Crickets chirp outside as Hineni lays in bed, laying on his side and facing away towards the wall. Obscura lays behind him, also on her side, but she faces the other way and the two of them sleep back to back. Honestly, with him having never had a grip on social situations of any kind at least, he has no idea what’s ‘normal’ in this situation and what isn’t.

The boundaries between the actions appropriate for people to take in their circumstances are vague and undefined as far as he can understand the situation. They’ve been intimate with each other several times now, but walking and holding hands is still a bit too much for Obscura. Hineni meanwhile often finds himself awkwardly standing there, not sure what to do with his hands when they hug. It’s an odd gesture that he doesn’t really know how to respond to, except to lift his arms and then feel like he’s either squeezing her too hard or not hard enough. There’s always something still missing from the formula, somewhere.

Hineni lets out a quiet breath. It’s the middle of the night. Why is he worrying about weird, random, dumb stuff like this again? Isn’t he over all of this already? The man rolls around, taking the initiative and simply wrapping his arm over her, before pulling the blanket up higher, pressing his face against the back of her head. He wonders, if this is what ‘normal’ people always live like?

Imagine what life must be like, if you grow up in an environment where this kind of touch, this kind of warmth is a constant given. It’s just there. It’s expected as much as the sun rising in the morning. It must be a strange way to grow up, right?

Then again, he can’t say that he wouldn’t choose it either. He doesn’t remember much honestly from the period of his life, between the incident and his return back home. It’s all kind of a jumble. It feels like he was in a half-dazed state for the entire time, just wandering through life like a dead-eyed zombie.

Obscura stirs, rolling her head around to look back at him from the corner of her eye. She turns her head back forward, before scooting back tighter against him and tugging on his slung-over arm, wedging it between herself and the sheets so that he can’t escape.

Hineni closes his eyes and accepts his fate as he falls back to sleep.

It’s not so bad, really.

“This kind of water damage?” asks the man, looking around the house. He presses a foot down onto one of the floorboards. The old wood lets out a loud creak in protest. After the last flood, they had tried to dry it all out as best as they could together with the help of Obscura’s wind magic. But it might have just been too much. He might have been a little optimistic about his earlier assessment of the kitchen. The man clicks with the back of his tongue, making a sucking noise. “I’ll say eighteen-hundred. For this room.”

Hineni takes in a sharp breath, allowing the pain to settle for a moment. “And the kitchen?”

“’Bout ‘nother twelve on top,” says the man. “But you gotta move the cabinets yourself. Otherwise it’s another five.”

“Three thousand?” asks Hineni, rubbing his forehead with the back of his thumb as he thinks. That’s a lot of money. It’s a fortune, in fact. He looks around the house. A month ago, he would have been willing to just let things be as they are. So what if there’s a little water damage? As far as he would have been concerned, the house could rot together with himself. But that man is dead now and the house needs him to step up, just like Obscura had needed him to step up. A man takes care of his home after all, right?

He nods. They have just barely enough saved to get started with these kinds of payments. “Do you know anyone who does glass?” asks Hineni, nodding to the broken window that is still covered haphazardly by the flipped-over table.

“My cousin does glass. Should I bring him by next time?”

“Please do,” agrees Hineni.

The man nods and the two of them part ways, leaving Hineni standing there with his back against the door, his arms crossed and his head lowered as he thinks, staring at the creaky floor through the gap between his scarf and his wizard’s hat.

Three thousand. That’s just about what he’s made so far from everything he’s sold and delivered, give or take. But that’s before the food he bought. With another order, he’ll have the money for the floor. But the window…

Well, glass is expensive.

The man rubs the back of his head, letting out a long exhalation as he walks away from it, deciding to get to work early today. He has money to make. He has to provide.

“Sorry,” says Rhine, looking up from the table he had been awkwardly sitting at while the carpenter was here. The boy looks down at the table, not able to look Hineni in the eyes. He’s awfully prideful, but now with a tangible threat like a large bill hanging above his head, he seems to be a little more flattened.

