Thrump! Thrump! Thrump!
The heavy, ringing heartbeat of metal striking metal rolled through air so thick and molten it felt like breathing soup. Sparks skittered across the blackened floor like frightened insects; the firelight painted everything in restless orange and bruise-purple shadow.
"Turn it."
Bart's voice cut low and rough, gravel dragged over iron.
Sweat gleamed on the broad planes of his tanned shoulders and chest; long white hair, damp at the temples, clung to his neck beneath the leather apron. The thick beard framed a face carved by decades of heat, soot, and decisions made in the moment between one hammer-fall and the next.
Kael was already moving.
The long-handled tongs felt like extensions of his own arms. He gripped the glowing bar—cheerful yellow-white at its heart, fading to sullen cherry at the edges—and rotated it with the small, precise twist of wrist and shoulder that Bart had beaten into muscle memory of him now. The iron hovered exactly where it needed to be, level, steady.
Bart gave a single curt nod, the kind that carried more approval than most men could pack into a paragraph. Then the hammer came down again—clean, deliberate, unhurried—each strike sending a fresh bloom of sparks arcing into the gloom.
Back and forth they worked: hammer, turn, hammer, turn, quench when the metal grew sullen and resistant, back into the fire's hungry mouth until it softened once more.
The only perfumes in that roaring space were coal smoke, scorched iron, and the sharp, honest salt of human sweat.
Eventually the rhythm broke.
The midday bell clanged somewhere beyond the yard. Bart set the hammer on its rest with a soft metallic clink, wiped his streaming face with a forearm already black with soot, and jerked his head toward the door.
"Lunch."
Kael laid the tongs beside the anvil, flexed his stinging hands once, and followed.
Bart and Kael crossed the narrow path on the wide green yard, boots scuffing dry earth still warm from the morning sun.
At the far end stood the kitchen—a broad, open-sided shelter held aloft by a forest of bamboo pillars, its thatch roof thick and steeply pitched against the rain that would come later in the season.
A thin ribbon of smoke rose steadily from the clay chimney, carrying the faint, sweet char of woodfire and something richer: onions softening in hot fat, perhaps, or bread browning at the edges.
The midday bell had barely finished its last brazen note when Lysa struck the metal plate again—three clear, deliberate rings, the very plate her husband had hammered flat and tuned years ago so its voice would carry across the yard.
She looked up as the two smiths approached, their shapes dark against the bright doorway, skin glossy with fresh sweat and streaked with the black dust of the forge.
Her smile arrived first—quick, warm—then the familiar edge of command.
"Okay," she said, wiping flour-dusted hands on her apron, "first go and wash away that soot before you track it through my kitchen."
Kael and Bart halted mid-stride, boots rooted to the packed dirt. They exchanged a single glance—wordless, weary, the look of men who had heard this particular order many times before.
From the shadowed interior came a bright, unguarded laugh. The younger girl stepped into a shaft of sunlight, wiping her hands on a cloth, eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Okay, Father. Little Kael," she called, voice light but teasing, "go quickly before the food gets cold."
Bart let out a low, rumbling sigh that stirred the ends of his beard. Kael's shoulders dropped half an inch. The same thought passed between them, unspoken yet perfectly shared: We'll only get filthy again the moment we pick up the hammer.
Still, the truth was plain enough. Their arms and necks were mapped with black streaks; their faces carried the pale ghost-prints where sweat had carved clean paths through the grime.
And more importantly, there were ladies present.
Kael turned first, walking the short distance to the well just beyond the kitchen's bamboo posts. The wooden bucket came up heavy, water sloshing cold against the sides.
He splashed his forearms, scrubbed at the stubborn soot with callused palms until the runoff ran merely gray instead of black. Face, neck, the hollows beneath his eyes—each pass left skin pinker, rawer, more alive to the air.
Bart followed the same ritual beside him, movements slower, more methodical, water dripping from his white beard in dark drops that darkened the earth at his feet.
When the worst of the forge had been rinsed away, they shook water from their hands, raked damp fingers through their hair, and stepped back toward the kitchen.
