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She is sitting in the library, studying. It's her most common pastime, by hours; spending time with her sister is more enjoyable but Jaromira prefers to socialize more broadly and Katarzyna would only get in the way. This is better on net; the two of them share a room, so it isn't as though her sister's time is entirely hogged by the other girls who call this boarding school "home." Or at least "prison." Katarzyna doesn't mind it, though; the school library is excellent, and basic manners and care for the books has endeared her to the librarian to a sufficient degree to lubricate the interlibrary loans process when there's something she wants to read that they don't have.
Kanimir and Jaromira in Fabulous
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"I strongly prefer to continue to have wings and weakly prefer that they be feathered but I don't mind replacing this set. I weakly prefer to keep this hair color but I'm not attached to the style. I strongly prefer my face remain recognizable as me but don't mind making arbitrary minor changes."
"All right then." He circles her, hmmmming, then says, "What kind of flying do you do, I have a set I've designed for the portfolio and haven't put on anyone yet, it'd work with your build..."
"Recreational slash transportational, so far. I might be convinced to try something else if I end up with a set of wings especially suited to it."
"These will be fine for that, I just don't think they're Olympic grade." He pulls up a computer image, with a few angles of sketched wings and one 3D model. "I'm going to print this out and tape it to one of your wings, that's unfortunately the state of the art with the equipment I have available. If you come back next year I might have a dye sublimation printer but even that isn't workable for wings." His printer is fast. He tapes the sketches to her left wing.
After a minor internal struggle with regards to whether or not to take up limited time with questions: "Why not just have me change the wings?"
"...you're going to, but to do it accurately you need to see the reference while you're doing it, which means it has to be on your person. Whenever you're ready." He goes to rummage in his sample boxes.
"Ah, understood." She goes into the starscape and looks at the reference and changes her wings.
When she's done he's holding up various kinds of silk near her face. Eventually he picks one, puts the others away, calls up some more references on his computer. "I can print these too but I don't want any of them copied straight, obviously, take the bodice shape of this, the skirt of that, this part from this one, make it all out of this," (he brandishes the chosen silk), "and put the hem, mm, a little higher than she has it, up here -" He reaches out and taps her mid-thigh. "And we'll go from there." The resulting frankendress has a halter top that crosses at her throat, turns (magically) into a single piece of material at the collarbone, and has a few more separations and rejoinings; the skirt is wraparound and three layers deep, different parts peeking out from under the others at different points. His reference photos show several angles. Once she has it on he starts rearranging the separation-and-rejoining elements: "I'm going to pinch the connections in the fabric and tug them while you're in starscape, see if you can follow me by feel."
She follows his instructions perfectly. She pays very close attention and successfully follows him by feel.
"Good. Now, I don't keep every fabric in every color, I'm going to go get my paints and mix up something. Are you very attached to the seafoam, I can make it work in seafoam."
"My first instinct is black, actually, but let's see whether the magic likes that or something else better, and once we have a base, time for gradients and detailing. Time, time... okay, we have time for this, yes." He mixes up a shade of black, a dove grey, a seafoam a little greener and dimmer than she had before, and a bright dollop of sky blue. He dabs a bit of each on her arm. "Try those for the dress, see what it says, change nothing else."
She goes into the starscape and cycles through the four colors as fast as she can while still being confident in her ability to distinguish the magic's opinions.
It prefers black!
"The good news is that means I'm on the right track, the bad news is that means such an explosion of accent possibilities. Okay, I have a complicated pattern in mind, let me sketch for you real quick -" He takes a photo of her from the front and from the back, desaturates them enough to show pencil marks on top, and then crosshatches in his vision for where the accent color should appear and how it should fade into black. "Try the other three color ideas and also -" He adds to her arm-palette a bit of pure white and a bit of silver.
She goes into the starscape and applies the accent pattern in white, then cycles through the rest of the colors.
It's a tie between silver and sky blue. When she reports this he asks if she has a preference - "Or I could try something more complicated but we have a deadline, here, and this is still just the one garment centerpiece though it is -"
"Silver it is. Come back later and I can do something more elaborate, with this amount of time I'm aiming for a professional quality baseline, iteration you can mostly do on your own time -" He's rummaging now through a larger drawer labeled SHOES. "How do you feel about heels?"
"The magic does not consistently care... I don't have time to fully ornament a heel area today, let's put you in pumps, start with this," he waves a shoe at her, "but in black with a silver sole, I'll come trace where I want the line to actually be and you can tweak it internally for fit."
He traces the revised line. He takes a step back and hmmmms. "Lot of empty space. I think this isn't terrible, you have a good silhouette, but I'm going to need to do something with the arms and legs... while I'm thinking about that let's talk hair." He finds hair references and has her try twelve things and adjust the one that's best. Then he has her loosen the dress slightly to have a sheer silver under-dress with sleeves that go past her knuckles and a sheath skirt that just brushes the floor, then adds some basic black embroidery to the parts of the underdress that the overdress exposes and the skirt and the sleeves. Then he starts piling on the jewelry, producing samples and references as necessary, pausing only now and then to let the magic break ties.
Katarzyna has never trained as a model, but she has nigh-photographic short term memory and impeccable attention to detail and she never needs to be told the same thing twice. She is brisk and efficient and doesn't waste time and on the inside she glows at how much better the magic likes this than her previous outfit.
Towards the end of the session he's visibly hurrying, trying to get as many references in front of her as possible, for makeup, for nail art, for black henna patterns that will subtly show through the sheer underdress, for feather patterns. When his timer goes off he slaps it and gives her an extra fifteen minutes - "it's gratis, nobody's waiting, I just so hate being rushed" - so he can continue trying different ways to place little chatoyant beads in various kinds of stone on the overdress, and in her silver jewelry, for a little color. He and the magic jointly settle on blue apatite, though when he sends her off it's with a list of things to mess with on her own, and trying more stones (and facetings of stones, and placement of stones) is on there. He takes pictures and confirms her email address and thanks her for her visit.
She thanks him in return enthusiastically.
She wings her way over to the air park, more slowly than absolutely necessary to get a feel for the new wings.