[Ironworks]Is it hot here, or is it just you? (Rhuryc)

[Jilitse]

She diligently followed his orders, a bit relieved that he gave good explicit directions on what to do. She set the horseshoe on the stone shelf, letting it make a muffled clang and cool off on its own. "Cool by air." Some of the metal smiths in Sahova cooled their forged items by dousing them in water.

Jilitse returned to his side, waiting for her orders. She was an assistant after all, it almost came to her as a habit. She stared at him. "Upsetting." Rhuryc would notice how she repeated the important words, "Heat the end, hit it, widen the base." Nails or objects that need a grip. Jil nodded, committing everything to memory. Rhuryc was thorough, he would sure make a good master smith. The Nuit could imagine the human running his own forge. In the future, perhaps.

"Yes, I'm listening," she answered him.

[Rhuryc]

Rhuryc was quick to run through the rest of the basics. He reviewed most of the common techniques and performed them in tandem on his 'example' bar, mimicking the motions with various tools: hammer, chisel, the basic essentials all to get the woman up to speed. Before too long the apprentice retreated back to the forge and finished his minor lecture. Now, he figured, there was real work to do.

"So. How about you give it a shot? You can use my anvil," He gestured to the large piece he had been working over, "And I'll work off to the side. Just follow along after me or go at your own pace. Don't worry about wasting any of the metal."

In his 'hands off' approach to teaching, or whatever he did, Rhuryc left the nuit to her own devices. Meanwhile he tended to his own duties. Removing one of the bars from the furnace he took it to one of the other anvils in the room and set it down. He waited for Jilitse to take her own and started in tandem with the woman, gearing himself with some of the spare tools kept around the smithy. There were triplicates of everything. Soon the tell-tale clank of iron on iron echoed about the small, enclosed area as the apprentice got to work. As before he ran through the same motions, bending, drawing, upsetting, though with his own piece he worked much faster and added additional detail as he went. Albeit it was just a horseshoe. Every now and again he would peer over his shoulder at the woman, check her progress, then return to his own work.

"Honestly, I didn't think I'd run into you again after that night." The man started, speaking in between hammer falls. "Do you live in Syliras? I didn't think the Knights wanted someone of, ah. Your condition walking around, you know?"

[Jilitse]

With Rhuryc's permission, Jilitse set about on her own task, lining up a few iron bars that she chose herself. She disdainfully picked up one after another, and managed to choose eight pieces that are nearly of equal lengths. Taking one in a clamp, she held it against the fire. The Nuit was accustomed to doing everything by herself from step one, and even without the presence of golems to aid her, she believed she could manage on her own. She waited for the iron bar to turn red, and then twisted it to its side and turned it over in specific intervals to get the flame to spread evenly. Once it got orangy-yellow she took the iron bar out of the fire and set to start pounding. Her smites were cling! to Rhuryc's clang!, as the undead worked with a different and slower pace, and did not possess the same strength as Rhuryc. What she lacked in power she made up with accuracy of blows. Her light swings and strikes were rhythmical, cling! cling! cling!, a lovely accompaniment to the claang, claang, claang.

Jil was murmuring intelligible words as she worked, and there was once she hummed a very old tune, a lullabye, in the ancient tongue. The nuit worked sluggishly but tirelessly, working with one iron bar after another. When she became more comfortable with the pace she was running, she decided to take two iron bars at a time, forging and smithing one while leaving the other to sit in the fire as Rhuryc had placed his bars in the ledge near the flame. She worked almost methodologically, as if the number of strikes had been calculated, the direction of the pounding estimated, the procedure memorized and carried out mechanically, the time spent on stepping from one place to another estimated.

Not to say that she got better immediately, though. The Nuit was new at making horseshoes, and was totally incompetent in punching the holes. She couldn't seem to match up the holes properly, but she did try her best not to punch beyond the mark she intended to puncture.

She was placing her sixth horseshoe on the cooling shelf when Rhuryc talked to her, which she replied to immediately, "Oh, yes I stay here in the City. The Knights are skeptic, of course, but I seem to have enough reputation behind me for them to consider me as non-threatening. Not everybody share the idea of course."