This time Lysa did not bar the way.
"Okay, Father, Little Kael, please take your seats. We're done here."
The voice belonged to the younger girl—no, not a girl any longer. She had already crossed twenty summers; in this world that usually meant a woman already cradling her first child, or at least promised to a hearth of her own.
Yet here she remained, still maiden, still moving through the kitchen with the same quick, sure grace she'd had at sixteen. The reasons for it stayed tucked away behind her easy smile; Kael had never asked, and no one had ever offered.
"Thank you for your help, Sister Mira," Kael said quietly.
He settled onto the woven mat beside Bart, the thick rush fibers still carrying the stored warmth of the morning sun that had poured through the open sides earlier.
The low table stood barely a hand's span above the floor; from its shallow clay bowls the scent of fresh flatbread and stewed greens rose in gentle, fragrant waves, mingling with the cooler current of air that slipped beneath the thatch roof.
Though he addressed them as Master and Madam, the words carried no weight of servitude. Kael was apprentice, not servant—chosen, not bought.
Bart had no son to inherit the hammer's rhythm, no blood to carry the old songs of iron and fire. So he had looked outside the family line, and Kael—by chance or quiet fortune—had been the one found.
The arrangement was unspoken but solid: years of sweat and sparks in exchange for the secrets of the forge.
In the wider world, blacksmiths were more than tradesmen. They were makers of edges that could split shields, of plates that could turn aside arrows, of tools that could feed a village or arm an army.
In the county seat, the forges stood shoulder to shoulder like rival schools, their apprentices paying steep fees for the right to stand at an anvil under a master's eye. Most families could never afford the price.
Bart had turned his back on all of that long ago.
He preferred the hush of Red Leaf village—the slow turn of seasons, the rustle of leaves that gave the place its name, the absence of shouting hawkers and clanging competition. The work still came to him: farmers with plowshares, travelers needing nails, the occasional blade commission that paid in silver rather than copper.
And though he had chosen solitude over the town's clamor, he had not chosen to let the craft die with him. Kael was the continuation—the free continuation—of a line that might otherwise have ended at the edge of this quiet yard.
Mira set the last wooden bowl in place with a soft clack. Steam rose in lazy spirals. Bart reached for the bread first, tearing a piece with hands still faintly darkened at the creases despite the harsh scrubbing. Kael waited, then followed.
The meal began without further words, only the small domestic sounds of spoons against clay and the low crackle of the kitchen fire settling itself for the afternoon.
But Bart caught it—the way his wife's gaze had drifted and settled on Kael.
Those eyes, soft and knowing, carried the same quiet heat Lysa once reserved only for him in the stillness of their nights, when the world narrowed to breath and skin and whispered want.
Now they rested on the boy—his apprentice—with the same lingering tenderness, tracing the damp strands of hair at his temple, the careful way his shoulders moved as he ate.
She did not hide it quickly enough.
Her gaze lifted and met Bart's across the low table. A small smile bloomed across her face—slow, beautiful, edged with something private and sure. It was the smile that had always undone him a little, even after all these years.
Bart felt the breath leave him in a soundless inward sigh. The realization landed heavy and inevitable in his chest.
Looks like I have to finally talk about this with my dear apprentice.
He kept his spoon moving—steady scoop, steady bite—chewing without tasting, the warmth of the stew forgotten on his tongue. His thoughts had already slipped away from the meal, circling the words he would soon have to speak.
At the same moment, Mira leaned toward Kael, her voice light and easy, threaded with the gentle authority of an older sister.
"More of the greens? Or another piece of bread while it's still warm?"
Kael shook his head with a small, grateful smile, but the offer settled deeper inside him.
The casual care, the easy fussing, wrapped around his ribs like another layer of belonging. His heart warmed under it; the protectiveness he already felt toward this family—this new, unexpected home—tightened a fraction more. He wanted to shield them, to keep this quiet peace intact.
He had no idea that a closely guarded truth was already rising toward the surface of the afternoon, waiting to be spoken.
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