"Keep them steady, Lad. Steady."
This was delicate work. Very delicate.
Glóin watched with a critical eye, sensing the heat of the flames, the give of the metal.
"Enough!"
He drew it out of the flames, shaping, bending, tracing the white metal into the shape he held in his mind.
Gimli came around the bellows to watch.
It had to be done swiftly. Glóin did not raise his head, and he did not speak.
It had to be perfect.
The metal was cooling.
The last of the curls was in place, the last frill…and they had it.
What more had to be done, would not be done at the forge, but at a jeweler's bench, and he would have his boy understand the workings of both. And he was old enough to appreciate now what it was he was seeing. Ready for more than the bellows, Gimli was. The stone he'd intended for the center would be a delicate thing, but Gimli had shown promise in previous jobs of a similar kind.
He thought of his wife, and how proud she would be to receive something they had crafted together.
Glóin looked up from his work to see his son standing beside him, sweat and soot smeared across his face. A look of wonder was in the lad's eye.
"Do ya think she'll like it?" he asked.
Glóin held the bauble in his hands, the ornament that had been taking up so much of his thought in the past weeks. Taking one end of it carefully, he held it up to catch the light.
"I think she will," he said.