Immaculate

Summer 63rd 2891 P.C., The village center, Hylicia’s Vale

Alunya whistles, jaunting down the cobblestone paths around the village. After his birthday that last spring, his mother had finally started letting him walk around the village more. Alunya has a sneaking suspicion there is more to the decision than simply his aging, but that’s neither here nor there.

Of course, his mother probably doesn’t know that he is going all the way down into the village center, or that he will be gone as long as he is; But, Antares and Reia will both be gone for hours, so he has time to make sure he gets back. And there is so much more to learn about or do down here.

Not least of which is what has taken Alunya’s attention at this moment, the smoke rising from the chimney of one of the largest houses in the center of the village, second only to the priest's residence just a little behind the large central plinth. From inside, the clamoring noise of copper on copper rings out, along with shouts from inside.

Alunya strides up to the entrance to the smithy- It’s readily open, to accept whoever needs copperwork done. There is always a little bit of work, but never that much; Mostly repairs to decades or centuries old copperwork. Sometimes, old copper was melted down to create something new. Alunya had been here briefly before, when Reia had run errands down here, but he’d never actually been inside. He’d always been curious about how it’s done, and today he’s resolved to find out.

“For Hylicia’s sake, boy, you're going to scratch the gem using the file like that!” Alunya can hear the voice of Gatrick before he sees him, peeking around the corner to find him and a boy-older than Alunya but younger than Antares-standing by his side, cringing backwards at Gatrick’s shouting. The two of them are huddled over a small, delicate piece of jewelry, performing detail work on it with a thin, long tool with fine teeth on one end.

Alunya prances on in, taking a look around the shop while tuning out the other two people present. There is a handful of conical structures at the back of the room, which to Alunya look a little bit like one of the village houses but shrunk down and made of clay rather than stone, complete with a small window at the front. There is of course the anvil, just a little behind a long table, and racks of tools hung up all over the place, with a few seats out in front for customers to sit while talking to Gatrick, a couple doors leading to other rooms, and finally, a stairwell leading upstairs on the far right side; the smith’s house was one of only three buildings in the whole village with a second floor.

"Reia's bastard..? What are you doing here?" Gatrick scoffs, eyeing Alunya suspiciously. Oh, looks like the jig is up! Alunya hops up on one of the chairs, putting on his sunniest smile. He had somewhat been hoping the man would keep not noticing him for a bit longer so he could poke around a little more, but that’s apparently not going to happen.

"Um, Mom wanted me to bring you this to ask if you could repair it!" Alunya offers one of the family's only pieces of cookware, with a rupture on the underside. That is... not entirely a true statement. It is true that his mother had wanted to bring the pan down to Gatrick for repairs, but she had absolutely not asked Alunya to take it down; he had done that on his own initiative, so that he would have a logical excuse for why he was there.

"...Fine. I'll take a look at it when I have time." Gatrick grabs the pan out of the boy's hands, who stares up at him expectantly, eyes shining a little. Gatrick pauses, a little put off.

"...Well? What are you waiting for, brat? Scram." Gatrick hisses out.

"Don't mind me! I just want to see you work." Alunya announces, cheerily. Gatrick is pretty hostile, but he is the only one in the village who could make things out of metal; That is pretty cool, and makes up for his deficit in personality.

Gatrick sighs heavily and places his head in his hands. "Oh, for the love of... Lyrin, you go deal with our 'guest'. I don't need any more distractions. And I especially don't need your sloppy work." Gatrick barks out.

The younger boy with him scurries over to Alunya at Gatrick's demand, keeping his gaze low. “Um, come on, I can show you some of the tools if you like. Let’s just go… Please.” The boy looks up at Alunya, pleadingly, giving nervous looks back at his father behind him. “You don’t want to be around him when he’s angry.”

Alunya rolls his eyes-It rather feels like a convenient excuse to get him to not get to watch Gatrick work, which is the whole reason he had come down. But, he had netted himself a guide- Maybe Lyrin could tell him how it all works! So, he nods his head in agreement and follows while Lyrin practically drags him through one of the doors into one of the back rooms.

“I guess I should thank you for showing up when you did.” As Lyrin speaks, Alunya notices him tracing a bruise on one of his arms with his fingers. Alunya glances at it briefly, but thinks nothing further of it; he probably just fell down or something and is still sore, right?

“Um, if you say so! I just thought it would be fun to see how the metal smithing is done. I was thinking about it ever since my mom mentioned needing her pan repaired.” Alunya explains. “Can you show me?” He follows up, eagerly.

“Well, father did ask me to ‘deal with’ you… I guess that's permission.” Lyrin says, uncertainly. “Um, I’m Lyrin, by the way.”

“I’m Alunya!” Alunya affirms, nodding eagerly. Lyrin laughs a little, smiling for the first time since Alunya had met him.

“Yeah, I know who you are. That hair of yours doesn't exactly go unnoticed, you know.” Lyrin remarks, dryly. “Come on now.” Lyrin draws Alunya through a back door and outside; a small open area, almost like a courtyard, is bounded on two sides by short walls about as tall as Alunya, with the other boundaries being formed by the river and the back wall of the smithy, respectively. There are a number of conical structures here too, of slightly different forms; some resemble the ones from inside, but larger and with ceramic pipes on the back that connect to a round structure made of wooden sticks. Others are much simpler, resembling little more than mounds of dirt.

