"Sorry, sorry," Claire's apology preceded her arrival to Blinky's library.
The elder looked up from the tome before him just as the young woman rushed through the entryway.
She had been spending the entirety of the day running all manner of errands throughout Trollmarket and it certainly showed; her cheeks were flushed, her normally pristine hair disheveled, and her coat hung on her frame completely askew.
She looked simply exhausted.
"Some bottle of goop fell over in the workshop and I was trying to get it cleaned up," she explained and picked irritably at the stain on her cuff. "I have no idea what it was supposed to be but if Merlin starts complaining about being out of whatever it was he's just going to have to get over it -"
Claire took a deep breath and waved her hand dismissively, interrupting the rant that had been brewing.
"Whatever." She slipped her bag from her shoulder and placed it on the table beside the current subject of Blinky's attention; a hulking troll who, considering the sizable chunk torn from his shoulder, was awaiting their ministrations patiently. "What happened here?"
"Oh, the usual; an inflated ego and an ill-timed dodge in the forge," Blinky explained distractedly, turning the page of his book. "All things considered, our friend here got off quite lucky."
Claire regarded the wound with fascination, repressing the impulsive urge to poke at the brittle dead stone. The majority of the large troll's shoulder was completely gone, leaving his arm holding on by just a thread of living stone.
"Can you still feel your arm?" She asked curiously and tapped lightly against the back of his hand. It was still the same dusty yellow as the rest of him.
The troll raised his hand and wriggled his fingers toward her.
"Aye, can still move her a bit too," he responded with surprisingly good humor, considering.
Blinky pressed the troll's hand back down onto the table. "Yes, yes. Maybe for now. But keep moving around and you'll only exacerbate your injuries," he looked at Claire with a weary sigh. "He was high-fiving trolls all the way here from the training grounds."
"What's the good of a battle scar if you can't show it off?" The wounded troll ventured.
"Well, if you're not careful,that pride is going to cost you your axe-throwing arm." Came Blinky's response.
"Ach, I'll still have the javelin-wielding one," the troll assured and waved his other hand.
Blinky ignored the remark entirely. He instead turned toward Claire and gestured toward her bag. "Did you manage to find what I asked for?"
"Yeah, I still had some of it," Claire confirmed with a nod as she unzipped her bag, "but Merlin's inventory is getting really low- on like everything, not just the ingredients I need for these potions. I don't really want to have to go out and restock all his junk, but if he's not back soon I might have to."
Blinky hummed thoughtfully as she produced numerous stoppered vials of multi-colored liquids from within her bag. "No, I don't believe that would be the soundest of decisions, given your condition. Not to imply you couldn't handle yourself properly," he added quickly.
Claire held up a hand, smirking with amusement. "It's fine, Blinky. I agree with you- not smart. But if I can't go out and get this stuff, we'll have to be super sparing with any potions. For, what, twenty more weeks at least?"
Blinky tapped his chin. He looked over at the heartstone that they had built his library around. It was large enough to form the part of the far wall, a vast improvement from the relatively small size it had possessed upon its discovery, but it still wasn't quite where they needed it to be. "That could prove to be quite the problem. The heartstone is still too young to draw any significant healing power from it. We can draw a little, sure, for more minor injuries."
"But anything serious will probably need one of my potions." Claire unstopped one of the vials and turned her nose up at the smell unleashed. Thanks to her new "Mom nose," as her mother had referred to it, it seemed like just about every smell made her stomach do nauseous flips.
Blinky took the vial from her, politely relieving her of her task. "If we're careful, we can manage. But Deya forbid we suffer an outbreak of any kind."
Claire sighed, shoulders slumping. "Tomorrow Claire can worry about all that. The Claire of the Present is just here to help big guy here-" the troll in question shot her a toothy grin, "-and then she's going home to sleep for about a hundred years."
Blinky chuckled, carefully applying Claire's potion to the injured troll's wound. "My word. I know you're resting for three but that sounds quite excessive."
"It's been a long day, Blinky." She plopped down at the table, sighing with relief as the aching in her lower back eased up. "I mean, I spent most of it taking inventory of what's left in Merlin's workshop but still."
Blinky grunted with disapproval. "I believe it's more your workshop than his at this point."
"I don't want Merlin's workshop," Claire protested, scrunching her nose at the idea. "I want my own workshop. Someplace closer to Trollmarket. Not so weirdly isolated from everything."
"Someday," Blinky said. "The forge has been completed and with that crossed off the list we've shifted our focus to completing the gyre. But perhaps we can get a small crew together; I don't imagine it would take terribly long to build a workshop to your specifications- stop that!"
Their patient, who had been watching him work intently, cradled his freshly struck hand to his chest, not unlike a wounded puppy. "It tingles." He said simply.
He made a second attempt to poke at the magical liquid smeared into his gaping shoulder.
"That means it's working." Blinky slapped his hand away once more.
