Jonathan sighed, lifting his quill as he looked through the heavily bubbled glass that warped his view of the world outside of Boriv’s cramped office. He’d thought that today was going to be much too nice to spend inside, but after spending the last six hours with his nose in these books he was sure. It was much too nice to focus on ledgers and lading bills when out there, past the tracks and the gravel of the railyard were the grassy fields of his father’s domain dappled in the yellows and pinks of spring. The wild flowers were running riot over the grasses of the Dulcine Valley now, and with planting done soon the fields would blossom as well. He could smell the primrose and forget-me-nots from here, even over the ink and the soot. There was no doubt in his mind that spring was the best season. Except for a few high holy days, it was probably the best time of the whole year.
It was the perfect time to be outside, and he would’ve gladly traded a whole extra week of work in the middle of winter - and spent all those extra days scratching away with his quill pointlessly, just to take the day off. That really wasn’t much of a sacrifice though, he admitted to himself as he gave the offer further thought. Winter was the one time of year where he actually wanted to come to the dwarf’s office. The rest of the year it was always too hot and stuffy here, but in the winter it was one of the only places you could stay reliably warm, away from the kitchen at home. While most of the homes of the village used as little firewood as they could get away with to keep their families warm, his father was happy to pay for a few more cords of wood each fall to stay comfortable until the new year. The dwarves made him look like a cheapskate in the way that they always kept the station’s furnaces well stocked with coal. Why not? Not only were their supplies practically bottomless, but they hated the cold even more than they hated the gobs and hobs that prowled their domains deep below the surface. Everyone knew that. Warmth was the only real perk of this job. Everything else was just counting boxes, doing mathematics and getting yelled at.
He looked over to Boriv, who was currently lost in some important piece of correspondence or another. Jonathan could only read the dwarvish numbers that his master had taught him so that he could work productively - the strange squat letters were nothing like the flowing script that the kingdoms of men used, so they were utterly meaningless to him. Wenlish and Franish were similar enough that even though he was only fluent in the former he could pick out a number of words in the latter easily enough. The writing of the stonemen was utterly alien. It was nothing but lines and angles with a few dots and spaces here and there to break up the page. It gave him headaches trying to figure out how they turned those broken shapes into a language that sounded like giant frogs croaking while they took turns gargling gravel, but they did. Boriv emphasized the point by making a quick grumbling sound. He might have been talking to himself, or clearing his throat. It was impossible to say for sure. Either way the sound made Jonathan turn back to his own work. His master had been more irritated than usual today and when he was done reading he’d be sure to take it out on his apprentice if he saw him just sitting there.
Reluctantly he went back to his sums, adding up the columns and dutifully writing down the tally in his own wavering handwriting. After two pages he stopped again though, unable to focus on something so dull when the view kept tugging his mind away from what he should be doing to what he wanted to be doing. He belonged outside. At fourteen he should still be free to run through the streams and fields. He didn’t think he was too old to play with some of the younger children yet, and if he found Claire out there, then maybe he could give her a bundle of freshly picked wild flowers. He blushed at the idea, setting his quill aside. That was a common fantasy of his these days, though he hadn’t actually had the nerve to do it yet. This month was definitely going to be the right time to do it though. He just had to talk to his father about it first. The only thing scarier than talking to Claire was talking to him about her; Jonathan had no idea how he would react.
He turned the page on the ledger, but anxiety made all the symbols run together. Parsing out the numbers could be difficult at the end of even a normal day, but when he was this distracted it was practically impossible. He didn’t just have to remember which symbol was a six or a three - he had to mentally transpose the digits once he’d figure them out because in dwarvish math the highest digit they used was an eight whereas the kingdoms of men counted all the way to ten. So while a dwarf might write “106” in a log, that was only “70” in normal math. Trying to remember those conversions had given Boriv’s other clerks fits, so it was relegated to Jonathan most of the time. Right now he needed a break though, and dwarves didn’t seem to believe in those, so instead he put down his quill, cleaned the remaining ink off the tip with a rag, then began digging through his drawer looking for the small knife he used to sharpen it so he could focus his mind on the intractable knot that had become his prospects.
Lord Shaw was a kind and fair man, everyone knew that, even if he was only just barely a lord, but the choices he’d made for his children’s future’s had all been very different. His sisters Brandwyn and Sarah had both been married off to older men in the city shortly after they’d become women. His older brother Marcus still wasn’t married at nineteen though. The popular rumor was that his father hadn’t yet found a family with a dowry big enough, but Jonathan was unsure. Their father wanted his children to be happy, especially since their mother had passed away. Even more than that though he wanted the house of Shaw to have a future, and a Baronial title wasn’t hereditary.
