Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [04/18].

[special_rabbit]

Amaya had been through more that enough of these weekends to know how things typically went once it was all over and the kids had cleared out and she would stubbornly spend the following week pretending like it hadn't happened at all. Tidying up the shop and finding all the little pieces and things Zephyr had worked on (those were some very cunning new helmets, for the lobsters, there, that Amaya was pretty impressed she'd even had time for), trying to ignore how nice it was to have that second anvil in good use again while deftly avoiding any acknowledgement of the word apprentice, and wondering just what to do about the small pile of interesting rocks that had been collected over the past few days over on the counter.

(Ignore them, mostly. Maybe find them homes in some of the pots around the greenhouse. She was trying to lean into that notion rather than the other, far more ridiculous one, that popped into her head about just getting a nice jar to put them in...)

But mostly, she was just intent on setting things back in order around the shop, and hoping that getting back to working on Margo's hammer meant not having to think about anything too much if she could help it.

Especially not the fact that she had been through more than enough of these weekends, and there was a particular trend of things tending to go, well...there seemed to be patterns, in how these things went, that's all she was willing to say even to herself, about any of that.

The Forge is open!

Comments

[begmetwice]

If you didn't know Irene well, you probably wouldn't notice anything amiss today. But she was dressed casually when she wandered into the forge today, and absent were her usual trilling greetings and confident sashaying.

She wasn't exactly sad Gareth had returned to his actual parents; she'd been through enough of these to know that he would, and she didn't even mind admitting to herself, by the end of the weekend, that she quite liked the sweet little monster a lot. Really, the thing that was weighing on her was that she'd been rather expecting a different little boy, and the fact that he hadn't turned up almost felt like something of a sign, in a long string of them.

That, and how much Gareth had made her think about the circumstances of his existence, too. (Like, literally, she still didn't know how that worked, but also less...literally.)

"'Lo, Amaya," she called as she wandered in. "What're we working on today?"

Of course she noticed the interesting rocks on the counter straight away, and that they hadn't been cleared out already did a funny thing to her chest.

[special_rabbit]

On the one hand, there was at least one question in the large pile of them that Amaya had that could be marked as answered now, whether or not Irene would be by today. On the other hand, Amaya had been far less prepared for the instance where there the answer was yes than she was if it had been no.

"Irene," she greeted back, with a stout nod, as she kept hammer just a little longer to get the shape of the big chunk of metal she was working on down a little bit more "S'a hammer. For Margo. She's been looking for something a little less slice-y and a lot more smash-y."

Technical terms, of course.

[begmetwice]

You could also consider it another sort of sign how Irene had fairly recently abandoned her tendency to go off and self-isolate when she was feeling melancholy or...off.

Not that she would admit she felt any kind of way about anything, of course.

"See, statements like that are why it's a good idea to stay on Margo's good side," Irene commented lightly, moving over so she could see the hammer a little better. "I'd hate to be on the receiving end of 'smashy.'"

[special_rabbit]

"I'd say there's a lot of good reasons to stay on Margo's good side," Amaya noted, between a few more hammer swings and a moment to inspect the drawing of the metal, before giving it a little flip and knocking a few lumps out of the other side, "but, at least with this one, you'll probably have a good few weeks after she gets it in her hands officially for a grace period, unless she's been hitting the gym these days."

There did seem to be a lot of that going around!

She grinned faintly. "Been learning the hard way that swinging a hammer's not quite as easy as some of us make it look, really!"

[begmetwice]

"She'd be a good candidate for your class this summer, if I thought Margo wasn't thoroughly done with school as a concept," Irene mused, inclining her head in a little agreement that unless she'd been working on her upper arm strength, that hammer was probably going to take some getting used to. "Has she tried with one like this that you've seen already?"

Because that sounded sort of funny, actually.

[special_rabbit]

Amaya nodded. "Came in the last week to ask after it," she confirmed, "so I had her try out a few from the wall to get an idea of what she's looking for and how that matches up to what might actually be useful for her. And, hopefully..." She paused her work to hold up the hammer-in-progress again to inspect it, with maybe a touch of a frown. It was shaping up well enough that this would be a good place to give it a rest for a while, but the comfort of having something else to distinctly distract her right now was too good to just abandon. So she turned around from the anvil a little to pop it back into the forge to get a little heat back to do a little more fine tuning. "This'll meet us somewhere in the middle of both."

[begmetwice]

"Weapon's only as good as your ability to actually lift it," Irene agreed watching that anvil-to-forge maneuver with a faint smile.

A year and change into this, and she knew a willful lean into a distraction when she saw one.

