Chapter 308: The Tin Knight and The Invitation of Memories (8)
Learning something from someone wasn’t simply acquiring knowledge and skills.
It also meant inheriting that person’s way of thinking, and the experiences and lessons they accumulated while mastering that skill.
The Witch of the East, who taught Dorothea necromancy, always emphasized compensation.
Dorothea knew that this stemmed from hatred and contempt for dedication without reward.
The seamstress who taught Dorothea sewing skills was the same.
People often said that the seamstress, who pursued her own sense of beauty even at the cost of ignoring public opinion to some extent, was obsessed with superficial beauty.
“Clothes are much more important in the unseen parts than what’s visible on the outside. If you don’t finish them properly, they’ll hurt the skin, and if you don’t design with body shape in mind, it’ll worsen blood circulation and strain the body.”
But when Dorothea actually learned techniques under the seamstress, what she emphasized most wasn’t how to design clothes beautifully or decorate them elaborately, but how to make safe and comfortable clothes.
Of course, beauty was important too, but secondary to safety, she said.
When Dorothea asked why, the seamstress avoided answering, but as the lessons repeated several times, later she volunteered the reason without even being asked.
“Our family wasn’t well-off. Our clothes were always dirty, practically just rags wrapped around our bodies. Especially my mother, while she was fine with other housework like cooking and cleaning, she was strangely clumsy at sewing, so the clothes she made herself were a mess, and we were subtly ridiculed by others.
“Then one day, my father bought a new outfit from the market as a gift for my mother. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t that great. Maybe half a step better than the dirty rags we usually wore? But my mother was really happy.