Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Saturday [04/15].

[special_rabbit]

Well. Last night was prom, and Amaya had been on this island for a while now, so waking up to hear the sounds of hammering from downstairs that weren't her own hardly came as any surprise. Just a groan to herself for having forgotten and a wash of relief when, after she'd taken her time in getting coffee and maybe a little breakfast, she'd gone downstairs and only found the one child there, only after all these years, she really wasn't much of a child any more.

"Put that down, Zeph," she instructed when she'd noticed what piece in particular the girl was inspecting. "That's a new hammer project I don't need you messing up."

"I wouldn't mess it up, Mother," Zephyr insisted, giving Amaya a withering look and a shake of her very blonde head. "I was just thinking that, for a hammer, it seems kind of...dinky."

"Well," said Amaya, going over to pluck the hammer-in-progress out of Zephyr's hand and slipping a regular smithing hammer in its place instead, "so's the person it's for. Physically, I mean, but believe you me, she makes up for it in personality. But since you're here...I've got some new plate that could use some shaping and some chainmail I've been meaning to link, and, if I remember right, it's in the armor that you really shine."

Her eyes certainly lit up at the prospect, anyway, and it wasn't any surprise, really, you take a Blackstone daughter and give her some work, and she's happy as a clam hammering away and filling Amaya in on what she'd been up to since last year while Amaya drank her coffee and watched the door with a sense of dread in her stomach, trying to keep an ear out for the pitter-patter of any other little feet...

The Forge is open!

Comments

[crumble_and_shine]

"Well, you can be!" said Zephyr, laughing at the little boy's enthusiasm, but she liked to see that in a fellow potential knight and half-sibling. "You just have to train hard and be brave and bold and clever and strong, and work really, really hard! Then one day, you'll be a knight, too! I'm going to follow in my father's footsteps and be the best knight Daventry has ever seen!

"And that's right, ma'am," she said, turning her attention now to Irene with a proud little nod. "After my next birthday, I'll finally be old enough to participate in the Tournament of Knights! I'll be the same age that King Graham himself was, when he became a knight! Did you know that he actually beat my father? If you ask him about it, he'll come up with a million excuses. He had a hangnail. The sun was in his eyes. Someone used dairy milk instead of almond milk in his latte that morning. But I've seen the records. King Graham beat him, fair and square!"

[wee_little_crumbler]

"Did this King Graham beat your father when he was your age?" Irene wondered, impressed. "Or your near-age, anyway. Because that does sound like quite a feat, regardless, but I'd be extra-impressed if he was new to knighting at the time."

"How old are you?" Gareth asked, vaguely suspicious, suddenly, of how old one must be to take up knighting. "I'm four. Almost five!"

He helpfully held up four fingers, just in case Zephyr needed a reference.

"How many days until my birthday, Mother?" he demanded, since she normally was able t help with that question at home.

Irene blew out a breath before...deciding to lie to a child. "Ninety-four," she said, nodding.

She truly had no idea. Sorry, Gareth's real Mom and Mother.

[crumble_and_shine]

"Ohhhh," Zephyr grinned down at Gareth, "that's a pretty good age, but you've still got a lot of years still before you can be a knight, then! I'm sixteen, almost seventeen, that means I'm so old I can't even show you how old with just my two hands! So that's how old you have to be, to compete in the Tournament of Knights."

Her smiled then shifted back over to Irene, and she was clearly enjoying getting to bounce between the two focus points of conversation. "And, yes, that's how old King Graham was when he beat my father. It was his first Tournament and everything! So when he became King, everyone was talking about how it was destiny and fate and all those sorts of things. He went up against a lot of formidable knights, too! My father, Sir Acorn, who now runs the craft shop in town that used to the Hobblepot's apothecary. One of the knights, by the name of Achaka, actually perished when attempting to snag the eye off of the dragon that used to live in the caves beneath the realm; there's a shrine to him now, to always honor his bravery and sacrifice; he was a true hero! And there was another one by the name of Manny, but he disappeared after the tournament, so ashamed he was by how King Graham bested him that they never heard from him again! Although, of course, that's just what the stories say, anyway. Obviously, this happened well before I was even born! And I mostly hear the stories from my father, which, as Mother says, means I need to take them all with the world's biggest grain of salt."