sagittate
[saj-i-teyt]
1. shaped like an arrowhead.
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There was glass shavings all over the floor. The sound of scraping and chiseling filled the air. Nina walked carefully through the small, impromptu workshop to find the man making the noises. Roy sat hunched over a workbench, holding a thin, delicate chisel in his hand.
Nina circled around to see what he was working on. It was a chunk of glass that was slowly being formed into a rough arrowhead shape. It was clearly not meant to be used on an actual arrow, since it was too rough and neither sharp nor pointed.
“What’re you doing?” Nina asked when Roy finally put his chisel down.
“Practicing.”
“Practicing what?”
“Making arrowheads out of glass.”
“Why?”
“So I’m ready when things go bad.”
Nina sighed. She should have known it was something like that. Roy had been on some kind of apocalypse survivor kick recently, since he had read an internet article about civilization collapsing in ten or so years.
“And making glass arrowheads will help...how?”
“Easy. I’ll be able to make my own weapons. Once I learn how to make glass, I’ll have an unlimited supply of arrows, which will help a lot.”
“Why not make them out of rocks? Those are easy to find, and you don’t need to learn any extra skills to make them?”
“One word: Payload.”
Nina raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to continue.
“It’s like this, arrows aren’t as lethal as some other weapons are. Sure, you can kill with them, but only if you shoot them in the right place. The wounds they make are too small, so bleeding is easy to deal with as well. That is, unless you’re using a special arrowhead. Barbed arrowheads, for instance, are harder to take out and make a nasty wound. But even those aren’t guaranteed to take out an opponent. So, what I plan on doing is use poison. Now, I could make an arrowhead out of stone or metal and just coat it with poison, but a lot of those loose their potency when they dry up, meaning I can’t just keep poisoned arrows around for an emergency. And that’s where the glass comes in. If I can learn how to make hollow arrowheads out of glass, I can fill them with a little bit of poison before I make the arrow proper. That way, the arrow enters the person and then shatters. This does two things. One, is that the shards do even more damage to the surrounding area. Two, it delivers the poison directly into the body. This does a lot more damage, and the poison won’t dry up, since it’ll be in a container.”
Nina was almost impressed. He had put a lot of thought into it. It almost made up for the fact that he was casually talking about killing people like it would be a common thing. Of course, that was because his head was also full of a bunch of post-apocalyptic action movies in addition to doomsayer articles.
Nina figured it would be better to play along for a bit. Roy would lose interest soon enough, so no harm would come of it. Plus, if he actually did learn glassblowing, he would have a useful skill no matter what the future might hold.
“Okay, that sounds...nice and all, but isn’t that a lot harder? Like, a LOT harder? I mean, just making an arrowhead out of glass is hard enough, but to do everything you want? I mean, you have to make it hollow, which is harder. THen you have to know how much stuff it can hold before it gets too heavy to fly fast enough to pierce skin. Plus, you have to know how to make both the poison and the arrow. All of those are skills that take years to learn, and you’ll need all of them. How are you going to make this work?”
Roy thought about that for a moment before answering. “I’ll just have to practice harder then, won’t I?”
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No, I do not believe that civilization as we know it will end any time soon. And even if it does, something other than pure anarchy will take its place sooner or later. Humans do have a tendency towards social order, even if it doesn't seem like it in today's world.
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