The air grew heavier with the stench of heat and the sorcery of creation. Embers sung from clashing metal, thin strands on top teased, worked, thrust back into flame, expounded upon, and worked again. Fiam’s eyes took in the shape now boldly resisting the hammer, but instead envisioned it complete, as it would be when the efforts were through, a phantom idol within the crude arc who begged freedom.
It would not be freed within the span of this blade, nor the next. For months, years, decades, perhaps centuries, perfection would remain a vision fluttering just out of reach, elusive as a thief. The rippling arms that held still this red-hot prototype and wielded the weight crashing desperately upon it cared not. Imagination or future sight took hold of joints, muscles, limbs and digits, with intent to share its fabled gem with the world.
Fiam tucked her face against her arm as if to scrutinize her work, covertly dabbing exhaustion from her temples. As her station fell silent clacks and clangs and hisses could be heard from other parts of the yard, where forgers more skilled than she sojourned. Soot from the ever-roaring flames gathered on Fiam’s horns, coaxing their natural cream to an ashy grey with dreams of obsidian. It smudged her face and settled in the worn calluses of her pale hands. Hands deemed worthy to smith the tools of battle but not to wield them.
No, she repeated her mantra, I am not bitter.
The young warriors who carried her works to the fields to swing foolishly, augmenting the claws they were still wary to use, would think nothing of the one who laboured over them. The older ones, who took respectfully the work of her superiors, might rarely utilize the advanced craftmanship, leaving the beauties strapped to their backs. Whether or not the smithery’s productions were of use to the clan could not be judged by any less than a watcher, but no order had been given to stop. Their work meant something. Fiam was not bitter.
She struck harder, thinking just how content she was with her station. If she could not fight, supporting those who could was such sufficient consolation. A spark raced its way towards her and singed upon the bare skin of her forearm. The fleeting mark fell just between lines of swirling ink, characteristically unruly as they were. She blinked once, twice, at the daring little ember’s aftermath, and softly let her musings turn to an artist whose works—and whose everything—she found divine.
Perhaps this facsimile of flawlessness, now forming at her command, would serve as sufficient trinket to appease that testy embodiment of perfection whose bed she hoped to share again tonight.
