fandomtownies | Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [12/20].

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Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [12/20].

One of the nice things about not being too strongly affected by Fandom's latest bout of weirdness was that, for once, Amaya's workflow had not been too terribly interrupted by all the nonsense and shenanigans. In fact, it went by so uninterrupted, that she'd managed to get all of her holiday special orders finished and shipped on time, and now all she had was the hope that someone would swing in for either something simple and quick or already made for a few last minute gifts or, even better, completely holiday-unrelated business.

And while one of the worktables was cluttered with a few sketch ideas that really leaned into this whole 'time travel is just a rip in time, and what better to rip time than a sharp blade?' concept of it all, but she was hunched over the anvil today, working on something very delicate, very small, that would probably just be a passing fancy and amount to not much at all, but she was making it anyway, just in case she ended up on a certain side if she ever managed to fall off of that fence she was sitting on.

The Forge is open!

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"Keeping busy I see, though... I would be worried if you were just lazing around in here to be honest," Dwight said as he stood in the doorway and peeked in. "You been doing alright?"

Look, he might not have been around enough to really chat, but after all the insanity and the added weekend oddness, he just wanted to make sure Amaya was alright, ok?

And it was the fact that Dwight really hadn't been around much to chat, and the fact that, if she hadn't been taking his workshop this last semester, she probably wouldn't really see much of him at all that had her glancing up from her work with raised eyebrows...and a swipe of the back of her hand across her forehead to take care of just a little sweat.

"Don't see how I wouldn't be," she said, shrugged her shoulders a little and throwing just a couple more quick hits down on the small blade she was working on. "Whatever that was last week seemed to skip me, for the most part..."

She was, truth be told, a little worried about Graham in all of this; he was, after all, the only reason she even knew something was up at first, and as a fellow Llewdorian, she could definitely understand where his distress had stemmed from.

Blade to a point where she felt she could pause, she stopped enough to straighten up from the anvil and give Dwight a pointed look as she said, "Have you been doing alright?"

Track records, in her opinion, definitely showed that he typically had a bit more trouble with that kind of question than she usually did.

"Escaped with just some mild ~~handwaved~~ nemesis issues. Nothing permanently disabling. Annoying more than anything and a reminder of why I left Haven in the first place."

Dwight gave a small shrug. "Didn't feel quite like myself the whole weekend either, so it was good getting back to things as they should be. Mail coming in lately hasn't been the greatest news but is what it is. See how things go once the insanity of the holidays are done."

Cuz things were quite chaotic right now - even by Fandom standards.

"Well," said Amaya, after a moment of considering Dwight and that answer and how it seemed to leave all sorts of little things left intentionally open to go poking at, when he should know she was the last person to go sticking her nose into anything like that... "At least you won't have to wait too much longer there. We're pretty much in the home stretch now."

Then, a reluctant sigh. "Sorry 'bout your bad news, though," she said, figuring she could compromise by at least acknowledging some of those conversational tidbits. "But good to hear you're feeling yourself again. Those types of weekends are easily some of the worst ones."

Speaking very much from personal experience!

"Thanks. Seems like even though the old man didn't make an appearance over the weekend, he's still managing to meddle and mess things up for me with the adoption plans. But what can ya do? Just gotta see what happens and roll with the punches, right?"

That was how he had handled most things. To varying degrees of success, but it was the one way he knew really. And he had managed through things before, he would figure it out again.

"Grit and determination and all that stuff" he said with a somewhat forced smile.

"That's always been my motto, anyway," said Amaya, who apparently didn't need to go poking at anything after all. Dwight clearly came to talk at someone, although why he thought she made for a better option than, say, a brick wall was beyond her.

Well, she had theories, but she didn't want to think on those.

"If you don't at first succeed," she waved a dismissive hand, "blah, blah, you know the rest."

Probably because all he had had to talk to were brick walls lately. But, Yeah that sounded about right and was about the reaction Dwight had expected all things considered.

"Yeah. Sounds about right. Glad to see you are back to business as normal" he said with a glance around the forge. "Got all the holiday orders finished and sent out?"

