Blackstone Foundry and Forge, Thursday

[built_fjord_tough]

Well, the forge was more or less back to normal. Or at least back to being a functional forge, which Fjord would take, and so he was settling in for a day's work.... mostly doing battle with trying to keep the temperature of the forge right. It ran a little too hot, made him hesitant to work on his rapier with it being as touchy as it was, and so he was going to start on something he was slightly less invested in today, preparing and shaping a bit of steel to make a dagger, like Amaya had set her students to working on in her class.

It was decent busy work. All the better for pretending yesterday hadn't happened.

Ahem.

[OOC: Open!]

Comments

[special_rabbit]

You know, when everything was busy and lively in the forge, with the students banging away on their projects and her focus on instructing them and seeing how they were picking up on the idea of shaping their pieces, it was almost easy to forget about any gremlin bites and excessive clinging and talk of big powerful swords and being locked away in closets for her own damn good.

...and she really wanted to thank Fjord for that, truly, she did. That was easily the best thing he could have done, in her estimation, to prevent her from acting an even bigger fool than she'd already managed. Tall, buxom (well, but like that!), svelte and sultry, indeed!

But once the cacophony of hammers and discussion had died away, and all that was left was the singular sound of what it was Fjord was working on amid a whole lot of just him and her and not even a whole lot of clean-up...

And thanking him would involve acknowledging it and....yeah....Amaya was so not ready to do anything remotely like that...

"Welp!" she declared, just a bit louder than entirely necessary. "Looks like that just about cleared us up on whatever good steel we had left in the place. Might as well use this time to head on over to the scrapyard, see if they've got anything salvageable to last us the rest of the week, since you've got the shop and all..."

Spend all day scavenging in the scrapyard? Sounded a heap of a lot better than dealing with the awkwardness that was bound to linger in here, no matter which project she threw herself into.

[built_fjord_tough]

"I, ah..." Fjord looked up from the... well, it was vaguely dagger-shaped, thus far... and turned his attention toward Amaya, biting back a grimace. "Yeah, that sounds like a good use for the day," he acknowledged. "You find any real big, awkward pieces, you can set it aside and send me to go fetch it once you get, ah, back..."

Awkwardness, they name was Fjord.

But really, he figured it was the perfect offer. Meant that once she started to get twitchy away from a hammer and anvil, she could tap out and he could flee from this awkward situation, right?

[special_rabbit]

"Any....real...big...awkward pieces," Amaya repeated in a bit of a murmur, because, yeah, she sort of already found one of those. It was right here, this whole place, right now, just the whoooole shebang. "Right. Will do."

She had absolutely no intention of heading back until well after closing time, no matter how big the itch might have gotten, because that would only leave her feeling a little annoyed over how something as silly as a gremlin bite should go and get in the way of the really good synergy the two of them had going. And it would get back, of that she was confident of, of that she was determined to have happen, but...she knew the last thing she could handle right now was sharing a space with him; there'd been more than enough of that yesterday, and it never did anybody any good working at forge when...distracted.

"Alright, then," she nodded, and, in an effort to make it slightly less awkward that actually only wound up making her feel more so, added a "See you later," and then turned toward the door before she could say anything else that shouldn't feel off, but still did, and she figured with that, she'd be out in a jiff and that'd be that, but then something had to go pulling at the back of her brain and she stopped once she reached the door and hesitated as she tried to figure out if she should just ignore it or not.

But she couldn't. She just couldn't. If she didn't say it, she'd wind up just thinking about how she really should have.

So she turned slightly back, hesitated a moment longer, and then just tried to get it out and done swiftly, like ripping off a bandage. "And....thanks," she said. "And I know you'll probably tell me it wasn't anything that could be helped," because it wasn't, but that didn't make it any easier to not feel bad about it, "but I'm sorry, too. Mostly, though...thanks. Just...thanks."

And since that was far more feelings that she cared to handle right now, she was just going to finish that up with a stern, firm nod and see to finally getting out that door and not going back through it again for a while.

[built_fjord_tough]

Fjord stared after her, not entirely certain what to do with that weird twisting feeling in his chest at that, and then just... nodded back.

By the time he had a reply that seemed like it would have been fitting in turn, she was already gone. And so he stood there for a few moments in silence, and then, shaking himself out of that weird feeling, he pulled in a breath and settled back in to work on his dagger, putting the metal back into the flame.