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Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Saturday [09/24].

Amaya didn't usually make a big deal or anything about when she was open/in the shop on a Saturday, but, with it being Parents Weekend, she felt it was a good chance for any of her students' (all two of them!) guests to find her if they wanted to have a chat, and, besides, you never knew! Maybe some of the other guests were really hankering for a nice sword or axe or set of throwing stars to take home with as a souvenir! Or maybe they'd had the need for a good blacksmith for a while now, but just couldn't locate one in their own dimension or world or whatever, and so this was just the opportunity to arrange a special order.

And if not? Well, she was still getting some solid work done, so it was win/win.

Well, maybe win/win/loss, the loss being for the foods on sticks that would surely be at the festival, but, while that was no insignificant loss, contrary to popular belief, there were some things more important than foods on sticks.

The Forge is open!

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If you thought Irene was stopping by because she was nursing a very deep loneliness this weekend and was outright craving company as a result -- well, you would be one hundred percent right, but she'd deny it all day long, anyway.

Irene was just here to flirt, thank you. Per usual.

"Working at the weekend?" she scolded, light and teasing as she made her way in today, her hands thrust into the pockets of her favorite Burberry trenchcoat. (A clever cover, Irene thought, for how little she felt like dolling herself up to the nines today; just cover a more casual outfit with a coat that cost as much as a vehicle.) "Is it something fun, at least?"

"Ugh."

Well, if that instant reaction out of Amaya after she'd looked up to see who had entered the shop didn't just do wonders for your current mood, Irene, who knew what would? But, still feeling a bit...raw and...tumultuous about earlier in the week, Amaya's attention went firmly back into her hammering.

"Not in the slightest," she insisted. "Standard sword. No bells, no whistles. Perfectly boring. Nothing to see here."

Might as well move right along.

Any other day, that ugh would have rolled off Irene like so much water on wax, but today -- for maybe the first time? -- it actually stung a little. She recovered quite quickly, though; it wasn't as though she didn't know perfectly well that she'd annoyed the daylights out of Amaya on her way out the other day, and besides. She'd spent all winter pushing through greetings like that, really.

So she wouldn't be moving along, no. She was, in fact, pulling off her coat to be more comfortable in the forge. Clearly she'd be staying a bit!

"Need any help?" she offered, keeping her tone as light and airy. "Pumpkin-carving's not much my thing, so I'm skipping the festival."

Also she was very sad and seeing everyone's visiting friends would make it much worse, but that was neither here nor there.

Amaya took a second to hold up the blade currently in progress to inspect it from a few different angles before going steadily back to hammering it out, almost as if to show just how little attention she planned on sparing for Irene unless she was going to actually bring something worth her time to the table.

"Nope." Simple. Pointed. Not missing a beat of her rhythm. "I'm good."

"No visitors, I take it?" Irene continued, finding one of her usual favored less-sooty spots to lean against. "Or did you send them off so you could get some work done?"

That was almost an acknowledgement that Irene recognized Amaya liked her space, if you squinted. It wasn't as though she hadn't put together a few pieces earlier this week while being chased out the door. It was also just that Irene's own need for company was superseding anything but acknowledgement at the moment.

You'd probably really have to squint, then, because, as far as Amaya was concerned, in that moment, anything short of just picking up and waltzing right back out the door was hardly an acknowledgement of anything.

Either that, or commissioning a piece on the spot. That would also be acceptable. Giving her work to do was always acceptable.

As it was, though, Amaya just sort of sucked in a breath for a moment and tried to keep her focus on the task at hand, and her answers just concise and serviceable and little else.

"Nope. No visitors."

And she almost....almost!...turned the question back on Irene, but Amaya would like to think, if Irene had visitors, she wouldn't be here taking up one the few non-sooty spots in the workshop, but also, Amaya really didn't want to open up the possibility of Irene taking up one of the few non-sooty spots in the workshop even if she did have visitors, either.

Irene had no intention of leaving -- again, this was the woman who'd basically stalked the only person she'd ever met who could almost match Amaya for stubbornness, in an effort to wear him down into talking to her, too -- but the shortness of these replies was signaling to her, clear and loud, that she had maybe fucked this up a little more than she had thought.

Maybe she needed to get her head out of her arse about the visitors she didn't have this weekend, and focus a little more on the woman who was clearly not having any of her shit right in front of her.

"It was quite disrespectful of me not to clear right out the other day," she offered, watching Amaya and that steely focus for a quiet moment. "I'm sorry, Amaya."

And while she knew that sincerity was, you know, the worst, she still felt that an actual apology might be due here.

And if anything was likely to get that hammer to stop its steady and persistent rhythm, it was something like that, something so wholly unexpected as an apology that Amaya had...no rightful idea how to deal with.

So the hammer stopped, for a moment, and Amaya blinked, and then she flipped the blade over on the anvil onto the other side and continued, as if to cover the pause like a clear and deliberate step in the process of forming the blade.

There were a few more ringing hits before she could even begin to know what to say.

"Well," she finally managed, "it is a comfortable bed, can't really blame you there."