Blinky, annoyed but satisfied with his application of the potion, moved to lift the retrieved hunk of shoulder stone from the table and fix it back into their patient's wound. Claire, noting his struggle to lift it, made to rise from her seat, but Blinky bade her not to with a wave of a hand and a strained grunt.
He managed to push the dead stone back into place, where it adhered to the potion and would, hopefully, revive and be good as new. A more generous application of Claire's healing potions could see reattached dead stone- if reattached quickly- revived in a matter of days. The little Blinky had applied to this particular troll could takes weeks, assuming he took the proper R&R and didn't agitate his wounds.
Not that he would willingly take any bets on that.
A healthy heartstone and a skilled elder with the proper incantation could see a wound of that kind reversed in a matter of minutes.
But, for the time being, Trollmarket was without either of those things, Blinky noted silently.
"There we are," the elder exclaimed, hearty voice masking the unpleasant emotions brought on by his intrusive thoughts. "That won't set properly for at least a couple days, so you'll need to take it easy for some time."
The troll regarded his reattached shoulder blankly. "When can I go back to the forge?"
Blinky frowned. "Well, if you're looking to lose that shoulder and possibly your entire arm for good, then immediately."
The troll seemed to actually be considering if it was worth the consequences, when the ground suddenly rattled beneath their feet. A loud boom sound somewhere across Trollmarket.
"Deya's grace! What on earth was that?" Blinky exclaimed, multiple pairs of eyes alarmed as he steadied himself against the table.
Claire swiped one of the vials from the table and was on her feet and rushing toward the exit in an instant.
"That was probably the sound of my day getting even longer."
Jim coughed and sputtered, summoning his shield to try and use it to fan away the dark clouds of smoke obscuring his vision.
"Everyone ok?" He called out, ears still ringing.
"Everyone" being the two trolls who had been helping him head the progress on the gyre. Well, three if you counted both of the heads on one of them.
The two-headed troll groaned in response, sounding pained but otherwise very much alive.
The second, a much smaller and more slight troll, growled in frustration, swearing loudly as he kicked something over.
Nothing important, hopefully.
"I'll take that as a yes," Jim grumbled, moving to help the two-head troll to their feet and push them toward the exit.
Out of the smoke and in the significantly fresher air of Trollmarket, Jim noted that many of the resident trolls had gathered curiously outside what was supposed to become the new gyre station.
At least, if they ever managed to finish construction.
Claire broke through the crowd and skidded to a halt before her boyfriend, brandishing a potion in front of her. "Is anyone hurt?"
Jim glanced over at the two-headed troll, who had managed to sit up against a wall and was currently drinking from a flask they had produced from somewhere.
"We're fine. But Klar-" the swears and curses from inside the would-be gyre station reached a pitch that made him swivel his ears in the opposite direction, "-is having conniptions."
Claire sighed, stuffing the vial into her coat pocket. Jim's armor was as pristine as ever, but the entirety of his right hand and head from the neck up were covered in soot and ash.
She reached up to brush away some of the soot around his eyes. "What happened now?"
Jim shrugged, raising his hands defensively. "I have no idea. I didn't even touch anything this time."
Klar, still growling profanities under his breath, emerged from the smoke. The pale tone of his stone skin was almost completely masked by the ash covering him from horn to tail.
"Wait," Claire took a quick head count. "There's only three- four of you?"
The gyre crew was normally much larger than that.
"It's all you can glug at the glug-," came the response of one of the flask-wielding troll's heads, "-I mean pub." Corrected the second head, lowering their flask.
Klar, finally noting the flask, turned slowly toward his crew mate, red eyes calculating. "What are you drinking?"
"Pub-"
"-Glug."
Klar took a deep breath; the kind of breath meant to cool rapidly mounting rage. Jim bristled, wary.
He was familiar with the small troll's quick temper.
"I've seen you drinking from that all day. Is glug the only thing you've filled it with?" Klarl asked, claws flexing at his sides.
The two heads exchanged a look and hesitated before responding. One head nodded an affirmative until they noticed their counterpart shaking their head and quickly followed suit.
"You," Klar began, practically vibrating with rage, "were working on the reconstruction of a piece of delicate troll technology while inebriated?!"
The tiny troll made a dash toward his crewmate, claws outstretched toward him. Jim quickly intercepted him on his war path and hoisted him over his shoulder.
Klar's arms and legs flailed about, claws raking harmlessly through Jim's dense mane of hair. "You idiot!" He spat at the two-headed troll. "We were so close! You've set us back I don't even know how far!"
"We couldn't have been that close if it blewed up!" Came the slurred response.
"Hey, hey! Cool it!" Jim dislodged the troll from his shoulder and held him at arm's length.
"They ruined all our progress!" Klar snarled in protest. "And we were so-"
"-So close. I know, I was there too." Jim huffed, exasperated.
Klar, seeing that the Trollhunter was just as frustrated by the turn of events as he, deflated. He dropped his arms, letting them dangle limply above the ground.