Hineni stares at the surfaces of the tables all around him that were once covered by ash and then by so much more dust on top of that. He shakes his head, patting Rhine on the shoulder as he passes him on the way to the forge. “Accidents happen. Come on, we need to work or we won’t have dinner tonight.”

“Huh? We’re eating again today?” asks Rhine, sounding somewhat surprised.

“Ideally, we eat every day,” replies Hineni, looking over his shoulder at the blue-haired gestalt. “But I guess you’re from the tower quarter. You’re probably used to better food.” He shakes his head. It seems like an odd problem. But perhaps this is just one of those weird social issues that he isn’t familiar with. Best tread lightly, to not be a jerk. The tower quarter is a very expensive, decadent place to live. Anyone coming from there likely wouldn’t be happy with the garish things that they eat down here in this part of the city. He supposes the boy’s parents probably don’t want him eating away from home either. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to eat anything if you don’t want to.”

“Huh? No! I do!” says Rhine eagerly.

Hineni nods once and then turns his head back forward to go to the forge. He doesn’t understand kids either, apparently.

“So you make weapons?” asks Rhine.

“I’m a weaponsmith,” explains Hineni, setting down a bar of iron and a bar of copper onto the anvil. “Apparently.”

The boy looks at him, a bit confused. “Apparently?”

Hineni stares around the room. It’s still early in the day and Obscura is missing, off doing whatever it is owl-gods do during their time away. “It’s what the owl-god wants.”

Rhine tilts his head, looking around the empty forge. By the look in his eyes, Hineni can see the familiar tinge of fear. The boy is scared of her. Though, to be fair, he has good reason. She hasn’t exactly been kind to him.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Hineni. “She’s not as scary as she seems,” he says, looking at the fearful worry in Rhine’s eyes. It reminds him of the expression the man had had, in the monastery. The one who had attacked him.

He isn’t sure if what he just said was a lie or not.

Rhine isn’t really suited to working in the forge. He’s small and his arms are very much weak and untrained. He doesn’t really have an eye for detail and he seems to be really impatient, always walking around Hineni as he works, offering ideas on how to do this and that. It’s not that Hineni doesn’t appreciate the input and the boy’s clear interest in the work. It’s just that the suggestions aren’t really good ones. But that’s fine. Honestly, he still isn’t really sure what it is exactly that Rhine is supposed to be doing here.

“So how come you’re mixing those?” asks Rhine, pointing at the bars of metal that Hineni has his hands hovering over. Traditionally, these two ingots, iron and copper, would be merged together in an extremely hot furnace, to come together as a singular alloy. But he’s just taking the easy way. Time is money.

Singularly, they both have their uses. Iron is great for cheap weapons and tools and copper is well suited for house-hold items and for magical crafting. It holds magical residue well inside of itself, compared to iron. He doesn’t really know why, that’s more of a magical science question, which is outside of his domain. Maybe the library has something on it?

(Hineni) uses: [Blacksmithing{Meld}] (Hineni) got: [Iron-Copper Alloy Bar] x2 - [Iron-Copper Alloy Bar] -

- Quality -

Normal - Composition - Iron: 48% Copper: 48% Silica: 1% Impurities: 1%

Iron-Copper Alloy:

-5% weight for crafted items +3 [FIRE] DMG augmented to all spells channeled through crafted items

A blended alloy, made up out of copper and iron.

While hot, it is easily malleable.

After cooling, it has a strong conductive and highly specific strength. While not suited for flexible and high-impact objects, its conductive properties allow it to be a reasonable material for magical items.

Weight: 5 kg Value: 19 Obols

“Copper is expensive here,” says Hineni, pointing at his rarely touched stack of copper-bars in the corner of the forge. “A single bar with a standard weight is going to run about thirty Obols,” explains the man.

