my way through the revelers, fleeing
the press as it soared upwards.

Towards the lottery, in fact. I hauled my way up and over the wall,
panting, and my brothers were sneering and jeering over it.

"Queens, huh? Huh?" Satochi was cruel, and he had the silk in his hands.
"Hey Taahmi, you didn't see your Queen fall, huh? So sad! That's what
you get, you know! That's what you get!"

"Bring it back!" I shouted. "That's not yours! She's going to get back
up and dance, she's going to need that!"

"She's never dancing again!" Eefla jeered. "Didn't you see her fall!"

"NO!" I threw myself at Satochi. He's lucky he didn't expect it, the
silk fluttered through his talons into my own, and I fled backwards as
he shouted and lunged for me. "Don't be stupid Satochi, that's not even
yours, the Pyromancers will be after you! The whole retinue!"

"They've got bigger problems, Taahmi! We can get some good coin for
that!"

He and Eefla were beating at me, trying to get it out from under where I
was curled, the silk clutched to my chest when the raucous CLANK and
THUD of armour sounded out and a vast shadow uncurled from a kneeling
position beside one of the minarets of the lottery, his plate and sword
brilliantly golden in the light of our single lantern.

With shrieking cries, Eefla and Satochi fled across the roof. That
looming figure in the dark, that armoured behemoth, advanced towards me.
It was only as a slender shadow detached itself from the titanic warrior
that it stopped. One robed hand pressed against the arm, and the
black-robed Illuminati glided across the roof, her taloned hands casting
back a hood trimmed in bronze and rubies.

"You have sssomething of oursss," she breathed. "But I think you are no
thieffff, child. Give ussss the scarf."

I gulped. "I... I... it's Sahaami's! It blew away, I want to
bring it back to her!"

"Sssso you have," she hissed, and knelt beside me. "Do not worry, child.
We will not hurt you. Sssuch a kind gesturrree shall ssssurely ssssee
you rewarded. I am the Fire Spinner's patronessssss. Look to the weave
of the veil."

My fingers fell across the veil and I looked down with incomprehension
to the veil I clutched in my milkling talons. Strange, calligraphic
patterns shifted on the surface - as the Illuminati extended her hands,
I saw the same things echoed in shifting golden ink on the backs. They
moved and chased each other, just as the silk shifted. I gulped. The
scarf slipped from my hand to hers, though neither of us seemed to move.

"I... I'm sorry."

"Do not apologisssee," she whispered. "I will remember you, child. You
dream very sssstrongly." Her talons brushed my forehead, and I stared
into her strange, shifting eyes. "Have no fear. You have done ussss a
favour."

I cannot remember where they went. One moment they stood there, the
silent behemoth in armour and the strange Illuminati woman, the next
they were gone. And the next morning, awaking from what surely must be a
strange dream, I found my parents sitting with a Keeper of the Scorching
Flames. My way to the Pyramid was made, it seemed, and paid for, and
though I wept with my milklings, I did not look back as they took me
away to become a Pyromancer.

I never knew whose hand cast the coins that brought me amongst the
novitiate, but surely their coin was well-paid. I learned the ways of
the Pyres, the ways to tend fire, the ceremonial paths. But my place was
never with the common fire-tenders, or with the great billowing smokes
of dreaming, or even in the archives. When I graduated from my lowly
position, I came to the Fire Spinners, and began my training.

Many fail to become dancers, as it happened. I could tell you of the
days of mixing pigments for cheeks and lips, the painstaking lessons in
attending the elder students, the lessons of becoming attendants. It is
not such a bad life, to work with unguents and silks and brushes, to
become artists of the form.

But so too did I excel in the bending of the knees, the isolation of the
hand, the undulation that praises the rising of the sun, and the
arabesques of staff-work. There were never any doubts in me for my
dreams.

Tonight I dance my graduation dance, and for the first time, it is
Longest Night at the Palace of Pleasure where I shall set foot where
Sahaami once danced.

At the edge of the crowd of revelers, against the wall, a vast behemoth
stands, silent and still, helm obscuring his face. He does not speak or
move, but in his shadow stands a slight woman, her shifting eyes gazing
unblinkingly at me as I wind the silk about my waist, as the attendants
adorn my face.

And sitting on the vast bulk of the Templar's armoured arm, dawn-hued
silk around her own waist, Sahaami Xeth, Madame of Solace, watches me
through eyes trimmed with topaz, and her lips curved brilliantly red
around a wide, wide grin.