"We can try again tomorrow with a full crew. Assuming no one ends up hungover, anyway," Jim decided, setting the troll on the ground and giving him an encouraging push in the direction of the pub. "Go. Go get some glug or something. Chill out for a bit."
Klar, still grumbling under his breath, padded away from the gyre station, all the while rubbing his hands over his ash-coated body in a futile attempt to clean himself off.
Jim turned toward the other troll, who was still nursing their flask. He twisted his amulet from his chest and dismissed his armor.
"Honestly? I'm not even mad," he crossed his arms with a weary sigh. "Just disappointed."
The other troll looked away shamefully and Jim turned back toward Claire. The small crowd had dissipated, no longer interested now that they knew no one was hurt- or could possibly end up getting hurt.
Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well, that's a day wasted."
Claire winced sympathetically and took his hand. "Do you need help cleaning up?" She gestured inquisitively toward the gyre station; the smoke had cleared, giving an open view of the explosion aftermath.
"No, I can do that," he said with a dismissive flick of his wrist. He stopped, noticing for the first time the smears of soot and ash coating the back of his hand. "And then I think I'm going to shower and call it a day."
"That sounds like an amazing plan," Claire remarked wistfully. "I might have to follow your example later. But first," she pointed dramatically off into the distance, "I'm off to clean up after the wizard."
Jim chuckled and gave her hand a squeeze. "Have fun with that."
"I'll try." She regarded him for a moment. "I'd kiss you, but you know," she gestured meaningfully toward her face.
"Yeah, fair." Jim swiped at his cheek and examined the dark smear across his palm. "I'll take a rain check."
It was a solid fifteen minute walk from the heart of Trollmarket to what was Merlin's potentially abandoned workshop.
The winding tunnel leading up to said workshop was only just wide enough to allow passage by an average-sized troll and lined from start to finish with pulsing crystal lanterns. Claire had always suspected the sizing had been purposeful; to dissuade visitors. But the long walk was typically more than enough discouragement for the everyday troll.
The clicking of her boot heels echoed down tunnel, the only thing that broke the intentionally lonely silence.
Merlin had first shown an interest in training her while they had all still been on the road from Arcadia to New Jersey. At the time Claire had been pretty sure he was just bored and wanted a project. But who was she to turn down such an amazing opportunity?
In the beginning he was a surprisingly attentive mentor, albeit a touch frustrating in his cryptically vague Merlin-esque way. Overtime, however, he grew to become rather absentee.
Especially after their settling into New Trollmarket.
Claire came to the end of the tunnel and halted before a pair of iridescent, emerald doors. She fished out the key Merlin had left behind and started to push it toward the lock-
-Before she realized one of the doors was already ajar.
She hesitated and tried to recall if she had forgot to lock the doors behind her earlier that day.
No, she was certain she had locked it- she always did.
Cautiously, she pushed against the heavy door and promptly froze.
Merlin, balancing a pair of jars in one hand and a half eaten apple in the other, stood only a few feet before her. He was poised mid-step, as if he had been just about to leave.
He blinked in surprise. "Claire? How on earth did you get in here? The door has a lock."
Not bothering to mention he hadn't even locked the door, she silently raised the key.
Merlin's eyes lit up with recognition. "That's where that went. Fantastic. Mystery solved." He glanced back at the table behind him. "That also explains what happened to my elixir."
"You mean the goop?" Claire asked in confusion.
"You didn't get any on your skin, did you?" He asked, far too nonchalant for her liking.
"No," she responded and warily looked down at the stain on her sleeve. "Why? What would happen if I did?"
Merlin shrugged. "Eh, no matter. You didn't get any on you so there's no reason for concern."
"I'd still like an answer." She responded flatly and carefully peeled off her coat.
But she knew better than to expect an actual response.
"I suppose you're also the one who made this?" He gestured toward the notebook she had been using to keep up with with his inventory. He nodded approvingly. "Very organized."
"Um… thanks?" Claire said, torn somewhere between confusion and pride.
Merlin paused, regarding her curiously. "You look… different somehow."
Claire blinked. "I'm… pregnant?" She ventured, pointing toward her rounded abdomen.
"Oh. Still?"
Still? What did he mean still?
Her eyes widened with realization. The last time time she had seen him had been a few weeks before Toby had come to visit. Which meant-
"You knew?" She cried, incredulous. "You knew and you never said anything?"
"I assumed you knew." Merlin replied simply, weaving passed her and out into the tunnel beyond his workshop.
"How could I have known?! I wasn't even aware this was possible!"
Merlin shot her a confused look. "Has no one ever explained to you the, oh what do you call it now these days? The… birds and the bees? Because I regret to inform you that's not part of my curriculum."
He turned and continued on his way.
"Wait, where are you going?" Claire called after him.
Merlin took a bite of his apple. "We're low on supplies, are we not? Your little book was quite clear on that."
Claire doubled back to pull the door closed behind her. "Well, hold on, are you coming back, or-"
But when Claire turned back to address him, Merlin had completely disappeared.