The village found its liveliness. The excited roads sprayed dust at everyone in the celebration. The shops opened; buyers and sellers both haggled to satisfy their needs. Foreign and familiar carts came and went through the village as the sun rose higher in the sky, leaving and picking people in passing. The sellers hawked, farmers carried their plows to the farm, and the kids ran around. Another group of cows blocked the main street, refusing to budge as if on a mission.

No one seemed to remember the murders or the murderer on the run. No one cared about what might happen. They talked about him, but like spectators watching from outside rather than as the characters inside the play. They were too busy in the now. It was just such a year.

Midst the excitement, the Smithy kept its regular pace. It bellowed a rhythmically consistent heartbeat onto the road. It contained two simple banging beats, one heavy and the other loud, accompanying each other on a journey. It was simple in its tone, but aggressively attracted the attention of every passerby, forcing them to share a piece of their present with the smithy.

Mannat hammered a red-hot piece of iron he had stretched six inches long. Every hammer strike reformed its shape, bringing it closer to the shape of a knife. An outsider may feel the shop was in harmony, but Mannat did not. Mannat was frowning. His hands worked while his mind ventured, a myriad of thoughts distracting him. Most he worried about his mother’s well-being and his father’s sanity. Sharmilla wasn’t out of his thoughts either. They broke his focus, irritated him, but couldn’t stop him from working as his successes announced, peeking from the top of the barrel.

Mannat kept a tight grip on his emotions. He finished the knife, quenched it in the oil vat, pulled it out, and cleaned it. He observed it under the cascading sunlight and found no cracks; the file also slid on it without biting. Examining it proved it was a good blade, balanced and strong.

[Kitchenknife][Common]

[Durability: 30/30][Attack power: 5]

[Effect: none]

“So be it,”

He went ahead and punched two holes in the tang while it was still hot, still ductile to pin the handle later. He kept it aside and picked the tong to get the other ingot burning in the forge when the front doorbell rang.

It wasn’t a guest.

Mannat was familiar with the tipsy footsteps that followed; they belonged to his father.

Raesh barged into the smithy but didn’t roll over the threshold like usual. He was tipsy, but he was not falling all over the place. He stood there in quiet and started at the place, the forge, the anvil, and his sweat-drenched son.

Fourteen years old, Raesh could see the boy’s mother in him. His red hair, his concentration, the way he raised his brows at him, the way he stood with his hands behind his back. They all had Noor’s shadow in them. Mannat had taken after his mother and there was no denying that. The boy wasn’t brawny or even tall as him. The boy didn’t have his anger. Raesh didn’t know who said that Children are the reflections of their parents, but he didn’t see himself in the boy, not a single bit. It was as if Mannat wasn’t his—

Raesh shook his head to get the vapid thought out of his head. It was his mind going haywire in his skull. His own thoughts revolted against him; as if the ghosts weren’t troublesome enough. It was the last thing he needed now.

“What are you thinking about, father?” Mannat’s voice was curt and wary, concerned.

“I’m thinking about you and your mother,” Raesh solemnly said. “How similar you two are.”

Mannat’s brows furrowed. He was starting to look more and more like a blacksmith, but he also had a lot to learn and accomplish. Raesh wanted to be there to teach him everything he knew, but he was afraid to make the promise, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to keep it.

“I am?” Mannat said placing the hammer and the tong on the anvil. He also removed his gloves and put them in the front pockets of his leather apron. He seemed to want to hear more so Raesh had to fulfill his choice.

“You don’t think so?”

Raesh Kept his distance two; he didn’t step an inch closer to Mannat or the workshop. It would be rude to the boy and his smithy, or so he thought. He was sober enough to talk, but not work. There was still enough liquor running in his veins to let a spark light him on fire. He didn’t want to create another problem for the boy. He had already burdened him enough.

“Are you happy here, Mannat?”

“Why do you ask?”

Raesh couldn’t bear the weight behind the boy's stare. He looked away, raised his head, and stared at the beam of light coming from the ceiling. It was bright and blinding. Perhaps, he could blame it for the wetness of his eyes.

“Because sometimes I worry that I wasted your potential by forcing you to become a blacksmith.”

“You didn’t force me, father,” Mannat said shaking his head. His red hair danced under the ray-like a fire leaping out through the forge. “I wanted to be a blacksmith.”

“I know-I know…” Raesh rubbed his forehead, cleaned the wetness in his eyes, and hoped the boy hadn’t noticed. “It’s just that I wanted it for myself. I was selfish in this regard.”

