Bonus Short Stories
Styles of Style
Fashion was a craft propped up on hand-me-downs.
Though magical technology elevated the Trialist Empire of Rhine far and beyond what Earth had been like from its twelfth to sixteenth centuries, the lack of modern industrialization meant clothes demanded an impressive price tag.
The silk garments worn by nobles—even those with dark, rusty stains that cast the seller in a suspicious light—were invariably expensive. The worst articles still went for a silver piece each; that was to say, more than enough for the average person to get along for days on end.
“This one is a touch big, but I suppose I could tailor it down. If only it weren’t this color...”
As a result, clothing was either made by family or purchased used. Neither the raw materials nor the skilled labor of creating new apparel were affordable, and most commoners’ first time slipping into an unworn outfit came on their wedding day.
“Hmm. But how many days out of the year will I be able to wear that one? Autumn is already approaching—I should really be searching for something thicker...”
The natural outcome was that the business of used clothes was everywhere in the Empire. Some set up storefronts and basically operated as clothing-based pawnshops, while others stitched together tattered rags to resell as wearables once more. The only places in Rhine that lacked secondhand stores were tiny cantons so rural that the denizens already bartered using clothes.
“Try not to mix them all up too much. It’s hard to find what’s where later.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think of it, miss.”
Yet to an observer from modern Earth, the store Margit was rifling through would have been indistinguishable from a garbage dump.
Swaths of clothes were haphazardly crammed into unmanaged wooden boxes. Sure, the broad categories of male, female, upper body, and lower body were maintained, but that was the only categorizing that had been done; it might as well not have been sorted at all. The shopkeeper seemed to let on that she knew what went where, but that was not the case for her clientele. For them, they were resigned to digging through musky mounds of clothes in search of buried treasure.
Yet Margit did not complain, nor was she particularly displeased by the idea. Rather, the outlier was modern Earth, what with its insistence on hanging up and displaying even used threads. The daughter of a common but well-off family had no qualms about navigating such meager chaos.
“You know, it’s odd to see an arachne looking through clothes.” In the back of the shop, beyond the moldy musk of the boxes, the shopkeeper made small talk while mending clothes.
The huntress sighed. “We can’t spin up an infinite string of thread like you do. If I tried to clothe myself with just my own silk, I would have only three or four outfits over the course of my entire life.”
“It’s funny how different we are when we’re so similar.”
The shopkeeper, too, was an arachne—but unlike Margit, she was an orb-weaver. Her lithe legs fed into a carapace dotted with splotches of black and yellow, proof that the woman’s people had come from a nest-building lineage of spiders near the Southern Sea.
Over the course of history, the ability to churn out webs had evolved from nest-building to silk-reeling, and then to broader textile work. At this point, they were a lineage practically born for tailoring: most orb-weaving arachne found themselves folding cloth over looms or mending fabrics with their natural silks to make a living, and the Empire was no exception to the rule.
The shopkeeper was yet another such example, earning her daily bread by fixing up old clothes. According to her, she’d tried loom work and found it wasn’t for her, and so she’d centered her business solely on repairs. She’d earned her store considerable popularity in these parts, having made a name for herself as someone who sold durable goods.
“Our threads aren’t suited to traps and bedding,” Margit explained. “We mainly use them to tether onto things. We can use our silk, but not for very much.”
“Oh, that sounds so inconvenient. I always thought that we all had it easy, since we could always just sell our silk if we needed to eat.”
Despite her slender legs, the orb-weaver had a plump abdomen leading up to her mensch half. Her face was that of a listless middle-aged woman, but in this instant, it turned to pure surprise. In a world where the individual had precious little access to information, learning that someone who seemed so similar to oneself could be so different could be genuinely shocking.
“I still have an easier time earning my keep than anyone on two legs, thank you. More importantly, how much for this, miss?”
“I think that’s a bit big for you...but, well, it’s fifteen librae if you want it.”
“Isn’t that a bit...much?”
The garment Margit had fished out was a wool coat. It had likely belonged to a floresiensis or the like, as it was small enough to fit the huntress but did not sport a childish design. With a little work, it would be a wonderful piece of outerwear for the winter.
“It’s well-made,” the shopkeeper said. “Wool is popular for how warm it is, so I think that’ll sell quick.”
“Mm... As cozy as it seems, I don’t wish to completely forgo style.”
Crunching the numbers in her mind, Margit decided the coat was not worth fifteen silver pieces and put it back in its box. True, it seemed warm, but it was a touch drab for her tastes.
Rustling clothes were a major detriment to jumping spider arachne, and they traditionally tended to wear more revealing garb as a result. Margit, having taken after her mother, preferred not to have her shoulders or arms covered in fabric; hand-me-downs from most humanfolk were very uncomfortable.
However, it was absolutely imperative that she begin preparing for winter. Not wanting to weigh herself down for her long spring journey, she’d only packed clothes for the warmer months when she’d left home. The only things she had to ward off the cold were a mantle for chilly nights and her hunting gear. Marsheim lay more or less straight to the west, so she wouldn’t need to worry about blizzards, but even a normal winter was enough to make her spidery joints creak. Sooner or later, she’d need to find warm clothes.
To that end, she’d gone out today with the explicit intention of finding her winter wear while she could still comfortably step outdoors. Unfortunately, nothing she’d come across had struck her fancy.
At the end of the day, she was still a girl. Warmth wasn’t the only consideration: she wanted it to be warm, pretty, and to her tastes. Fueled by her many demands, her little hands swam in a vast sea of fabrics.