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So all things being equal, he thought as he brought the sharp edge of the blade to the nib to shave it down a touch, he would probably end up married to the scion of a rich mercantile family, or perhaps the youngest daughter of another small house to firm up alliances. Both options appealed to him slightly less than doing any more math today. Neither of those faceless women could ever bring as much joy to his heart as the freckled peasant girl he’d fallen for. She might not have money or connections, but she almost certainly had the right blood. That was the only argument that he could possibly make. Her red hair meant that their children would almost certainly share his fireblooded nature - they might even be stronger than his middling talent, and with a little luck those hypothetical grandchildren could be a real credit to their family.
But no one wanted a fireblood in their family tree.
His argument finally came full circle, and he cursed himself again for his natural talent. All three of his siblings took after their father and his earth blooded nature. Each of them shared his black hair or his brown eyes that had long been the hallmark of the Shaws. Only he had been the odd one out to be cursed by his mother’s auburn hair, grey eyes, and her ability to channel the element of fire with a little effort. Outside the battlefield those powers were almost universally reviled though, and seen as dangerous. Rightly so, too. A torch like him could set people ablaze almost as easily as homes and fields with the right heat source, and the redheads that usually carried the talent were known for their excitable tempers. Jonathan would have given up his whole inheritance, meager though it would certainly be, to be able to use the power of the earth like his brother instead. To borrow the strength of earth until you could lift almost as much as a dwarf or to channel the toughness of stone so that even the sharpest blade couldn’t cut you, was far more impressive than being able to light and snuff candles without touching them.
It was all so unfair. It was the same conclusion he reached every time he had this argument with himself, but that didn’t make it less true. He couldn’t tell Claire how much he liked her until he got his fathers blessing, and he wouldn’t get his fathers blessing because the only possible reason for him to marry the girl was that all he would get for his trouble was more fire blooded grandchildren. It was hopeless, but knowing that didn’t make it easier not to think about her when thinking about her loosely braided hair or the way she smiled. She didn’t even own shoes but she seemed happier to him than his whole family put together. Jonathan could probably learn something from that mindset too. His older brother didn’t take his dalliances with the village girls half so seriously, and nothing bad had happened to him as he traded one girl for the next. That might work for Marcus, but Jonathan would never be able to see himself loving quite so casually as his brother - not even when he was nineteen himself. He sighed again, but immediately regretted it as Boriv cleared his throat.
“Well lad, are we going to get any work out of ye today?” he yelled from halfway across the room.
“Of course, I was just…” he looked down and his defense died in his throat. While his mind was fixated on Claire and what he should do about her, his hands had been busy whittling away the quill that hadn’t really needed to be sharpened until it was nothing but a nub. Even as he put down the knife and quill and tried to sweep away the evidence of his daydreaming the sound of Boriv’s heavy boots made the floorboards creak as he walked over to his apprentice.
When he saw what a mess he made, he didn’t say a word at first. He just cuffed him across the back of the head, and then reached for the ledger. He turned back several pages, and then apparently pleased enough with what he found not to yell at him further, set it aside and asked, “Well - you think quills are free? That they just grow out there on trees?”
“No, sir.” he said, his eyes downcast to look properly chastened. It didn’t do to argue with him or make the obvious joke that they actually grow on birds, so he bit his tongue and took the well deserved rebuke. Dwarves rarely seemed to enjoy humor.
“No, they don’t,” the old dwarf agreed, “So if you’re done being productive today why don’t ye just go to your home and stop ruining my tools.”
“Yes, sir.” Jonathan answered after only the smallest delay as he suppressed his smile and tried not to appear too eager. He waited until Boriv walked back to his own desk before he finally rose and grabbed his bag. “Thank you sir.”
“Don’t thank me,” the dwarf grumbled, “Just be here early tomorrow, and bring a fresh quill to replace the one ye ruined.”
“Yes, sir. I will,” the boy promised as he walked to the door, but his thoughts were no longer listening or speaking. They were on getting off early to feel the sun and breeze while he took the long way home. Thinking about Claire and what to do about her was hard, but seeing her on the way home was always easy enough, so long as he ignored the tightness in his chest.