“That’s all right. I don’t know where I would have been If not for the job.”

“You would have been fine.” Raesh snorted… like that was even a thing. “You would have a found a way through somehow.”

“Father,” Suddenly Mannat asked, coming closer, his mind burdened with something that Raesh couldn’t figure. “What was she like when she was my age?”

“…At your age?” A smile grew on Raesh’s face as the memories refreshed in his mind.

“She was demons personified.” He snorted. “She loved to go out and roam the city. She hated studying and used to hide from her tutors. Sometimes we would leave the city altogether. We never went too far only until the river. There we would catch fish and roast them on an open fire on the bank. She loved the forests and everything they represented. The gardens in the city weren’t to her taste. They were too cultured and proper for her. Tamed, she called them. She was a bird who wanted to fly free from the customs and the cultures of the rich.”

Raesh paused, his smile faded until all the excitement had left and the pain revealed itself. His breath grew rapid, eyes darker. He looked right of Mannat, overwhelmed with sadness. “She once said nature is the most beautiful in the wild, where the flowers can grow untouched and unhampered by others influence -- To be who what they want to be, not what they are supposed to be. I never really understood what she meant by that, what she was telling me. I wish I had.”

Mannat saw his father’s emotional crisis. There comes a time when even the rock knows to move. This was one such time. “You can tell her that when she wakes up,” Mannat said, hoping it would help; it didn’t.

“You are right,” Raesh said; his voice a shade too dark. He forced out a smile, but his eyes remained hollow. He couldn’t believe the boy. “How are we doing so far?”

“Not bad,”

“Anything else you want to know about your mother?”

“You said she had tutors?”

“Oh, yes. She had many-many tutors.” Raesh shook his head. “Her father, your grandfather, the great Survya Agneehotri wanted her to become a scholar. She was homeschooled in many things, forced to read from dusk until dawn, and sometimes until she would fall asleep on her desk. She hated the books and wanted nothing to do with them. I think her wandering nature arose because of that. She just wanted to fly free. Sometimes I think all our trips outside the city were her attempts to run away because she was so eager when I saw her in the carriage on the day we eloped. There was not a hint of fear in her bright eyes; whereas I was shaking in my boots.”

Mannat stood stunned behind the anvil, hands clenched tightly. His thoughts reserved, though he smiled enchantingly, reminding Raesh of another promise he had made to Noor, at least this one he had kept somehow.

“So she knew how to read?”

Raesh hesitated. “I guess she did.”

“Then why didn’t she teach me anything?”

This time Raesh answered confidently because he had this conversation with Noor once when Mannat was still a young boy.

“She thought it was all for the best because you had already decided to become a blacksmith. I told her a few times it would do you good to learn a few words, but she always said she would teach you when you want to learn. I guess, she didn’t want to force the books onto you. She knew your burden, after all.”

Mannat’s lip quivered. He wanted to speak, but the words were lost to him. In the end, he dropped his head and closed his eyes.

“She loved you boy. And so do I.” Raesh said. “And no matter what happens that is not going to change. Don’t forget that.”

Mannat nodded.

Raesh saw him immersed in his thoughts and no longer worried whether there was a part of him in Mannat or not. He had just remembered that it didn’t matter to him what the Witch had done to give them a son, but Mannat was his as much as he was his mothers. And no one could deny him that.

The conversation had sobered him up and lit the fire that he had drowned in a flood of worry, anger, and liquor. His hammer called to him, the anvil hummed in response. He realized who foolish he was to seek help in liquor to forget the pain when all the help he needed was right there in the shop.

Exhaling the last motes of worry still floating in his lungs, Raesh confidently stepped into the workshop and though his heart speed up at the action he didn’t take the foot back and stepped on, breaking through all the barriers that he had created between himself and the smithy, his second home. He shed the last of his reluctance at the threshold, abandoned the weight that he had been carrying.

“Are you done with the knife?”

Mannat’s heart skipped a beat when the strong and magnetic voice fell on his ears. The dull and stale air started moving again, trembling with excitement. He saw his father lifting his hammer and eagerness took root in his heart.

Mannat nodded feeling… hopeful, unbelievable, and ridiculous. He cursed the realization that he didn’t believe in his father anymore, didn’t believe he had it in him to come back, to forget the pain for a second, to move on. But it was happening and it scared him to the balls of his feet, the edge of his being. He had hoped the day would come, but it came and now he didn’t want to go through with it.

