Daja's about had it up to here with these Tortallans.
The journeymen smiths around her sneered and whispered behind their hands and tried to disguise their snickers behind the clang of her hammer on metal. While the workshop was run by a man who knew skill when he saw it (he claimed to have known the second she'd walked in), none of the workers under his employ had the same ideas.
Her very presence was offensive, she supposed.
They got back at her in the usual ways. Dropped tongs, casual bumps when they walked past her workstation, the apprentices deliberately bringing her the wrong tools- Daja rolled her eyes and tried to control her growing temper.
The last straw was when one of the bolder men nonchalantly dropped her gloves into the glowing coals of her fire. The leather curled and cracked in the heat, crumpling in on itself. Daja just stared, unmoving. She hadn't needed them- they were for appearances sake, but...
Lark had made them.
Around her, the men burst into guffaws, slapping each other on the back and hooting. The one who'd slipped the gloves into the fire smirked and leaned into her space. He was huge, with a barrel chest that leant itself well to smithwork. His face made her want to punch it.
"Are you gonna cry, girlie?"
Instead, the Daja's eyes narrowed with rage. She practically snarled in his face, groping in the coals for the iron strap she'd put in the heat to soften. The metal whistled in her mind as her bare hand wrapped around it and lifted it, cherry-red, from the fire. She brought it to bear, it's cherry-red tip inches from the arrogant smith's nose. "I don't know, are you?"
She noticed he looked less like a bastard and more like he was going to be sick.
Daja looked around, glaring at each of the terrified looking men in the eyes. Then she turned her back on them, and brought her hammer down on her anvil, returning to work.
If the sparks flew a little farther than usual, what of it?