“Ooh… What are these?” Alunya asks, looking around the former type of structure. It’s made of clay, but the inner sides are vitrified and hardened. “Weren’t they also inside?”

Lyrin shakes his head. “Um, this is the bloomery. Whenever something is broken too badly to fix it, we melt it down here. The waterwheel back there runs the bellows to pump air in, because stagnant air doesnt let the fire burn, and the shape of it keeps it hot enough to melt down copper. I guess if we found any more ore we would smelt that here, too, but nobody has found ore since before I was born.” Lyrin explains.

Alunya nods along in interest. “Um, but, once it melts, how do you get it? It's like… um, ice, right? Where once it's heated up it becomes… water?” Alunya struggles for a minute, not knowing what to call it.

“Molten, it's called molten copper. Not water.” Lyrin states, crouching down near the window of the smelter to show Alunya inside, where there is a ceramic rack. “You put the coals down here and light the fire, then the crucible goes up on top of the rack. It gets really hot and then the copper melts, then you pull it out with the tongs here and pour it into a mold to make an ingot.” Lyrin explains, showing off the tools for each step.

The conversation goes on like that for some time, Alunya asking questions and Lyrin explaining bit by bit. Plenty of the words used are unfamiliar to Alunya, who has to ask what they mean. What is “slag”? What does “molten” mean? Lyrin explains not only the smelter, but some of the tools around too, and the big mound in the back; a charcoal burner, necessary to provide the fuel used in the smelter.

By the time they finish looking around the things outside-Not too much, since most of the real work is done inside-the sound of Gatrick working has faded away. “Let’s go see the forge inside, now! I wanna know how that works, too!” Alunya affirms, cheerfully. Lyrin’s blood drains away from his face as Alunya peeks open the door to see inside.

“No! Please, don’t disturb father, he’ll-” Lyrin starts, desperately.

“He’s not there right now!” Alunya announces, looking back at Lyrin. “Do you know where he went?”

Lyrin sighs with relief, leaning over his knees. “Oh good.. So he’s already retired upstairs. Um, ok, I guess we can go look around inside… I mean, father did tell me to deal with you…” Lyrin reasons to himself, uncertainly.

Alunya frowns slightly. He’s having fun, but it seems like Lyrin was upset. Sure, he does want to learn more about coppersmithing, but if his guide is miserable that puts a damper on his mood too. “Um, Lyrin? Is everything alright?”

“Huh? Um, yeah, it's fine.” Lyrin brushes it off, rubbing the back of his head self consciously. “Um… It's better than alright, actually. I should thank you for showing up when you did. It got father's mind off of me.” Lyrin laughs a little awkwardly.

“Why was he upset at you?” Alunya asks, curiously, as he steps inside the smithy.

“Oh, I… I didn’t do a good enough job filing the details on the priest's new talisman.” Lyrin professes with shame in his voice.

Alunya blinks at Lyrin in some confusion. “Really? It looked to me like you were doing a good job, and you seem so at ease around the forge!”

Lyrin shakes his head. “Um, I’m ok with the smithing… But it’s really hard to get the filing down right. My father says that I’m going to ruin the piece by pushing too hard and slipping out of the filing channel.” Lyrin hangs his head in shame.

Alunya quirks his mouth in mild concern, but shrugs it off. “Well, he’s not here now. Can you show me how you do the actual smithing, now?” Alunya asks, and Lyrin smiles a little bit.

“Um, sure! Father probably won’t be here for a while, so we should have some time.” Lyrin leads Alunya over to the tools; Files, hammers, the anvil, tongs, chisels, awls, and grindstone.

“These are what we use to make etchings in things. I don’t get alot of chances to try, since there's not alot of work that needs that much detail.” Lyrin explains, before making a short demonstration of how it works for Alunya, using a piece of firewood; obviously, messing with any of the copper in the room would get him in trouble again.

Alunya nods sagely and follows along while Lyrin continues showing him different things and doing his best to explain their functions. Somehow, Lyrin seems more relaxed the more he gets into talking about his work.

“...This is mine. I work on it sometimes when father isn’t watching. I think he thinks it's just scrap copper.” Lyrin explains, showing Alunya a bracelet made of two copper bands twisting around eachother, with a fairly intricate pattern carved around the edges. The work isn’t perfect-there are a few scratch marks outside the bounds of where the main pattern has been filed away-but it is surprisingly elaborate.

“Woah! That's amazing!” Alunya gawks, eyes lit up. “Do you think I could ever be that good?” Alunya asks, earnestly, looking up at Lyrin.

Lyrin shrugs. “I dunno. I don’t think I’m that good. Dad certainly doesn’t. Probably, I guess.” He gazes down at the bracelet melancholically. “It just makes me feel good to have something just for me. Working on it by myself makes me feel… I dunno. Steady.”

Alunya frowns, cocking his head to the side. …If it makes you feel steady, why do you sound so upset..? There’s a nagging feeling that Alunya was somehow bugging him, but Lyrin wouldn’t say as such, so…

Before Alunya can follow up on that thought, the door swings open. Lyrin gulps nervously and hastily hides his bracelet, keeping his gaze down, as Alunya looks up to see Gatrick stomping into the room, flask in hand and resting scowl on his face fully intact.