Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [08/15].

[special_rabbit]

As per usual, Amaya's work that day (since there was a distinct lack of other projects on her roster right now, ahem) was taking a cue from what they'd gone over in class yesterday: twisting metal, but taking it that slight bit further with twisting it, then pressing it, so that the twists separated themselves to make a little bit of a twirled metal cage sort of thing. Which was great for both cabinet handles and staff-toppers! In fact, she'd just realized that slipping a nice shiny piece of materia into the twist was a good, easy way to make that staff actually imbued with the elemental power of whichever materia you were using, which could be pretty big on the hack magician circuit.

Which, you know, included most magicians, but anyway.

The Forge is open!

Comments

[begmetwice]

"Didn't you get enough of that yesterday?" Irene wondered in a light, teasing voice when she turned up this morning, setting aside a(n iced) coffee, straw carefully laid atop it, for Amaya with her usual lack of fanfare as she herself sipped on a tea.

If you knew to look for it, there was the slightest absence of Irene's usual pep to her step; a certain...subdued, slightly-pale quality that had been there since she'd hauled herself into class yesterday. But she was putting on a pretty good show through it, she thought, and she certainly wasn't about to discuss her recent whereabouts with anyone voluntarily.

[special_rabbit]

"Nope!" Amaya answered, brightly, almost cheerfully, as her next turn and twist became just a little bit more performative in light of now having a (particular) audience. She made sure the twist was good and tight before moving to finish it up, releasing it from the vice, and, only when the piece had been quenched in the bucket, did she offer over a nod and the customary, "Irene."

After her eyes had very briefly flicked over to the most likely spot for coffee deposit to confirm.

[begmetwice]

That eye flick was clocked, catalogued, and already planting a reminder in Irene's brain to put the coffee somewhere else next time. The last thing she ever wanted to be was predictable.

(Though she might be able to make peace with the idea of eventually being reliable. That was different, and something nicer, wasn't it?)

She hissed appreciatively at the quench before gracing Amaya with a bright smile, the likes of which she had not managed to offer out at anything (save Clementine or a particularly life-giving box of cream crackers) in about a week. "Amaya. That looks pretty."

She meant the piece, of course, but she could also have well meant the blacksmith herself. Flirting could not fall to the wayside simply because one had lost a stone the hard way over the past week.

[special_rabbit]

Amaya shrugged a little. "Haven't even gotten to the fancying it up part yet," she said. Not modesty, just facts, and this particular one would likely just stay right where it was since it wasn't going to get the attention it would need when it was needed with a visit, but that was fine. That was a possibility that was already accounted for an accepted.

But with that out of the way now, she did tilt her head a little thoughtfully at Irene for a moment, before putting her attention to the coffee and the trick of managing unwrapping a straw with gloves on.

[begmetwice]

Irene's lower lip caught in her teeth as she watched that...trick, before a soft laugh escaped despite herself.

"Darling, let me," she offered, actually crossing over and making a little grabby gesture towards the straw. "Much though I think I could watch you try to do that with gloves on all day, I did set you up for failure there a bit, didn't I?"

Adorable. Must not let on that it was adorable -- she was doing a poor job of that, but she was trying -- but adorable nonetheless.

Free

[special_rabbit]

"Well, you don't have to hlgo and put it like that," said Amaya, a bit witheringly, a bit disparagingly, with the objection that the word failure could be attributed to her for such a simple task, and was tempted to stubbornly insist that she could manage just fine without the help, thank you very much.

But, well...then Irene was there, and Amaya was thinking about how these visits, lately, had been a bit sparse, and she'd been worried wondering if things had moved on into that inevitable march toward indifference or even disappearance, and so she was handing the straw over before she'd even caught up with her own thought process.

"S'pose I could've just taken 'em off," she murmured.

But then what if there was a sudden bout of blacksmithing that needed doing immediately??

Re: Free

[begmetwice]

It was a safety concern!

And besides, Irene had long learned that these visits -- sporadic as general summertime laziness, activities, and, perhaps, the occasional spot of illness might have made them recently -- generally followed a certain dance, and one of the steps therein was always pretending that Amaya might need to return to her project at any second.

"For frustration, then," Irene amended with an affectionate, amused lift of a brow as she undid the straw with a little flourish before passing it over and immediately, unconsciously, winding the wrapper around one finger to make a little ring. "You would've gotten it eventually." If, perhaps, glovelessly in the end. "Soon enough we'll be out of this bloody heat and back on the strawless stuff, anyway, god willing."

Or else Irene really might have to consider, like, an extended holiday to the Arctic.

Re: Free

[special_rabbit]

"Oh, I've never really minded the heat much," Amaya stated, pointedly plucking the straw now down into the drink as if to prove she could still manage one aspect of this without assistance, thank you.

Well, two, once she started drinking it.

"'Course," she added, "I am a bit more used to it than most."

She hung out all day in here that sometimes made the heat outside seem like amateur hour. On purpose.

Though she'd admit that the cold weather did bring in a better chance of people popping in just for the warmth, really.