"Zephyr get anything done for you over the weekend?" she asked, figuring Zephyr was safer ground than any adorable little prospective geologists (who also wanted to be knights, astronauts, or dinosaurs.)

[special_rabbit]

Zephyr certainly was a safe, stable constant with the comfortable caveat of having some absurd, potentially even fictional father that Amaya, most importantly of all, didn't have to face in the days following the whole messy event. Amaya frowned at the forge, waiting for the metal, and closed her eyes, just a moment, to just focus on the familiar, also comforting feel of the heat wafting up to her face.

"Took care of a few lingering swords that had been hanging around on the wayside," she said. "Managed to knock out some cunning new helms for the lobsters, too, I suspect that's where most of her time and energy went to. Solid work, too, but that's hardly surprising, considering where she got it from."

[begmetwice]

"How many times has she come to visit you now?" Irene wondered, drifting lightly towards the counter. Not to look at the rocks, don't be silly. "Sounds like she's been quite the institution of these weekends."

[special_rabbit]

"Four times, maybe?" said Amaya, frown going just a little deeper, but the metal should be heated enough that she tugged it out from the furnace and turned back to the anvil to get those first crucial blows before the cooling started. "Five? I've lost track, to be honest, but I'm pretty sure it's been every once of these since I got here."

A number she also tried not to think about too much, because oof.

[begmetwice]

"Is she a little bit older each time?" Irene wondered, watching Amaya work even as she idly started poking around the rocks to look at them individually. "Hamish was always six, the three years I've seen him. This would have been four. The consistency is a little bit nice, I'll admit."

Which was an oblique, easily-ignored way of acknowledging the wee little curveball they'd been thrown.

[special_rabbit]

Amaya's hammer stopped, a slight hitch in the otherwise steady rhythm, when she realized where Irene had wandered over to and what her hands had likely gotten into over there, which just meant it happened slightly earlier than it would have when Hamish got mentioned just a second later. Brief, barely a bresth's worth, but enough that it took her a few more pounds to get back into the steadier swing of things, and to reply.

"She's a bit older," she said, "about a year, each time. I suspect she'll age out of it before long, maybe even by next time, if she gets that knight position she's been shooting for now..."

The next stop was significantly more deliberate, a hit at an angle to get the edge to curve up sharply, before going and dropping in the quench with that near-punctuation of a sizzle.

"All the others, though,' she said, shaking off the oil like they were implications, "they always come and go."

She grabbed a rag, to start wiping off what the shake hadn't dislodged.

"Didn't know," she added, casual as could be, really, "Hamish was a repeat, too."

Was, she felt fairly certain, was the right word, too; she was sure she'd have been treated to a bit of a babble about a brother if there'd been one skulking around somewhere...

[begmetwice]

"He was," Irene shared, and look at that -- two could play this oh-so-distracted game, as she appeared to give her whole attention to sorting these rocks casually. "Though unlike you and Zephyr, I know his father. Hamish's dad is the reason I'm here."

In so, so, so many ways. He'd literally placed her here -- but she also never would have needed to find a place to hide out without his interference.

"But it must be nice having an older one around," she added, still a little over-casual. "I seem to be doomed to receive visits from little creche-dwellers and primary schoolers."

The thing was -- she felt like she should mind that much more than she ever ultimately did. Her tiny little boys, both of them, were much more charming than she would have ever given a small child credit for. (And it helped that she saw not only herself in Gareth, but Amaya even more.)

[special_rabbit]

And part of Amaya wanted to ask more, and another part of her wanted to run as far away from asking as humanly possible, while another part of her focused on just figuring out what to do with the first stages of a hammer she'd quenched a bit early because she was worried, at this rate, if she didn't, she'd end up pounding it put of shape beyond repair.

"I'll admit," she said, "she's been quite the handy one to have around. All the other ones," said as dismissively as she could possibly manage, just toss another on the long list of clearly inconsequential sproglings that didn't just show up to cause a fuss and throw so many wrenches in the gears of otherwise smoothly running machinery!, "have been pretty wee little things, but you see how she was with Gareth, much more a natural hand at it than I'll ever be. Must get that from her father."

Insert derisive snort here.

"Whoever in the blazes he even is."

[begmetwice]

"Whisper," Irene told her, with as much dramatic, scolding flair as she could muster. "Obviously! Which is a very silly name for a knight, I must say."

But what did she know? The knights she knew were named things like Elton. (Or, well, Reginald, but no one needed to split hairs about that man's given name.)

