"Are you feeling cold? Try my coat, it's heerus down"

When I was young, in my village, every family used their beasts' down at the beginning of the warm season, and the warm days came with the strong stench of boiled hide all around the country.
But it's only since a few decades that dedicated fabric workshops have appeared, at first to respond to the needs of The Service. In large, suffocating factories, we see barrels of feathers, plunged into huge boiling baths, where workers add active chemicals to speed up the process.
Clothes are produced in chain now, it's far from when my grandpa would compulsively measure how we had grown, to adjust his knits whenever we went to the farm, but I must admit, the quality is better today. I remember that my neighbour's aunt was really bad at spinning the down, to the point that my friend was always itchy from his coat. But the old woman always insisted to be the one spinning in the family. We called her "bad string Beeth", whenever we would see her spinning in front of the farm.

Heerus cloth: how it's made

Aetids have a very interesting plumage. Unlike other birds, their feathers are long and thin. The rachis is covered in a multitude of short barbs that tangle and fuzz with each other. When boiled, the rachis loses its strength and becomes elastic and smoother, ready to be worked into yarn.
For millenias, people have used heerus down for clothing, bed sheets, It is woven, or knitted, in clothes and bed sheets, because its soft mesh gives good, thick insulation but does not irritate the skin. The cloth can be soaked in tree resin to protect it from water. It becomes tougher and can then be used as a heavy duty transport sack.