It wasn't until a few hours after sunset, when the sky was completely dark, that Thorn the crafter emerged from his hollow. He'd spent the early part of his evening untangling a large ball of leather cord he'd recently inherited from a rather scatterbrained crafter who was giving up the business to become a bard. She'd not needed it, and Thorn was always happy to have more cord. But goodness, had this stuff been tangled! So it wasn't until after twilight was good and gone that he was able to hop out onto his favorite perch and craft away. The night was nice and clear, with a light breeze and a crisp scent of leaves. The Deep Woods male sighed contentedly as he settled himself down for the evening. Rika, his marked mus, was dozing in the wedge between his hollow and his perch, and Cassiel was flying nearby, swooping for bugs. A quick, intense listen revealed nothing going bump in the night, and he wasn't expecting a visit from Liam. Certainly a customer would be nice, but tonight was one of those nights where solitude would be perfectly fine.
"What a lovely night," he remarked to nobody in particular as he toyed with a fairly thin piece of what he thought to be spelter. He was glancing at his sleeping companion as he bent the metal this way and that, wanting to capture the looping feel of a mus's ears in the folds of the metal. Then, he'd bend it into a circle and put a cord through it at the top, and it would be some kind of weird mus-ear flower... And it would be pretty! Unique, abstract designs were so much more fun to make than the spirally covert bands and pendants so common throughout the forest. Better to have something unique and lovely, he though. Maybe after the mus-ear flower was finished, he could make something pointy, like a chirop's wing... he could do a whole companion series! That might turn out very nicely indeed. Was it his imagination, or did something flutter in the distance? Some distant noises could perhaps be visitors, and Thorn quickly straightened up in case it was. A good impression was needed for the customers!