“Hmm,” the shopkeeper groaned. “What are you looking for, then?”
“Let me think. I won’t be too picky about mobility or sound, seeing as I’ll be wearing it for daily life...but I’d like it to not cling too much to my body—or, alternatively, to cling very tightly. And to fit, of course.”
“Then how about you layer up?” The larger arachne lumbered into the back of her shop and then came back out with something she’d pulled from her stores. “You can dress light for your first layer and slip on something thicker to cover up. You’d only show what’s underneath to a special someone anyway.”
The shopkeeper had brought out a fur coat, almost too splendid to grace this establishment of worn goods. A light gray-white, it looked to be made of wolf pelt; the sleeves were long, perfect for either bundling up properly or just wearing on one’s shoulders. Peculiarly, it was just about Margit’s size.
“Yet another lavish item,” Margit said. “A wolf pelt...but from a juvenile.”
Identifying the animal was a simple feat for the huntress as she scanned the fur. Of the various species of wolf that called Rhine home, this color suggested this game had been hunted in the northern regions; the lack of snow in the south left most wolves around here with darker fur.
“That’s right. I got this from a pawnbroker who said it used to belong to a noble’s child. But I figured it’d be hard to find a buyer since it’s so small, and I was planning on taking it apart to line some other winter coats with.”
Rich as they were, the upper class still sold their old threads rather than simply trashing them. The poorer among them even purchased secondhand wares—from high-class businesses, of course. But eventually, after years of making the rounds in higher spheres, clothes that could no longer be resold to nobles were passed down to the common sector, where average people would see them for the first time.
This was just one such item. It had likely gone unsold due to how narrow its market would be: no self-respecting noble was going to buy their child a fur coat. Foreign cultures aside, fur coats were distinctly adult in the Empire; yet this one didn’t have enough prestige to be worn by a grown noble of small stature.
When wearing fur, the most important signifier of class was the history of the beast it had come from. Where had the creature stalked? How many had it hurt? Which legendary hunter had been tasked with bringing it down, and how perfectly had they preserved its pelt? The answers to these questions were what determined a coat’s value.
To that end, this coat didn’t appear to have any stories to tell, and its color was passable at best. Had it been a striking snow-white, or had it been instantly recognizable as a wolf pelt, then perhaps it would have spoken to the sophisticated palate. As it was, though, there was probably only one pervert in all of the Empire who would appreciate having it on hand.
“Mm... How much?”
“A drachma.”
“That is daylight robbery. It’s worth twenty-five librae at most.”
“Don’t be silly, sweetie. Look at the sewing here: it’ll last ten, twenty years without repairs if you take care of it.”
“The tanning is subpar. Also, while I respect the craftsman for cleverly hiding the blemishes around seams, whoever hunted this was an amateur. Wearing three—no, four arrow marks would hardly be a flattering look.”
The shopkeeper bit her tongue; Margit was right.
Privileged though the original owner may have been, they had likely been a struggling noble on the periphery of high society. Though the orb-weaver didn’t know why they’d given their child a fur coat to begin with—a regional custom was her best guess—she did know that it had been pawned off because their peers had mocked them for the decision.
Even at a glance, it was hard to claim it was a luxury item. Smart needlework helped hide most of the damage from the nonfatal arrow wounds, but it wasn’t enough to trick a proper huntsman who’d brought down plenty of wolves herself.
“...Seventy.”
“Forty at most. Any more, and it truly would be better served lining the interior of another coat.”
Countless factors bounced around the larger arachne’s head: the work of disassembling it, how likely it was to sell as is, the price she’d bought it for—she, too, had ruthlessly haggled the price down—and more. Eventually, she decided to swallow the smaller arachne’s terms.
“Goodness.” The woman shrugged, as if to tell the little thief to take her winnings. “Selling fur to a hunter is hard work, isn’t it?”
“Please do forgive me. I’ll be sure to buy more to make up for it. For example, what about that? Do you have something similar in my size?”
Margit pointed toward another garment as a show of consolation, but the response she received was a deeply furrowed brow.
“...You want to wear that?”
“Is there a problem with that?”
Margit’s finger was stretching straight at a set of black leather clothes. They hardly even tried to cover the stomach, shoulders, and neck; if a certain blond boy had been around, he would have questioned what a succubus costume was doing here.
Truth be told, the leatherwork had come from a, well, rather niche shop. When she’d first had them forced onto her, the shopkeeper herself had wondered what in the world she was going to do with them.
Yet different cultures had different perceptions. Like how many mocked mensch for weighing themselves down with shiny rocks, some demihuman cultures boasted deranged signature styles that were nearly indistinguishable from going about in the buff. The shopkeeper figured that it would be uncouth to voice her concerns—namely, that wearing such an outfit would make any man the little lady appeared with seem like a demented pervert—just because she didn’t share the same cultural values.
“I...don’t think I have anything else like that.”
“Aw, what a shame. But, well, I suppose I might be able to make it work with a little tinkering. What would you say to ten librae to take it off your hands?”
Although the crease in her brow grew deeper, the shopkeeper hadn’t expected to make much off the leather outfit anyway—she agreed. The poor fellow who’d have to walk alongside the girl wearing it would have to forgive her; if nothing else, she offered him a silent prayer.
[Tips] The spectrum of fashion is infinite, especially between cultural groups. What mensch call normal may be laughed out of the room by others.
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