It's been ages since Fakir's sat in the smith with Charon.
He would get in the way as a child before Mytho came along. Afterward, the noise of the work just gave him a headache, not exactly the best thing for his writing. But right now, there's a comfort to the rhythm.
"Would you like to be a smith?"
Charon's question shakes him out of his thoughts. "What?"
"Would you like to be a smith?"
Fakir chuckles softly, unsure. "What makes you ask that all of a sudden?"
Charon hammers out the rhythm, shaping the glowing hot metal against the anvil. "Well, I've never asked before. And I can't help but notice that you've been...what's the word?"
He taps the hammer again.
"Stuck. Yes. You're stuck, Fakir."
"Stuck?"
Charon nods.
Fakir breathes out, idly scratching quill against parchment.
"It's a familiar kind of stuck," his father continues. "Everyone goes through something similar at your age. Some stay in it for years. But sometimes all they need is something new to try."
A great hiss fills the workshop, steam billowing as Charon cools his project in the water.
"And you like to create."
"Me?"
The smith nods again. "The Knight is what you were born with but you chose to be a danseur, chose to be a writer. Those are paths of creation. So is the smith. If now isn't the time to dance or to write, maybe it's time to be a smith."
Fakir puts the quill and parchment down. Why did he never think of this before? Of all the ways he's tried to shape himself before, how did he never consider the man who took him in? He tugs at a corner of his lip, the hint of a smile.
"Maybe you're right."
The other corner turns up when he sees Charon smile wide and go, "All right."
Fakir wipes the sweat from his brow, the result of hard work and high heat.
"Haven't scared you off yet, have I?" Charon jokes. "I thought the sparks jumping out at you earlier in the week would've gotten you."
"I'm not going to get scared away by something just because it might hurt," Fakir answers.
It's strange how easy it is to say that now. But perhaps he learned more about accepting pain from being a danseur and a writer than he did from any attempt at being a knight.
"You're not going to get very far with that hair hanging in your eyes, though," his father says.
"Or the back of my neck," the son agrees. "No wonder you kept saying my hair's too long while I was growing up."
The smith laughs. "Funny how things change, right?"
"Yeah..."
Fakir finishes his day's work, heads upstairs for a much-appreciated shower, and wrings out the sopping locks of his hair. He gives himself one last look in the mirror before gathering the hair in one hand, taking a razor in the other. The sharp blade cuts through with little resistance. He holds his hand open in front of him, freed from the past.
He likes what meets him in the mirror now better.
"I'll get it trimmed properly in town tomorrow," he tells Charon at dinner.