Sewing an Argument

“In through here” the woman leading you says. Artemis had convinced you to go out onto the town in lady-form, even going so far as to land you a job at one of the workshops Tevron has set up. The first thing you’ve noticed thus far is how different it is to wear a dress. With male clothing, your junk ends up being held together by the loin cloth you wear, yes there’s a bit of a dangle and a good bit of breeze but it’s nowhere near as bad as wearing a woman’s dress. The dress itself goes to your knees so that’s not an issue, but the folds of the dress move almost before your legs reach them. This combined with the fact that you are wearing a girdle around your bustline rather than a belt means that it feels a lot more breezy than it should. The fabric of the dress was a nice woolen fabric, bleached white because Roman dyes don’t work well on wool.

“So what are we making?” you ask, not knowing precisely what this particular workshop did.

“Those padded long tunics that the legion’s been demanding” the woman replies as she opens a door and ushers you inside. The inside was definitely a workshop, large stacks of fabrics covered work tables while several women sat around the center of the room with needles and thread.

“Oh! There’s the new girl!” one of the women calls out, saluting with her needle “hope you know how to sew!” there’s a couple chuckles and shaking heads to the woman’s comment. Apparently she fancies herself a poet.

“Sit here and start sewing layers together, you’ll want about twenty layers” the woman who had been leading you told you. She had gestured to sheets of fabric that were scattered about. “If we work fast enough, and diligently enough, we’ll get another one of those ‘gambeson’ done today” she said before taking a seat herself and pulling out a needle.

You, of course, gave yourself all the knowledge you needed to sew and quilt. This allowed you to get into a nice little groove as you stitched fabric together.

“Shouldn’t we be tailoring these?” you ask as you completed another row of quilting stitches on your piece. The woman in charge merely waved you off.

“They will tailor the sleeves themselves, it’s why we make them short sleeves for anyway” she said “This being a tunic means they can use belts to tighten it up if necessary and it’s going under their armour anyway” She explained. You nod before getting back to work.

“So, you’re from that group that came in with the soldiers aren’t you?” the joking woman mentioned.

“Uhh yeah, how did you know?” you replied with a frown, looking up at her for a second before concentrating on your work again.

“You’ve got that out-of-towner look to you” the joker told you, with a knowing smirk. You gave her another look and noticed she was able to keep sewing even with her attention fully on conversing with you.

“So what do ya know about that ‘Solus Augustus’?” sighed another woman. You frown at that, wondering why she was sighing.

“Don’t mind her, she always does that, thinks it’s funny to have a strange verbal tic,” Matron said, not taking her eyes off of her work.

“Uhh, he appeared out of nowhere and laid into the bandits attacking our town like the wrath of the gods” you say, trying not to chuckle as you talk about yourself, of course you are going to embellish.

“Oh, don’t tell me yer a pagan!?” sighs asked incredulously. She didn’t even sigh for it.

“What’s wrong with that?” you ask, trying to put as much defensiveness in your tone of voice as possible.

“Heathens! Heathens aught to burn!” the woman exclaimed. You took a glance around the room and noticed nobody even looked like they were going to stop her.

“What’s it to you?” you ask “I’ve done nothing to you, I’m even helping you right now with this work, and yet you say I must die for my crimes? What crimes?” you say. “Why can’t you let me worship my gods in peace like we do for you?” you ask.

“Because you’re heathens! There’s only one true god, and anyone who don’t worship him gets eternal damnation!” the lady replied.

“Have you even read the bible? You demand I need to die, but the book says you must love thy neighbour and forgive thy enemy” you counter. The woman stopped short as she spluttered.

“How dare you take the lord’s word against me!” she snapped.

“Enough” the matron called out “This debate is over, and I think our new girl is the clear winner” she said, still not looking up from her work. “Since we can’t have polite discussion, the next one to talk goes home poor today” she declared before settling into silence. You sigh and get back to work, you wanted to complete an entire piece today and with no distractions, it shouldn’t be too hard, but you are definitely going to have to consider if you want to come back, you are only doing this for amusement after all.