“Standard weight?” asks Rhine.

“Five,” explains Hineni. “All standardized ingots have a weight value of five.” He points at the iron bars and the copper bars. They have different sizes, but the same trapezoid shape. “They’re different sizes, but both of them have a weight value of five because the density of the metal is different.”

“Oooh!” says Rhine, nodding. If Hineni didn’t know better, he’d say that the boy had cast his river-magic again and gotten soaked to the bone. His robe is clinging to him like a film. But in reality, he’s just sweating buckets. “So why mix them though?” he asks, rubbing the back of his head.

“Iron is cheap,” shrugs Hineni. “A standard iron ingot only costs about ten Obols,” he explains. “By mixing them into an alloy, we can stretch the copper further, while still keeping some of the properties of both.”

Rhine nods. “So is it better?”

“Better than what?”

“Better than if you didn’t mix it?”

“Depends,” replies Hineni, lifting up the iron-copper alloy ingot with one hand, turning it around to inspect it. He hands it down to Rhine. The boy grabs it with both hands and then drops his arms as he struggles to hold the thing up in the air. Rhine plants his feet firmly down, straining himself to hold the heavy thing. “Oh, sorry,” says Hineni, reaching back. He had forgotten that Rhine is a bit on the scrawny side.

“I got it!” says Rhine, straining his face, clearly not having it. “This is nothing!” he says, trying to fake a laugh. But he doesn’t really manage.

Hineni shrugs, deciding not to break the boy’s pride. He’s clearly trying to impress him, so he’ll just allow himself to be impressed in that case.

“Anyways,” says Hineni. “Pure iron is better for close-combat weapons. And pure copper is better for staves and wands,” he says, adjusting his hat as he looks back at the anvil to think about what today’s weapon is going to be. “But with a blend, we can make low-level magic items cheaply. It’s good enough,” he explains. “Maybe fifteen or twenty percent less effective than pure copper, but the lower price makes up for it,” says Hineni, looking back at Rhine whose face is as red as the glow of the forge. His cheeks are puffed out and his legs and arms are shaking. Hineni blinks, somewhat impressed after all. He forgot the boy was holding the metal for a moment there while he was lost in his trade. “Oh,” he says, taking it back from Rhine who lets out a relieved breath. The man nods. “You’re pretty strong.”

“Of course I am!” says Rhine, placing his knuckles against his sides. “I’m RHINE! The river-wizard!”

Hineni stares at him for a while, not quite sure why he always does that. It’s kind of fun though. “Okay,” is all that Hineni says, looking back to his work. “Today, we’re going to make three magic wands,” he says, setting down the ingot and moving over to his workbench, gesturing for Rhine to follow him.

“Aren’t they usually made out of wood?” asks the boy.

“They are. But we’re making ours out of metal. It’s more durable and more manly.”

“Huh?”

Hineni nods. The boy doesn’t really understand yet. But metal is more manly than wood. He feels like he doesn’t need to expand on that any further. It just is what it is.

He pulls over an old piece of parchment and flips it over, to sketch on the blank backside. Hineni stares at his hand for a moment as he picks up the pen from the inkwell and lets it hover above the paper. His hand is pretty big, honestly. It’s kind of lunky and rough. A wand is a delicate thing, made for delicate hands. Even if it is made up out of metal.

The man bends down, grabbing Rhine’s hand and sets it down on the piece of paper. “Stay like that,” he says.

“What?”

Hineni doesn’t reply as he sketches down the outline of the hand on the piece of parchment, so that he has a sense of scale for how big the wands should be. Maybe he’s going to find a use for Rhine after all. “Try not to sweat on the parchment so much,” says Hineni. “You’re getting it all wet.”

“Sorry!” apologizes Rhine. “It’s hot in here.”

“We’ll get some water after this,” says Hineni, focusing on the scribble. “Get ready. It’s going to be a busy afternoon.”