I'd been working. There's a certain art that goes into metallurgy, and I don't think many have an appreciation for it. You have to feel it, to have a reason for wanting to do it. Mine was simple - today was the the Flower Festival, the day of Flower Watching and a time for lovers to gather beneath the boughs and count every petal falling in some sort of love-struck, sappy daze. A lover's siesta for everyone and here I am tempering metal.
The whole affair had lost its meaning to me eight years ago, and for eight years these petty, human-sanctioned days for affection served as a reminder to every one of Kyle's milestone, every time he had successfully outperformed me, outlasted me, out-suited me for wedlock. She was an elf, of pure elven blood! Diluting her beautiful lineage for a stranger who had wandered into this town like a leech to take a farmhouse he hadn't worked for and call it home.
I shaped the metal beneath my hammer - it was a testimony to the fact that I was not Kyle, a testimony to the hard fact that I work for what I spend and what I own.
It dawned on me that I didn't know what I was making. I faltered in my mental tirade as I regarded the orange, intangible mass. A blade, I'd thought. A blade. As I hammered the bar into a curve and pressed it flatter, I'd regarded a time when I'd almost gotten to test my handiwork. I thought of the day I'd called upon Kyle for a duel, about the confidence I'd had declaring it onto the community post and the image of his terrified, wounded form that had most certainly been in my mind's eye that day.
I hammered it for Cecelia coming to his rescue, and I hammered it for not skewering him between the ribs even though she had.
I could feel my face grow hot with the steel and hotter still with shame as the festivities concluded outside with a raucous cheer from Byron.
Clank-! Clank-! Clak-! Plink-! Pink-! Pink-!
I'd lost control. I wasn't even striking metal. My hammer was bouncing harmlessly from the anvil I'd hoped to shatter for every mistake I'd made, and in my anger, I didn't stop.
"Jake...?"
There it was. The monolith to their consummate intimacy; the little human girl, the polluted bloodline staring at me from an ajar doorway with the oddest expression on her face. She was terrified, but at the same time, there was something else that seemed to reflect from the orange-black of the forge. That something else softened me, I don't know why. It told me I was stupid for beating the anvil.
"Little human." I said, acknowledging her.
"Tanya's here, isn't she?"
"No little human. She's tipping back glasses at Egan's."
If there was a thing that made Tanya more tolerable than any other round-eared waste of air, it was the fact that she payed me for my work. However, if there was a thing that had me know as much as I did about Tanya, it was that she'd spent countless hours at my home red-faced and drinking-up whatever she didn't give to me.
She seemed confused as she turned the phrase "tipping back glasses" about in her head. I pointed across my anvil with my mallet, "At the Inn?"
"Oh-!" she said quietly, "Well, Gordon had asked me to...-And um..."
She was beginning to sound like Dorothy with the demure way she spoke around me, and I was quickly growing tired of waiting for her to explain why she'd interrupted me. The something else was growing unnoticeable beneath my impatience and finally I sent my hammer aside and stated
"You're bothering me. What do you want?"
She sighed, resigned to a straightforward answer.
"There's a really nasty Orc that took something of Gordon's, and I want to get it back but," she toed the ground sheepishly. "I don't know have anything to fight with, so I was hoping Tanya would get it back, and I could take it back to Gordon, so he'd be happy."
I scoffed.
"School - what's the use, if they don't teach you how to swing a sword?"
This was something I could enjoy. Tanya was too far gone to be capable of teaching this girl, of that, I was almost certain. With a sort of pride I can only say comes naturally as one shows their work, I put a sword in the girl's hand, and closes her fingers about it.
"How's this?"
She waved it though the air - I'd spent quite some time shaping the stubborn Air Crystal in that particular one. She toyed with it a moment longer before, with the feigned discerning eye she'd likely learned from our other customers while running favors for Tanya, she remarked
"No, it's too light."
With all cruelness intended, I'd set out an axe.
"How's this, then. Hm, human?"
She hefted it over her shoulder and looked comfortable with the way it rested against her neck, I was astonish or, perhaps, pleased as she did so. I can't quite shape the feeling into one or the other - it's not metal. There was a certain appeal to her there, axe on her shoulder in orange-lit imitation of some logger out in Triste.
"Perfect-!" she replied. Her pride was safe in her refusal to admit it was too heavy.
"Come tomorrow," I said. "I'll teach you how to use it."