Edited 2022-12-20 19:44 (UTC)

She supposed at least she could respond back, then. If the brick walls offered their two cents, then you might have a few other problems on your hands, really.

Amaya followed Dwight's eyes as he looked around and then they settled back on him with a nod. "Pretty much all clear, unless I get any last-minute shoppers trying to cram something in and being surprised that I actually can't get them a highly detailed custom sword ready by Saturday. The metal wreaths weren't as big as a hit as I thought they might be, so, hey, if you know anyone who could appreciate a wreath made out of metal, I can cut you a deal. Holidays been good to you, too? Business wise?"

See, now, business stuff, that she felt she had a bit more to say about. Business stuff was a bit less likely to take an awkward turn...

"Yeah been busy but I think the worst is over. At least for the custom pieces... might get some last-minute orders online to mail out in the next day or two" Dwight said with a nod. "Which is part of why I stopped by, other than to see how things were going. Wanted to see if you needed any more wood pieces. If not I can easily keep them on hand for stuff, but figured see if they would be of any use to you."

"Well, you know me," said Amaya with a little shrug. "I'll definitely put any spare wood to good use if you've got it, but no need to make any extra trouble getting it to me unless you need to clear up the space. Don't really have anything at the moment, but, if anything, spare quivers of arrows are never a terrible thing to have around, and all those axeheads have to have handles eventually, too."

Dwight nodded. "Sure, I'll see whats left after the holidays and what doesn't get used in any projects I come up with. Can bring over what I got at some point once things have calmed down a bit." Or as calm as they ever got on the island and for Amaya.

"When you hit that point where you catch yourself thinking, 'you know what? I'm a bit bored, I sure wish something exciting would happen,'" Amaya offered with a faint grin, "that's when you know things have calmed down. We're almost in the clear, though. Start of the new year tends to be nice and quiet...at least until everyone gets settled into their new schedules and whatnot."

When Irene ducked into the forge today, it was in the wake of a tiny snow angel, leaving powdered sugar all over the floor (and Irene's heeled boots, naturally, which she did not enjoy.)

"I'm quite ready for Christmas," she sighed, eyeing the little beastie and stamping her feet a bit in an effort to dust off the sugar. "It's all more annoying by the day, I swear."

Yeah, thankfully, anything made of snow (or was it powdered sugar, actually? The nature of the beasts were a little bit technically confusing) wasn't going to last too long in the heat of the forge. Not without a little magical enhancement, probably, anyway. So far, most of them had been avoiding it, it seemed, just to be on the safe side.

"Almost there," Amaya assured her, with the faint, amused grin of someone whose absolute least favorite part about December had come and gone, and, unless the island decided to be a real jerk about it, wasn't going to be a concern again until next year. "And then we're back to long stretches of almost being bored between random little nuisances."

She then considered the small blade she was working, giving a few more swings of her hammer to the edge, followed by a small sigh and a shift over her attention on her visitor with a nod.

"Irene."

"Amaya," Irene replied in a fairly good mimicry of Amaya's cadence, and returned the nod before quirking a smile. "What're you working on? Time machine add-on for Missus Crumbler?"

She would not be the least bit surprised, even if she was fairly certain even from here that that looked more like a knife than anything time-machiney.

"Nah, that's..." Amaya gave a gesture toward to the paper-cluttered worktable, "...slightly delayed for some attempts at a more...compact sort of time machine....weapon apparatus..."

And she wouldn't call it so much a work-in-progress as she would a work-in-halting-lurches. So her gesture then moved toward the small blade that she held up a little. "This," she said, "is nothing, really."

Or it might be. She hadn't decided yet.

"Just a knife. Possibly for a switchblade. Nothing too thrilling there, just scratching an itch in my brain, really."

"Ooooh, switchblade sounds fun," Irene noted, winding her way over to lean on something and observe closer. "And probably a hair less complicated than adding a time machine weapon apparatus to anything."

Just a hair.

"I'm still impressed that came together as quick as it did, last week."

"Even better," said Amaya with a snort, "maybe I'll figure it out soon enough to make it a switchblade that could switch time."

This whole concept of time weapons had really did a number on her focus right now.