Amaya Blackstone, that mattress was as hard and stubborn as you were, and you knew it.

But what else could she say?

Hey, Irene had half been expecting to be told that the best apology she could give would be to get the hell out again, so....

So that comment was getting a slightly-hesitant smile as she shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, absolutely. I can see why you don't like to share it for too long," she replied, her tone light. "And I was being a bit of a brat on purpose to rile you up, anyway."

Which had been obvious at the time, but she could also own right up to it, too.

Yes, because telling her to leave had worked out so beautifilly the last time!

And, also, that would have meant that, in no uncertain terms, Amaya wanted Irene to leave, instead of....whatever unknown, tumultuous thing it was that she was feeling knotting up in her chest at the moment, instead.

"Yeah, well," Amaya murmured, the next hit just that slight bit harder now, "what else is new?"

Well, there were a lot of new things about it, really. The infringement on what was one of her few strongholds of any sense of privacy around here, the clear and decisive refusal on her part, the evocation of that word...

Well, that word was liable to come up again, since Irene didn't actually realize there'd been any sort of misstep there and she called everyone from her friends to her dog darling on the regular. Something to look forward to!

"It worked," Irene noted, a touch of her usual cheekiness back. "Just a little better than I wanted it to."

Probably because she'd been bratty about vacating what she was coming to realize was something of a sacred haven, actually, and Irene could respect that. (Even if she wanted to spend much more time in that sacred haven, because it seemed like the closest she'd get to actually popping open that bushy head and crawling around inside. But nothing good ever came from taking shortcuts, anyway.)

Oh, no. Darling hadn't been the problem. Darling practically felt like it went with the accent.

Apprentice, however...

Amaya just grunted a little, partly in response to Irene, partly as an acknowledgement that this sword was beaten way off course by now and would absolutely have to go back into the forge to be reset, but she was going to keep hammering at it anyway for now because it was the only thing she really knew how to do right now. She certainly didn't know how to navigate her way through this.

"You're a tough nut to crack, Amaya," Irene told her with an uncharacteristically tired little sigh, popping up to actually perch at her chosen spot (and, likely, earning herself some soot on her backside in return, but she genuinely didn't much care today.) "But I like it."

Again, obviously. And every time she found a new thing that seemed to send up her walls -- apprentice would likely make an interesting discovery at some point, when she realized -- it just made Irene all the more fond of her.

There seemed to have been something distinctly making herself comfortable about that, and Amaya, despite her best judgement, looked up to see that this was exactly what it was, and the hammering halted with a sigh and a lingering look that was really questioning a lot of things in that moment.

(And thinking maybe hermitage really did have some significant benefits over being an active member in a society).

"You know, Irene," she then stated, turning back to the sword, turning away with it toward the forge, and giving it a firm shove back into the heat in an attempt to be able to work out everything she'd messed up with it during that whole encounter, "some nuts can be toxic and are probably better left uncracked."

"Yes, well, I've never had the best sense of self-preservation when it's come to...nuts, anyway," Irene replied without much hesitation (aside from deciding how, exactly, she wanted to strain the metaphor.) "Besides, if anyone here is toxic, it's not you."

And further to the point -- Amaya might argue that she was best left uncracked, but Irene could not help but notice that that was a warning, and not a request to stop trying.

And Amaya was still turned away from Irene to face the forge, giving the sword a little jostle to bury it a bit on the embers, so she couldn't exactly see Amaya's face, but the silence that accompanied it was definitely not a denial of that last point, either.

While waiting for the sword to heat up again, Amaya was left with contemplating the fact that Irene had clearly gone and made herself more comfortable, which meant that the chances of her leaving wasn't very likely. So did she just accept her fate and try to make something of it? Or just go about her business as usual and just hope the other woman realized she had much better things she could be doing?

Ahhhh, zards, what if she really didn't have anything better she could be doing?

Maybe she should start suggesting some new hobbies for Irene to take up...

"No visitors for you, either, huh?" she concluded, pulling the newly glowing sword from the forge and turning it to the anvil to get back to work on correcting the shape of it.

That was kind of the crux of it, wasn't it? Irene certainly did have other things she could be doing -- this would have been a marvelous weekend to jet off to Martha's Vineyard or Paris or some tropical island she'd never been to, and swath herself in treatments and drinks and pretend she wasn't sad about anything, ever. She could have even just stayed cozied up in her own flat, watching trash telly and maybe getting a little day-drunk with her puppy. She could have been doing literally anything else.

But the only thing Irene wanted to do, right now, was to sit on this vaguely-uncomfortable surface and watch Amaya work. It was partly that she didn't want to be alone, and it was partly that she specifically found it comforting to be near Amaya (though she knew much better than to admit that out loud or, frankly, really to herself.)

"No, no visitors for me," Irene agreed, a little more wistful than she'd like. "But I also didn't really expect any, being dead and all."

That was a fib, of course. She always hoped for one.

"A-yup," Amaya said, a little brusquely, though that could have very much just been the exertion from getting that first initial swing of her hammer on the reheated metal going, "I can see how that might put a little bit of a damper on the guestlist."

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Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Saturday [09/24].

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