The light at the end was too bright for Mannat who had learned to adapt to the darkness, and it threatened to burn everything that he had become.

Raesh instead felt like himself, moved like he used to with big and powerful strides -- steps that said this was his domain, his life, and no one could take it from him.

Raesh carried his hammer, cuffs folded to his elbows, carrying an all too familiar smile that Mannat had been longing to see. He stopped at the forge looking at his son standing stunned in front of the anvil.

“Come here,” Raesh called. “Let’s make something together.”

Mannat smiled happily like a four-year-old who had just found a ray of hope shining in the dark forest.

There were no apologies said. They didn’t hug to make up for past mistakes, for abandoning each other and forgetting what they had for what they had lost. No one cried.

All that mattered was that his father was back. It was all he could have asked for.

Mannat was in a good mood when he left the smithy. It was noon, but he didn’t go straight to the clearing. He turned right on the turn leading out of the village, taking him to the fields. There were times he believed everything would slowly fall apart around him and then he would have no one by his side. His father proved him wrong. Raesh proved that communication was the key and relationships could be mended. The thread between him and Sharmilla might be under tension but it had not broken.

He wanted to see her. They hadn’t met for a few days and now the need in him to see her was wider than any gully, and it was wilder than any river.

It was harvest season. The farmers and their helpers had gathered in the fields where golden shoots of wheat stood tall and endearing. There were hundreds of people, men, women, and children, gathered. The men harvested and dropped the bundled shoots to where the women threshed them on large barrels to separate the grains from the chaff. The empty husks made golden hills in places that swayed with the wind.

Mannat asked a worker for the old man and was told to go inwards.

Sardar was together with Sharmilla and his son-in-law, the latter of whom glared at Mannat with the intensity of a predator that hadn’t eaten in four days. Mannat ignored him. He had only met the man once and knew he didn’t like him for some reason. Well, he didn’t care about being liked by everyone either. People had always hated him for various reasons; he wasn’t going to have hair loss because of another addition to the number of his haters.

The thin-scrawny man pointed out Mannat as he walked toward them. The old man stopped working at the sight of him. He stood up wiping his face with the excess of his turban and waited for him like he did when they first met.

Well, he wasn’t there for the old man, he was there for the girl who stood behind him, who was just as shocked to see him as was her grandfather.

She wasn’t dressed in anything awe-inspiring in particular. She wore the same threadbare garments that every other person wore. She could have been covered in mud for all Mannat cared and he still wouldn’t have looked at anyone but her. Because there was no one else whose hair dazzled like the threads of a cloud on fire with the sun to her back, no one had lips so soft yet full, a voice that could break his heart into a thousand pieces, whose ears turns red every time he touched her skin. Because no one in the whole world looked at him the way she did, the way her lips part when their eyes meet and her cheeks bloom with a blush. Mannat hoped if there was a god staring at them at this moment it would not let anyone disrupt them, because he was falling in love with her all over again, and he didn’t want to miss it again this time.

Sardar silently starred at Sharmilla as she ran toward Mannat with spring in her feet, the tiredness all but gone from her face. She looked like a different person when she stopped in front of Mannat. She was drenched in sweat and her clothes hugged her form, showing her growth in the last year. She hadn’t grown taller than a few inches, but her waist had slimmed and her face had matured. She was still the same girl Mannat had fallen in love with, but she was also so much more.

“Come closer; let me take a look at you.” Mannat grabbed her arm, which Sharmilla acted to free.

“No, no, I’m covered in sweat.”

“It’s all right,” Mannat pulled her into his arms and she barely put any resistance against him.

“Everyone’s watching,” She said, the blush blowing colors of shame and need onto her face, but she didn’t pull back. Her heart bled into her eyes, reddening them.

“I think so,” Mannat said.

“What are you trying to do?” She asked him, staring into his bright green eyes that were madly in love with her.

“To make sure everyone knows,”

“What?” She asked, but it was clear to her that her wait was over.

“That I love you.”

She got surprised when Mannat gave wind to worry, leaned forward, and kissed her. Her irises blew wide until they were two rings of brown around deep-black wells of desire. She watched him as the murmur faded around her and only the sound of his heart echoed in her ears, telling her to stop resisting, it was okay, now everything would be fine. He already had her heart, and now she let him take her mind.

So what if others were watching? They had feared enough; it was time everyone learned that she was his, and he was determined to keep her no matter what.