"But, well, it's not really all that surprising," she noted. "Gathering of minds like that, all those different experiences with various technologies and science and what have you, matched with a healthy dose of technical skill, with a singular focus on a goal? I'm more fascinated that time machines haven't been a more frequent thing around here, what it so many people practically from different times already. But I guess when you've got portals to most places and times, it's not really something on most people's minds."

"Why make it from scratch when you can just book a portal to your destination?" Irene agreed thoughtfully. "Though then that's where the -- well, turning it into a weapon bit might come in. Specializing within the scope of the invention itself. And I suppose it's one of those things you'd want to be doubly and triply sure you had correct, lest you end up amongst the dinosaurs with no way to return home."

"On the bright side," Amaya pointed out, with the cheeriness of a concept that could clearly basically market itself, "if you did, at least you'd still have a weapon.

"The idea," she added, "is more along the lines of sending the person you're poking with the pointy bit back amongst the dinosaurs."

"Or perhaps at least somewhere in the past, away from you," Irene offered, pondering this because that really was quite a good idea -- she'd been envisioning using smaller jumps in time to avoid being struck during a fight, or maybe rewinding time to replay an action with a touch more finesse. "Speaking from experience, it's probably less advantageous to send one's enemies into the future."

After all, here she was with a much better mobile phone and many more resources than she'd had access to back in London. And even Irene, isolated as she was from anyone who'd known her in a past life, couldn't always resist taking advantage of those factors in a -- well, morally grayish sort of way.

"That's how you get people marching back with things like electricity, too," said Amaya, with a snort, going maybe a bit further back, because, well....she still had her pipe dreams of doing exactly that in Daventry....as well as literal pipe dreams, what with indoor plumbing to add to the mix.

"Or sports almanacs, so they can place bets on events in which they already know the outcome," observed Irene, who was basically just a better-styled Biff Tannen at times anyway, let's be honest. "Though I might not object so much to that one myself."

Should she ever find herself back in the early 2010s once more, she'd certainly be happy to have the insider information she'd gleaned from being a decade in the future for several years already.

"Too bad Edison never figured out how to steal a time machine," said Amaya, feeling stupidly proud for this callback, thank you very much, "otherwise, just imagine what he could have come up with 'first'!"

That observation drew a sincere, surprised laugh out of Irene (so all that pride in the callback was so deserved.) "We could have so many other inventions to thank that man for!" she agreed. "Ten thousand wrong ways to create the combustion engine, ten thousand wrong ways to settle the matter of indoor plumbing -- the list goes on."

Probably only limited by this theoretical Thomas Edison's ego, really.

"I don't even think I'd want to know even one of the ways the matter of indoor plumbing could go wrong," Amaya noted, the laugh doing absolutely nothing but bolstering that proud little lift of her chin and giving her more fuel for her grin. "And I would say maybe he already did steal time travel somehow and we just haven't heard about it, but, from what I can gather, if he did, we'd definitely know about it."

"Oh, no, he'd have put his face on bloody Mount Rushmore if he'd been given the chance, from what I understand," Irene agreed. "We'd have statues to Edison's brilliance the world over if he'd had access to a time machine, probably."

As it was, his house had been moved to a Detroit suburb as a weird sort of museum thing, and he'd probably love that.

"'Course, it's also possible that he did steal time travel, and got himself stuck with the dinosaurs," she added, thoughtful.

"You know what?" Amaya added, just as thoughtfully. "That does sound like just the sort of thing that would happen, too, wouldn't it, especially if you were just stealing it rather than going about and doing all the hard work yourself. I can't say I rightly know how the man actually went out, but, from now on, I think that's what I'm going to choose to believe happened."

"Rod Serling would be proud of the irony," Irene agreed. "Much better than to think that he just retired asleep on his millions he made off lightbulbs, or however it is he went out."

Irene would totally steal a time machine if she had an opportunity, for the record.

"Any big plans for the weekend?" she added, carefully casual. "I've got a boring king to watch on the telly this year for Christmas, it's quite the change."

The wrinkling of Amaya's nose at the word king perfectly matched the tone Irene had given it, although for contextual different reasons, no doubt.