"Though," she added, idly pulling one rock up to examine it, "Hamish's father's name is Sherlock, so glass houses and all that." Between that and Mycroft, Irene was certain that Mr. and Mrs. Holmes must have utterly despised their children from the start. "And I didn't think you were particularly bad with Gareth."

Irene had, probably accurately, attributed most of Amaya's reaction to him to his parentage, rather than his adorable little person itself.

[special_rabbit]

"Whisper," Amaya repeated, not with a dramatic flair, but a dramatic groan, and an eyeroll to go with it, "is a silly name for anyone."

Even worse, knowing it was probably an an acronym like Zephyr's name, too!

Then her irritated bristling seemed to simmer down a little, as her eyes now drifted over to Irene, purposefully, for probably the first time so far during this particular visit.

"Pretty sure you did most of the heavy lifting on that one, though," she pointed out.

As was also how there things typical went. Much easier to deal with a child whose other parent you didn't even have to look in the eye.

[begmetwice]

Irene met her gaze with a tiny, almost reassuring smile. There were a lot of things that still mystified her about Amaya -- and she liked it that way, because she worried a bit for the day she actually felt like she'd completed this particular puzzle, and what that might mean -- but this staunch tendency to ignore things that made her uncomfortable was not one of them.

Nor was it something Irene particularly faulted her for, either.

"Little ones are easy," she replied with a shrug. "Or, well, not really, but I always thought I'd make a marvelous auntie to someone's child. The trick is just keeping them from crying, and I was worried the whole time we wouldn't make it out of the woods on that count."

He was just so little. They all found reasons to cry when that little, whether it was a skinned knee or a hurt feeling or that something was the wrong color for their tiny preferences.

[special_rabbit]

And a smile that tiny had absolutely no business doing so much to Amaya's chest just then, and it was enough to almost make her want to turn around and thrust the would-be hammer right back into the forge again. But she didn't, holding firm, almost defiantly, and not just because another reforging so quickly could be potentially disastrous for the integrity of the iron.

"Not much of a worry there, I should say," Amaya remarked, and, had she more self awareness, she might have tried to pull down that lifted chin of hers a bit. "Not if he was any sort of true Blackstone, at any rate."

Valiantly ignoring that Irene had met a quite younger, bespectacled, and honestly quite a bit wibbly Amaya at some point, of course.

[begmetwice]

"We Adlers are weepier stock, I'm afraid," Irene told her, having to bite her lip a bit at that chin-lift. "Or, rather -- my own childhood playbook involved a bit of...strategy there."

Irene had absolutely been a child who cried in the face of being told no, and had often managed to change her parents' minds using that particular tool in her arsenal. Little wonder she'd grown up knowing how to get exactly what she wanted out of most people.

"Besides," she added in agreement with the narrative, her smile taking on a fond, slightly-teasing slant, "I seem to recall a much...shyer Blackstone I met once. Suppose we should be glad he got my eyesight, yeah?"

[special_rabbit]

"Well, it wasn't like I was born with bad eyesight!" Amaya objected.

It was all the books, late at night, by candlelight, that did it! Bit hard to pull of a torch under a blanket when that torch was actually a torch and not a flashlight!

"It could still be an issue, down the road."

For this hypothetical, improbable, unlikely, impossible child that very likely did not actually exist, nor would he, whose theoretical eyesight she was suddenly feeling strongly defensive about.

[begmetwice]

"Then he will look adorable in spectacles," Irene told her easily. "Like his mom."

Never in her life had Irene pronounced an Americanized O sound as deliberately as she did there, lest there be any mishearing it as mum.

[special_rabbit]

Amaya could feel the distinct sort of headache that came along with thinking about things like this a bit too much, building behind her temples, in a way that felt like a warning. The smart thing to do would be to see that the bridge ahead was out and the road plunged into a cliff that was going to be a hell of an ordeal to scramble out of, and yet there she was, keeping the path all the same...

"Designer ones, too, no doubt," she said. "Far too expensive for something I'll be liable to have to fix up every other week or so."

Which was not some sentimental sort of speculation on the state of some amorphous and clearly absurd idea of them having a child between the two of them, thank you, just your standard dig at the egregious ways in which Irene was far too willing to empty her wallet.

[begmetwice]

"Do you not think our child deserves the very nicest things?" Irene countered, perhaps banking on the power a phrase like our child might wield. (Maybe that banking was a little based on the effect that it had on her.) "Though now I'm picturing the little darling in a pair of Oakleys or Ray-Bans with a little strap going 'round the back. What a fashion statement."

She could not have sounded more fond if she'd tried.