The Cappy Chronicle

Asha swept aside her thoughts with a wave of her hand. She had much to do and her habit of daydreaming was her biggest enemy. “Time to get this work done,” she muttered. Standing before her hoopla she assessed her progress. Back in the early times women had sewn using a thin metal pin-like object to make works of art and beauty. They had struggled with time and lack of funds to make objects every bit as creative and special as an artist’s painting. The amount of time it took to complete a work of such beauty was often hard for others to comprehend.

The fabric artists of the 21st century had gotten little recognition for their skills in sewing, due in part to the fact that selling such items generally cost more than people would be moved to pay when they could get something machine made much more cheaply. Unless they happened to find that rare individual that could appreciate good workmanship, the market for such art was completely small. Those who did the art did it for the love of the process of sewing and it showed in the pieces that had survived the passage of time, having been lovingly protected and framed to withstand sun damage and wet environments . Yes, the women who sewed in the 21st century had done it for love, and never made more for their pieces then they spent on the materials to make them.

That all had changed when the hoopla was invented. It blended the best of the machine age with the timeless beauty of handmade elegance. A standard hoopla was a thing of immense beauty. Crafted from recycled wood it was cross beamed and supported at the bottom and top with strong Willkee wood (a hybrid tree that grew in just 2 short weeks to full adult size, and was stronger than any wood known.) The Willkee tree had been the savior of trees everywhere since they no longer needed any other kind for most consumer needs. It came in a vast amount of colors and grains and was extremely durable and could be grown to be pliable or rigid depending on the parent trees used in its genetic coding makeup. Now, there were parks and tree sanctuaries all over the green world featuring trees that once were considered rare and endangered as well as the kind that was just fun to lie under. People had embraced the idea of trees and plants and now even cities were covered in parks and sanctuaries. There seemed to be one on just about every block these days.

Asha carefully selected the style of stitch she wanted and programmed it into the hoopla. That done she tossed her copper locks as she mentally contemplated the work she wanted to create and plotted the appropriate stitching lines on the hoopla. Her nimble fingers would hand create the first work, in the ancient way of the medium, while the hoopla replicated the stitches onto the other hooplas as Asha did her work on the original. Asha liked this part best, because she could imagine herself sitting alongside the women of yesterday as they shared stories as they sewed. Depending on how many hooplas an artist had she could create a work of art in as many duplicates as she wanted. Asha stuck to 5. To allow the pieces to have their own unique style she had programmed her hoopla program to make random mistakes common to the ones found in real works of the past.

In her world the first work an artist did was considered the ultimate prize. It was so highly prized because even with duplicates, the original could never be copied. The magic inherent in the piece was like a fingerprint and no one yet had found a way to copy it, though some had tried. The use of a Cappola bird was generally the end of any attempt at trickery,  as this type of bird was a natural lie detector. The lives of many men had been changed by a sharp minded wife and the purchase of a bird for their homes.

Standing back a while later, Asha was astounded to find that she had once again finished a complete piece without recalling it. This happened quite often lately. It was unsettling; she would be looking at the piece one moment and the next moment, almost a blink in time, and she would look and see that much time had passed while she was contemplating other thoughts. It was always surprising to see how the work reflected what she had been thinking about. If she thought about love, bold strings of pinks and purples would flow through her hands and transform slowly into a scene of a man and woman dancing together, or making eyes at one another on a helio-pad as the aircraft prepared to disembark for places unknown. If she was sad the scene of a sad eyed woman gazing out her window would appear. The emotional pull of her works had made her one of the most recognized and sought after artists of her realm, but Asha did it for the love of the work, not for money. She loved the security of having funds to draw upon, but the real draw for her was a connection to the past. Tenuous at best, but it was all she had. She had no family to draw loving memories from.

Giving a great sigh Asha contemplated her current work. It was well-fashioned and the specialty stitches were straight and true. The subject matter was… she stepped back to assess this and stopped mid-step. There was something unsettling about the subject’s face that she could not understand. It was a man. His appearance was that of a warrior in full battle fury. He was not an angry man; the face had a distinct feeling of purpose and integrity about it; it appeared the way a reluctant hero’s face might be in a battle he didn’t wish to fight but was forced to for a cause that was just. Her face was drawn to it. She drank it in with hitched breaths. The silver orb in her bellybutton seemed to give off a sudden throbbing heat. He was familiar to her somehow. It was as if someone had struck her with a bolt - her heart was so engaged in the appearance of this man. Who was he? Had she met him on the street somewhere? Had she used the image of a friend she once knew? Who was he? Why did she feel the urge to run from the room and deny his existence? Why was she affected this way by something she herself had made?

“This is crazy”, she thought, “I am just tired”; laughing shakily she backed away from her creation, hand clutching her navel as the orb intensified its heat. The man’s eyes seemed to follow her, almost as if he was amused by her fear. A twinkle in his eye seemed to dare her, his mouth a study in humor. “Wait”, thought Asha, “wasn’t he fighting”? How could he appear amused in a fight with - she looked more closely at her artwork - a great dark shadow filled the rest of the space. The creature’s cold and angry presence filling Asha with horror. “I created that?”, she thought in terror. Turning she allowed her fear to claim its full power over her and ran, as fast and as far as she could from what she was seeing. As she fled, she could have sworn she heard a slight chuckle from the canvas.