The Nuit seem to have worked herself out, was it even possible for undead to get tired? "This body has taken its share of work today," not having golems exhausted Jilitse, and she took care not to overwork her fragile, it was almost time to replace her vessel, too. "So this is how humans work, labor without for automation. It does have a few setbacks," especially to Nuits, of course. "It is a pleasure to have worked with you, Rhuryc. I did not expect that you will impart the knowledge to me." Perhaps making a horseshoe was no trade secret to humans? She said goodbye, but did not make any move to leave. The Nuit intended to watch Rhuryc until he gets off work.

[Rhuryc]

Cling? Rhuryc seemed confused by that. On occasion he would glance over his shoulder at the odd sound, unable to place the lighter melody in his mind. Eventually he found he could ignore it, albeit his work fell into a steady rhythm in opposition to his companion, every silence from her strikes filled by his own. Amusing. The man found he enjoyed the interaction. Even Jilitise's presence made the whole endeavor an easier matter, her occasional quips and random bits of information giving him material to think on. The Knights, for one, how they suffered such a creature within the walls. From the looks of her body - not to say she was ugly - but the Nuit was in some constant state of decay; something that had he not known her, even Rhuryc would find disturbing. Not to mention the lack of anything human. The figure was similar, sure, but the eyes held no spark, no emotion. They were, simply put, dead.

He supposed that made sense.

By the time Jilitse finished her sixth shoe Rhuryc had moved on to a different project. She was a quick learner, but he was accustom to the laborious process. Shifting back to his anvil the smith was involved in some in the construction of what appeared to be a box. An iron box. Strange. The large hunk of material had no real purpose other than a shelf of some sort. Nevertheless he struck the top with that same, repetitive motion, he hammer brought up and down again in what appeared to be an effort to thicken he edges. Maybe he was just putting on a show.

"I have no idea what automation is." He said between clangs, experienced in he art of speaking between hammer falls. "But what do you mean by that? Humans? I know I'm not too knowledgeable about Nuits," That was the word, right? He hoped he had not forgotten it so soon. "Weren't you human? Before?" Was that offensive? Somehow he felt that she would not care even if it was.

The rest of the day was spent in a similar fashion. Rhuryc took very few breaks. When he did he would either drench his upper torso in the nearby barrel of water or fetch some old bread from a crate in the back of the room. Often he kept food in the forge if only to keep the time between projects short. The man was a tenacious worker. He would speak to his 'apprentice' while he worked, but he would never stop for anything more than a few moments, perhaps allowing himself to catch his breath or organize some tools. Eventually his box took the shape of another anvil and more tools followed, calipers, prongs, a hammer or two, items of the craft deposited next to the never-yielding supply of horseshoes. By the time most of the forge had shut down for the night Rhuryc continued. Although the audience made for a unique venture - he found it strange to be watched so carefully for so long - the job was no different. It was not until dusk came that the man stopped and started to clean, moving from one duty into the next with a seamless grace.

"You're the most patient being I think I have ever encountered." He said, his hammer replaced with a broom. "How can you just sit there like that?"

[Jilitse]

Jilitse murmured in her soft dull voice, "Golems are creatures, machine objects imbued with life. They often have a single directive to accomplish, and it varies from pounding a bar of metal to talking with another person." She sounded somewhat serious. "It would be like having machines do the work for you. It is a must for the undead, who would otherwise be physically limited to build and create things that are usually done inside a forge. Only difference, I think, would be the precision and tirelessness of machines."

The Nuit smiled, "Yes, Rhuryc, I was human before I became a Nuit." She offered a little bit more, "I hailed from a small town which was once part of Eastern Alahea." That quickly placed her alive before the Valterrian, if Rhuryc was familiar of it. She went silent and stayed in one spot, the one vantage point where she could observe Rhuryc without following him around. He almost worked ceaselessly, but he needed to stop every now and then, to Jilitse's dismay. Time was lost when you stopped working. She tried to remind herself humans are not built to do the same thing over and over again tirelessly the way golems can.

Time passed, and the Nuit quietly stayed in her place. Jil even found a stool to sit herself on where decided to stay until Rhuryc finished. There was a lot about the man and his work that she was keen about; he was doing a repetitive job, but he didn't seem to mind. When, at last, he moved to wrap up for the day - which had Jilitse confused at first, "Why are you stopping?" She had asked him out of wonder. Before he gave his reply, a wave of understanding hit her, and the Nuit looked like she asked a very stupid question. Of course he's stopped to rest, Jilitse told herself.