"Nothing as exciting as all that," she said, with a shake of her head and a bit of gratitude that royalty where she came from didn't have access to televisions, "I can tell you that much."

She actually didn't have...any plans, really, but mentioning that outright to Irene was about the equivalent of slathering yourself in honey before traipsing on through a bear's den.

But, also, Irene was the type to put her foot right in the door if you left it even a little open, too.

"Probably just take it easy, finish up some bits and pieces here and there, especially after the weekend we've just had."

"Give me a ring if you're bored, then, or if you need help," Irene offered lightly, indeed looking for a crack in the door there where she might shove her adorable little foot. "Or if you'd like to see a personified receding hairline give an abysmal address while drinking spiked eggnog. I don't even know how to start a drinking game when it comes to Charles. At least old Liz had cute dogs."

And at least the up-and-coming next king had a particularly attractive wife -- not that Irene knew or cared about that at all.

"And you really know how to sell the appeal of it, too!" Amaya remarked, a little bit impressed at how that almost twinged on a small spark of pity (and maybe even the start of curiosity) to inspire her to maybe take Irene up on that. "Is it really that big of a deal, this Christmas address?"

"Yes and no," Irene answered honestly, giving it some thought. (Anyone else, and she would have probably blown it off flippantly, but -- she actually wanted to give Amaya a real answer, here. Best not to look too closely at why that might be the case, of course. "No, in that I'm sure there's loads of people who've ignored the Queen their whole lives and they're not about to start now just because her son's replaced her. But yes, because it's a tradition, and to me, as much a part of Christmas as the tree and the presents. Makes me feel like I'm home."

A pause, because that was dangerously sentimental, and she added, "I might bust out some Christmas crackers, too. Jon wouldn't let me bring them over to his, last year, but I love them."

There. Sentiment crisis averted.

"Well," said Amaya, after a moment, feeling that awkward discomfort creeping into her as it always did when anything veered even remotely sentimental-adjacent, and she didn't really know what to say. Usually, she probably wouldn't worry about that, either, but, well, with Irene...

"A willing sacrifice, then," she noted, with an approving nod, as if making it out to be some bold and noble undertaking. "Taking one for the home team, so to speak."

But, more importantly:

"....what's Jon got against crackers, anyway?"

Should she be warning a certain hometown knight-hopeful?

And Irene, for her part, had somewhat caught onto the fact that Amaya did not handle emotional things well at all -- but that didn't necessarily mean they were just coldly dismissed, either.

Irene's favorite blacksmith remained her favorite puzzle, and every time she figured out a piece, it was one of the most rewarding things ever.

"Not like crackers you'd put cheese on," Irene clarified. "They're these obnoxious popping things you pull on Christmas and inside is a paper crown or a little toy or some other little reward. They're for kids, mostly."

She even helpfully drew her hands together and pulled them apart, miming a tiny explosion between them (and maybe overselling the explosiveness of crackers a tad in the process.)

Now, why would Irene have gone and done a thing like that? Surely, it had nothing to do with the way such an exaggeration on explosiveness instantly snagged Amaya's attention and refused to let go.

"Really?"

Also, kudos, British parents, for giving children small explode-y things. She felt she could chalk that up as another point for 'knives are perfectly acceptable toys for children'.

"What is it that makes them pop?"

"Chemistry," Irene offered, grinning at Amaya and clearly fairly pleased that she actually knew the answer, too. (And yes fine it was not much of an explosion, but it did make a nice bright crack when you did it right! Maybe that would be enough to be persuasive?) "There's a little strip of treated paper inside that pops when you pull at it. 'Less you get a dud, but then that's just an excuse to grab another one."

Amaya was going to be so disappointed when she saw one of these things in action.

"....huh."

Until she was thoroughly the distracted by its innards, anyway.

Which she was already starting to do inside her head right now, if that thoughtful roll of her eyes to the side was anything to go by.

"You can take one apart," Irene offered, knowing that look fairly well and sounding a little fond. "Probably end up improving upon the design, honestly, knowing you."

Hard not to, really, given how disappointing these crackers indeed would be.

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Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [12/20].

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