Shadows of the High Spire: The All the Way Up Gloves
The All the Way Up — Black Fingerless Elbow Gloves are black stretch fabric arm gloves running knuckle to elbow, fingerless, twelve inches of solid dark coverage that keeps the silhouette clean and the hands completely free. Ironspire makes a great many things that are not worth keeping. These are worth keeping.
Ironspire's Shadow Districts do not advertise. They do not need to. The people who need to find them find them, and the people who don't need to find them walk past the same alley entrance seventeen times without ever seeing it, which is exactly how the Shadow Districts prefer it. Luna has never walked past an alley entrance without seeing it. This is not a skill she learned. It is simply what she is.
She had gone into the Shadow Districts for something else entirely. This is how it always goes in Ironspire — you go for one thing and the city shows you something adjacent, something you did not know you needed until it was in your hands and you understood immediately that you had always needed it and the city had simply been waiting for you to show up at the right hour. Ironspire runs on this logic. Luna has stopped being surprised by it. She has not stopped appreciating it.
The gloves were on a low shelf in a stall that was technically not open — the vendor's cloth was folded, the display was down, the stall had the particular quality of a place that has finished its business for the day and is not interested in further transactions. Luna picked up the gloves anyway. The vendor, who had been pretending to be absent, watched from the back of the stall with the expression of someone who has decided that this specific customer is not worth the argument of being closed.
She pulled one on. Worked it up her forearm — the stretch fabric moving with her, holding without gripping, the black running clean and unbroken from the knuckle line all the way to the elbow. Fingerless. All five fingers free. The silhouette solid and dark and exactly right. She flexed her hand. The fabric moved with her. She made a fist. The fabric held. She reached up — all the way up, arm extended, the glove running the full length of her forearm without shifting, without bunching, without doing any of the things that lesser arm coverage does when you ask it to actually move with you.
She bought both. The vendor completed the transaction without comment, which is the correct response to Luna in the Shadow Districts at the hour when the stalls are technically closed.
Cinder was at the district entrance when she came out. He had not gone in. He assessed the gloves with the particular attention he gives to things Luna brings back from Ironspire — not suspicion, not approval, simply the steady evaluation of something that takes its responsibilities seriously and considers knowing what Luna is carrying to be one of them. He fell into step beside her. Ash materialized from somewhere in the district's outer shadow — she always does, in Ironspire especially, where the shadows are deeper and more numerous than elsewhere and Ash has strong opinions about shadows — and pressed her flank against Luna's leg for three steps before peeling off toward something in the alley wall that turned out to be a crack in the forge-stone that smelled, apparently, extremely interesting.
Midnight was on the rooftop when they came through the portal. He lowered his great sapphire head through the skylight and looked at the gloves on Luna's arm — the black fabric, the clean line from knuckle to elbow, the fingers free and the arm covered and the whole thing exactly as dark as it needed to be. He rumbled once. Low. Satisfied. The rumble he gives when something arrives that is exactly what it appears to be and is not pretending otherwise.
Chelle looked up from the crystal shelf. Looked at the gloves. Looked at Luna. Said nothing — which is how Chelle says those are right and you know it.
Luna pulled the second one on. Held both arms out. Looked at them. Looked at Chelle. Looked back at her arms.
"All the way up," she said.
Chelle went back to the crystals. Midnight went back to the rooftop. Cinder went back to watching the door. Ash knocked something off the counter — not the gloves, something else, something that had been sitting there long enough to deserve it — and then sat down beside Luna with the expression of a wolf who has decided this is now her counter and she is simply allowing it to be used for commerce.
Ironspire makes terrible things and occasionally, by accident, makes something worth keeping. The gloves are worth keeping. Luna already knew this before she pulled the first one on. She went back for the second one anyway, because some things are worth being certain about, and twelve inches of solid dark coverage that moves with you and holds the line and keeps the hands free is exactly the kind of thing you want to be certain about before you walk back out into the night.
→ All the Way Up — Black Fingerless Elbow Gloves
More from Luna's domain: The Reach of the Shadow — All the Way Up Gloves, First Story | The Ashen Plains — World File & Canon Index | The Sacred Flight of the Death Moth | Dragonforged — Midnight's Domain
What are the All the Way Up gloves?
Black stretch fabric fingerless arm gloves — knuckle to elbow, twelve inches, all five fingers free. The silhouette runs clean and unbroken. They move with you, hold without gripping, and keep the line solid and dark from the hand to the elbow.
Are they truly fingerless?
Yes — all five fingers completely free from the knuckle forward. Full arm coverage, full hand mobility.
What is Ironspire?
The industrial city on the other side of the portal — forges, smoke, Shadow Districts, and a pre-dawn market the city officially pretends does not exist. Luna shops there. It makes terrible things and occasionally, by accident, makes something worth keeping.
Who is Luna?
Dark fairy living in human form. Black hair, piercing green eyes. Heavy boots. The Attic's authority on everything gothic, dark, and alternative. She does not explain herself. She does not need to.
What will you find?: All the Way Up — Black Fingerless Elbow Gloves