"I do not think it is patience, Rhuryc. It is more of having a lot of time. It is gratifying to watch a human do the job for a change. I am trying to see the difference in efficiency and precision between you and one of the golems in Sahova. There is a good margin, but then again, you can talk to me, and the golem I know cannot." She said it out of comparison, and not out of a desire to converse with the man. As proof, Jilitse did not appear like she wanted to talk to Rhuryc a lot, since she was silent most of the time, except her inquiries about the tool Rhuryc used or the procedure he was doing.

"Is it wrong to sit?" Jilitse wondered and stood up. Rhuryc looked like he was preparing to leave. "Should I go now?" She asked, her eyes locking on his eyes.

[Rhuryc]

As was becoming habit with the Nuit, Rhuryc felt uneasy. Not because she was undead or that he was uncomfortable in her presence - albeit the fact that she was a rotting corpse was a bit disturbing - but due to the strange way in which she presented herself. He was not a companion, a friend, or even an acquaintance, it seemed, but a test subject; something to be observed, examined, like one of those golems she mentioned. Tireless machines. He mused that that. To have such a companion would no doubt triple the efficiency of the forges and increase their production ten fold. Why, for such simple jobs as nails and horseshoes the care of the smith was of no concern. A shake of his head brought his thoughts back to the task at hand. Focus. Jilitse still spoke and he had work yet to do. He continued on with his final chores, the debris swept aside and into a convenient little basket before he put the tools back on their respective stands. Finally, he approached the quiet fire of he forge and went about with a series of movements that lead to the eventual execution of the flames. Maybe he would clean the pit out tomorrow.

"No, it's not wrong." Rhuryc stared with a gander over his shoulder at the Nuit. "It's just unusual. For me. Most people that sit in that chair leave long before I finish." The man turned about when his job was finished and rose a hand over his mouth, covering the yawn that escaped his lips. The sound was more like the growl of a mighty lion. "And, ah. You don't have to go if you don't want, but it'll be lonely if you stay. Not sure if that matters." Did it? Rhuryc had yet to really figure this woman, undead creature - thing, out. If he were to leave now he very much would expect for her to be here in the morning with her talk of far off, unknown places and magical constructs. It was strange to be so close to a being and yet so far apart in worlds.

"I imagine you don't sleep, do you? I guess you could come with me, or go do whatever it is you do. I'm most likely to just grab something to eat and knock myself unconscious for the night, though."

[Jilitse]

If Jilitse felt any indifference to Rhuryc, it must have been buried underneath her interest in his values, virtues, and job. Of course it may also be an interest to occupy his body - that thought did not exactly die, but she was far away from considering it. Rhuryc stayed in Syliras, and it was hard to possess the body of a person who other people could recognize.

"But, of course, it would not be polite to stay when you have already left." She considered herself as a guest, a visitor if not an apprentice. Even with her minor exhaustion, she couldn't promise Rhuryc that she will leave things untouched. She might not be able to quell the curiosity and the drive to create and invent new things.

"Oh I do sleep, for very special occasions," Jilitse said and smiled. There was a lot to know about Nuits, but she didn't think Rhuryc could absorb the details of her unlife. "But not right now, I have no need for sleep."

She went silent and pondered upon her question for a while before answering, "I suppose you might go to the temple again tonight?" Jil chided as she recalled their first meeting. Seriously, she added, "In as much as I would like to join you while you eat, I have no need for that either, and my presence is not welcome in many public places. I do not want the stigma of the undead to attach to you. It is the best I could give in exchange of your lessons for today."

The Nuit followed the human out of the door, gave another round of thanks and slid away to the night.

OOCI suppose this is goodbye; our thread is finished?

[Leviathan]

Thread Award! Rhuryc Exp +2 Observation, +3 Teaching, +1 Blacksmithing, +1 Interrogation Lore Being an Apprentice with an Apprentice, Working with the Emotionless Jilitse Exp +4 Observation, +1 Interrogation, +2 Blacksmithing Lore Being the Apprentice of an Apprentice, Contrasting Forges (Sahova and Syliras), Lore of "Upsetting" Metal Additional Comments Sorry for taking so long guys, I've been busy. If you have questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to PM me anything, anytime, and I'll get to you as soon as I can. Again, I'm sorry and nice job!