Sakur-pate

Thin as spider silk, strong as starlight.

Produced in the small town of Pate along the Starfall River, north of Vertus, Sakur-pate is a woven fabric made from threads of discarded Sakura blossoms. It is often pink-purple in colour and wafer thin and silky soft.

Manufacture

To make the thread that makes the weave requires use of a tool of bunched together fine and pointed stems and thorns to coax a fuzz the delicate fibres of the coloured petals. These are them plucked and passed through a fireflies powered machine, a coaxing of nectar brushed over each pass before the mass is cut and plucked, the process repeated until long thin threads of petal fibre have fused together.
The fibres are woven over large frames, the process taking over fie months for a single panel of the cloth, which usually takes several weavers to make.

Customs

While this becomes a community act, there is often a second project off to the side for some of the older women of the town. A requirement of Pate-Grandmothers is that they must have a shawl of their own made from Sakur-pate, proof that they have the patience to lead and the clear headedness to Master.

Garden by the river.

The Sakura trees of Pate line the river, tender to by the Gardeners of the town. Between 8 to 10 of the locals fill this roll, coloured native flowers ringing their bases and enriching the soil.
Dredgers cast nets over the river surface during flowering season, collecting the petals there while picking and raking from the soil with curved tools that syphon the petals with minimal damage to the topsoil. This community based work keeps the process turning, the trades made from the cloth distributed among those involved in the process.

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Those foreign to Pate would see the strong shouldered dredgers pass large sacks of petals to the threatens, watching them shake the petals over drying racks and wonder how such a process would turn pink and purple mulch into diaphanous cloth.
The care and love of the community is built around the spirits of the trees and the river, and one could call the community garden it banks and its depths.