Singer Sailor Merchant Mage

Chapter 81: Mapping my world

“Cartography; from the Greek chartes meaning papyrus, sheet of paper or map and graphein meaning write. It is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can be modelled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.”

Wikipedia

This evening, before I fell asleep once more, I began my newest project. Mapping my world. Drawing on my skill draw and utilising my skill recall I started to map my first view of the world. The one from within the womb. It seemed strange to think back a year ago to when I was first forming an opinion of what the world around me would be like. However, my skill recall works a lot better on my more recent memories. So, I was able to recall with accuracy what the room looked like even when I couldn’t at the time even see it yet. Memories from my former life are harder to recall so clearly, but I am hoping that as I continue to level the skill, so too will my ability to recall precisely events from before. Memory is a funny thing.

I drew as I recalled it. My mother would sit at her loom in the corner of the room, where she would work every day making her cloth. I had drawn the rough outline of the rectangular room before I started to add the details. My sister would sit around the table in the middle of the room where she would spin the thread, and I added the other 3 chairs around the table too. Originally, I didn’t know exactly what they were doing but in retrospect that is obviously what they were up to, weaving and spinning.

I added in the front door, as well as the doors to my parent's and my sister’s rooms, before detailing where the windows sat in the front and back walls of the main room. Other than the loom and the main table the largest fixture of the room was the oven and stove with the chimney attached again in another corner of the room. This chimney actually kept my sister's room a little warmer than my parent's room. Then I added the rest of the kitchen cabinet for pots and pans. The water barrels in the corner, my mother's chest of cloth, and the wood for the stove and chimney were added next.

Ding! Cartography (Lv1)

I wondered why I had never made a map before if the skill was so simple to gain. On a roll, I continued. I put the map drawn in chalk on a black slate to the side and started on the next one.

First, I drew it again but this time I turned it around before adding in the extra rooms. My parent’s room was off to the right with my old box in the corner. Then there was my sister’s room to the left with what I assumed was to be my bed sometime in future. It had never happened in the past but if we ever stayed there again, I supposed that the room, would be mine too, we would have to share it. Once I had drawn that I extended upwards detailing the yard with my father’s boat and fishing supplies the nets and the occasional lobster trap. I filled in the yard next with our olive tree and our fig tree. I had always been surprised that our water well managed to draw fresh water as close as we were to the salt lagoon but somehow it managed. Next, I added on my mother’s shop front with her cupboards of cloth and clothing her workbench and the three mannequins, small, medium and large that she had used to hang her clothes on as she made it sometimes. Finally, I added in the little details like my mother’s herb boxes and the old bits and bobs that she had always asked Father to get rid of but that he had failed to do, always claiming they would come in useful one day. Then I finished the outdoor area by adding in the woodpile.

Ding! Cartography (Lv2)

I checked my status to see if I had managed to level up the skill further and Ding! It was now at Level 2. I smiled to myself to watch the new skill levelling upwards. I would have to keep going with this one but it was time to go to bed now. Aleera leaned over me to look at my work. I was working on the floor as the table was still too high for me to reach or work at and the floor was just as flat.

“How do you do that?” she asked as she looked down at the map I had just drawn.

“I can remember our house really well and I can draw what I can remember,” I explained.

“I understand how to draw things. I just . . . I couldn’t do that when I was your age and I doubt that I could do it that well on my first attempt even now.” She sighed either disappointed in her own ability or frustrated by mine.

“I’ve practised before.” I half explained. It was only half explaining, as while she had seen me draw things before, she was not aware of the amount of time I had spent practising in my mind fortress. I might not get the system acknowledged skill levels for the time I had spent doing it within my mind but it certainly helped when I attempted to draw it in reality.

To be honest I was also cheating just a little bit.

I would first close my eyes and using my quick-witted trait I would quickly run through drawing it in my mind fortress. Only after I had practised it a couple of times within my mind was I willing to commit it to paper. Paper was expensive here and I had no desire to waste any of it on a poorly drawn map, room or chair. So although it looked like I was simply pausing before I attempted to put pen to paper actually I had already put it to paper once or twice, edited my work polished it too within my mind before finally showing what I was capable of.

“I’ve seen you practising. I’ve practised myself but it never comes as easy as it comes for you. Just doesn’t feel fair sometimes.” Aleera mumbled more to herself than me. It appeared that stating my stats and skills as explicitly as I had to after my unbalancing had knocked my sister’s confidence more than I realised. How did one support another’s progress when they were comparing themselves to yourself and you were playing with a stacked deck? I had decades of experience but she didn’t know that and I hadn't told her yet. Would I ever tell her?

“Do you want to practice with me?” I asked trying to offer an olive branch and some form of support or scaffolding for her learning.

“Sure.” She answered although she didn’t seem particularly convinced by either her ability to learn from me or my ability to teach her. Thinking about it trying to teach her was going to be a challenge in itself. It wasn’t her ability or her interest, it was going to be the lack of materials. I had spent a long time practising within my mind fortress utilising imaginary resources. I rarely asked for or was allowed to practice on actual paper seeing as it was so expensive and limited in quantity.

Paper here was not paper as I knew it. It was not cheap, easily accessible or even white. There was parchment which was made from animal skin scaped clean and stretched tight, vellum which was a similar product but made from younger animals. Then there was the papyrus version of paper which was made from leaves pressed together at right angles to form something that we could write on. Anyway, it was not cheap and we were not allowed lots of it to practice to get better at drawing. If I was going to try to teach Aleera how to draw better I was either going to need a lot more paper or use different materials to practice with.

“Practice makes perfect, we will need a sandbox and a wax tablet,” I told Aleera. It wasn’t completely accurate as practice made permanent more than perfect. As in if she practised something wrong all that would happen would be that the bad habit would be permanently engrained. Still, the phrase was useful in its ease of remembering the importance of practising.

“Practice makes perfect?” she repeated back to me.

“Yes, first off we need to learn how to draw perfect circles,” I explained. If it worked for Isambard Kingdom Brunel it would work for us. We would just have to practice first on sand and wax tablets before using up our precious ‘paper’. I think I recalled Brunel being made to draw 10,000 perfect circles by his father. I might be wrong but there was no one in this world to correct me.

“I’ll show you tomorrow. We can practice in the sand, everything starts with a circle.” I added a little more detail as I wondered whether there were any skills for teaching. If there were skills for teaching would I get more levels the more children I taught? Maybe I could have a little school of children like Plato encouraging them to think for themselves. Or I could introduce everyone to Arabic numbers which would be far more effective at teaching maths than the current Roman like numerals they were currently using.

Thoughts for another day. I felt my stamina running out and knew that I would be soon be carried back to my bed. Aleera could see my yawns beginning. It was hard to maintain my smile and cheerful nature as the wave of exhaustion crested over me.

I curled up to go to sleep confident that my family would keep me safe and secure. As I drifted off to sleep I daydreamed about the next map I would be making. I could add a roof and show the small pier of wood we had on our little plot of land by the edge of the lagoon.