Completed Smith's First Day [Touch of Fire]

[Calven]

1st of Spring 521


Calven showed up to earn some money at the local blacksmith’s place. He did not see any of the important people at this hour but then again he had been asked to come in super early to help get everything ready for the day. He was not very trusted with the team yet because he was a new hire. All was well though, he had expected there to be hardships. In truth he had not spent very much time with the owner of this place. He’d done the interview and all the woman seemed to be interested in was that he looked able bodied enough to at least do some basic work. That was all she cared about really unless they could actually help make weapons and Calven was very much a beginner. Calven had a rough time even finding the place in the dim lighting of the early morning. He knew he was in the right general area but where was that blasted building? His eyes darted around until eventually he saw someone waving at him.

“I’d look the fool if I didn’t even find my own workplace,” Calven said to himself. He waved back and walked over. He did not recognize whoever this was. It was definitely not the owner. He asked, “what’s your name? I don’t think I saw you when I came by to apply the other day.” Calven did his best to scan the person’s face. It was a man who looked about the same age as himself. He had brown eyes which caught Calven’s eyes as stunning. Calven did not notice anything else about him because he was not given much time.

“Listen new guy, I got a lot of stuff to get to today. I don’t have time to stand around and chat with you. If you’re lucky you might learn a thing or two about the trade while you’re here. And if you can put up with the workload without outright quitting you might end up getting to make some weaponry. But for now? We have to see if you have what it takes to do the workload. And trust me, there’s plenty of work to go around. I had to go through this and so do a lot of the other people that come around here looking for money. Now let’s get you something to do shall we?” The man walked around and obtained a crate of weapons. “You clean these with these cloths. When the cloths get too dirty you clean them, ok? I don’t want to hear anything out of your mouth other than you’re done.” The man then walked off to go take care of one of the many chores that needed to be done for the day.

Calven muttered under his breath, “I signed up to do blacksmithing work not clean a bunch of dirty weapons that’ve been collecting dust,” when the other employee walked off. “Got to make the best of a bad situation I guess. I can do this. This is simple work!"

[Calven]

“What’s the worst that could happen? And if I do a good job I’m more or less guaranteed to get some exposure and experience helping out with other stuff in the shop.”

Calven looked at the crate of weaponry. There were quite a number of weapons in there. There were too many different types for Calven to even differentiate at a glance. “Okay, first step. I’ll take all the weapons out and sort them by size. Then I’ll clean and neatly put them back into the crate as best as I can.” He nodded to himself and got to work.

The first weapon he pulled out was a longsword. He curled both hands around the handle and lifted very slowly. He held his breath as he lifted and found it difficult to pull the weapon free because it was snagged on something inside the crate. He pushed and pulled with a little bit of force until the weapon came loose and then he was faced with a new problem. How was he going to manage to lift all of these weapons like this? Sure, he could put his back into it and remove all the weapons haphazardly but that was not efficient at all now was it? “I’d be too tired far too quickly. I need to be smart about this,” he thought while trying to adjust his stance a little bit. He was no great shakes at optimal muscle usage but he did his best to at least use the right muscles for the job. Whereas before he had hunched over the crate he had transformed his stance to be somewhat even and he finally used his arm muscles to pull the sword up. He heard the sound of the metal sliding against other metals in the crate that sounded a bit eerie in the early morning air.

As soon as Calven had the sword fully extracted he finally started breathing again. For someone who considered himself pretty strong he still had a lot of trouble with the basic lifting mechanics. He panted and did his best to carefully find a clear spot where he could lay down the weapons. This task of putting the weapons down was going to make him engage an entirely different set of muscles than he had used to pull the sword free. Calven took another series of heavy breaths and then held his breath again as he squatted down and lowered the weapon. His arms already felt tense from holding this weapon and it did not do him any favors that he was still unable to see very well this early in the morning. “You can do this Calven!” he managed to say. His legs started to hurt too but he was ultimately able to place the sword down on the ground ever so carefully. Calven was not an idiot, he knew how to hold a sword and it was never this hard. This sword must have been made for someone with a lot more muscle or a larger stature in his opinion.

[Calven]

Calven looked over to the crate and realized that this was going to take forever. “I am never going to even get all the weapons out let alone back in at this rate. I could try but I’m going to get too tired.” He hated how weak he felt sometimes. It was a shock to realize just how insignificant he was when it came to this basic stuff. Calven was not going to quit though. He thought in his foolish mind that he could overcome his physical limitations with sheer will. Oh how he was mistaken.

Calven’s “supervisor” came over after Calven painstakingly removed another three swords and laid them on the ground. “Are you stupid?” the employee asked. “Just turn the blasted crate on its side. The weapons just slide right out after that.” He used his own burly muscles to tip the crate over and caught it with his foot to help lower it. Calven stood there flabbergasted that he had really been so foolish not to do it that way. Calven was told that, “you’re taking too long. Now I have to help you and get behind on my own work. Thanks.”

