Solo To Some I Have Talked With By the Fire

[Fia Eaven]

In the Fall of 512 AV on the 90th Day Smothered by the forge's breath, her palms sweat and swelled inside the leather gloves. It was the beginning of the process that would shape the suede to her hand. The working gloves were barely burnished in places, worn from where the handle on the crank for the forge protruded, and by the unique divots in the handles of her tools. In time Fia would look at the gloves and see the shadow of her grip. For now, they felt cumbersome and she begged her good sense for permission to remove them. Eying the sleepy forge, Fia turned the crank with her left hand and stabbed at the ruddy hill of coals with the poker in her right. "C'mon, love, I know it's cold out," she tried to coax the glowing heap like one would a horse from stables. "Can't let the weather keep you dim. We've got things to make." She glanced at the bundle of narrow rods balanced across the face of the anvil. One small patch a quarter from the rods' ends was sloppily welded together, a metal ribbon barely binding the loose twigs of iron. The rods were to make a pretty handle for a lady's bureau, or so she hoped. "It will be a fine handle," Fia assured both the forge and herself, "One you'll be proud to say you heated." she snuffed a laugh and hung her head, "Lud. I'm losing me mind…" Her conversations with the forge were the longest she could maintain since the letter. Customers were greeted with a veil of cheer, but she faltered over words. They turned to toads on her tongue and were knobby, leaping things. But for the proprietress, most Fia's company was men and they didn't question her reserve. As long as she sang on occasion and littered grins about, all was well. There was the Ethaefal, though. She could talk with him. Perhaps because he seemed a sleeping forge himself. Under the crumbling gray cairn she imagined a heart still as a star and red as morning. Fia gave a final turn to the crank then slid the poker in its place. "That'll do, love," she said with her grateful eyes on the coals, "I'd kiss you if'n you weren't so smitten with Ivak."

[Fia Eaven]

After considering the width of her sheave of iron, Fia plucked up the proper sized tongs. She didn't want to have the metal pitch into her face because she carelessly grabbed the nearest vise. Tongs in hand she pinched the iron and fed the forge's blazing mouth. The iron would keep for a bit as she gathered the needed bits and pieces from the hooks and shelves across the forge. Casting off her gloves, she traipsed her fingers across the shelf. "Ah, there you are…" If Fia had any talent for letters, she would have known the tool she plucked up was a hollow "T" shape. Instead it was 'the wee table'. And the other hollow implement created for torque as she twisted the metal was dubbed 'the long-armed cross'. She fit that one under her arm and hummed as she brought her spoils to the altar of the anvil. The 'wee table' slid into the anvil's hardy hole, so only its flat top was visible above the face of the anvil, while the cross was set aside. Now, she would watch and wait for the rods to show the proper color, that yellow orange like persimmon flesh. The smith shop was dim for just this purpose, so the smithies could see the metal ripen to workability. It was these stretches of forced idleness that splintered Fia. They were to be borne. Wasn't right to run from grief. Had to sit still sometime and let it carve off what it willed. Every time Fia stood straight from bending over the anvil or looked aside from the forge, she expected to see the lanky figure of her Da. His limbs had always seemed longer than other's, drooping toward the ground, his fingers stretched between the joints. When little Fia remarked on this, he'd chuckle from his gut and say Tanroa drew him out on the anvil a bit every year when he was young. It was a jest she came to repeat, trying to catch that first laughter again. It was only her in the dim though, crooked like an old woman. Da wasn't going to push the door open and ask why she had been gone so long. He wasn't going to ask anything at all.