The two of them spent the next half hour or so pulling out the weapons and wiping them down. Calven was always the one who had to clean the cloths in a barrel of water so they could get back to cleaning. The cleaning itself did not take very long or much effort which was a blessing because Calven definitely needed the break. The pair then loaded everything back into the crate once the weapons had been dried and then it was time for the second round of tasks to get assigned. The owner had showed up by then and boy did she have a lot on her plate. She told Calven to help out a totally different employee who was trying to make horseshoes or something basic like that. Calven did not even get a chance to say a word and was sheparded over to the right area of the shop so that he could immediately give a helping hand.

“Do you know what these are?” asked a young woman that looked to be even younger than Calven.

He nodded his head. “Looks like tongs and a hammer.”

“Good, you’re not totally clueless. Now watch me.” The woman took some hot metal and started hammering it over an anvil to make the metal flat. Calven tilted his head and watched as it was done. He tried to pick up on the overall gist of what was being done. He could not notice the exact nuances to the shape but he understood that the goal was to hold the metal with the tongs and bang on the hot metal with the hammer until it was flat. “Can you do that?” the woman asked.

“Pretty sure I can,” Calven said. It wasn’t like he had never used the tools before. He had practiced a little bit in the past but when it came to actually smithing anything he’d never had to actually do that.

[Calven]

So he was understandably a little nervous. He smiled and picked up another set of tools and proceeded to copy what he thought he’d seen the woman do. He used the tongs to grab hold of some hot metal and immediately ended up fumbling it so that it fell out of his grip. It took him four tries to actually get a solid grip on it and he carefully brought it over to the anvil. He then took the hammer and started beating the metal. He was very uneven in the way that he did it but the other employee was quick to point out where he needed to hit more and told him so when necessary. Calven was actually feeling like he was doing something important for once! He continued to bang on the metal until the woman told him to stop and then he was to drop the metal into a bucket of water. Calven had seen this bit done before so he dropped the still hot metal into the bucket.

“Just keep doing that,” said the woman and Calven shrugged.

Calven said, “I can do that. This is pretty easy.”

The girl laughed, “the first one is always easy. Then your arms start aching and each impact of the hammer makes your arm go numb. You get used to it though. You’re not doing too bad for your first day. You’re lucky we’re busy because normally you’d be doing a bunch of boring stuff. Anyways, when you do the next one try to make the edges as straight as possible. We’re trying to make flat rectangles. The worse you do now the worse it’ll be for you later when you have to fix the shape.”

“Wow, well I guess I would have not been able to do a good job at that on my first try anyway,” Calven said. He took a deep breath and grabbed the next chunk of hot metal. This time he only fumbled it three times before he got a decent grip. He felt somewhat confident in his ability to control the tongs so he was able to bring the metal over without worrying about dropping it once he had secure grip. Calven swung the hammer down and sure enough he felt some of the numbness that he had been warned about. Every swing created the same sensation. It did not hurt, per say, but he could tell that he was no great shakes at swinging the hammer no matter how simple the task was. Hitting at improper angles caused strain on his muscles and he was definitely not hitting hard enough when he should and conversely hitting too hard in areas he shouldn’t have. It was all a learning process both in the terms of efficient body usage as well as blacksmithing.

With that task out of the way Calven was finally allowed an actual break. He walked over to the quieter part of the shop and rested. His arms throbbed and his back hurt from being hunched over the anvil for so long. Now that he thought about it, it really hadn’t been that long at all.

[Calven]

The working day had just barely started and he was already dead tired. He did not know how someone could possibly do all the work that was asked of them but he was looking at a lot of employees that were all pulling their weight. “It’s going to be a long while before I get to that point,” Calven said with a sigh. “At least I can sit back and relax now. Hey, that weapon looks kind of neat.”

Calven reached over to a rack on the wall and lifted up a dagger. He held it in his hands and admired the quality of it. It was not some run of the mill dagger that you found in a smith’s mess up pile. This was a piece that looked like it could take some serious punishment. Little did Calven know that there were very little actual cues that gave the weapon’s quality away. He was inadvertently tapping into his abilities as a vorilescence magician to pick up on the quality of the blade. There was something about it that just felt right, like he would feel confident keeping it by his side and using it to stop a longsword’s blow in an emergency. He had not felt this way about any of the other weapons he had held today and it made him question whether he was wasting his time with bigger swords when this dagger seemed to be made better than his own weapons. He wished that he knew how to actually use a dagger so that he could feel confident swinging it. He did not though and he carefully started to put the dagger back onto the wall.

Calven stopped before letting go of the dagger. It was at that moment that he heard something. It was that sound. It did not sound familiar but he knew what it must have been. It was the song of the dagger… it was a pure, soft tone like one might hear from a tuning fork. It was very feint but Calven could finally hear something. It was a sound he only heard when he was at home by himself with his swords. There had been so much noise and focus on other activities that Calven had simply been too distracted to notice the tones before. “Is there something special about you dagger? Or was I just too cloud minded before?” Calven closed his eyes and focused on the sound more because it was a soothing tone. Unfortunately it all came to an abrupt end when he was grabbed on both his shoulders.

“Huh?” he asked in surprise. He turned to see that the girl from before wanted his attention.

“Time to file the rectangles. Then we’ll make some more and you can go home. Don’t need you wearing out too quickly since you’ll have to do this all again tomorrow!”

Calven smiled. He was having fun! He was happy to go work on some more smithing stuff. He was glad he was actually making a living wage doing this!

[Oralie]

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