“Aryyloooosss~!” Iris called out while entering the house after coming back from her own shopping trip. “I’m back~!” she called cheerily while taking off her shoes in the foyer. No voice returned to her but she felt something in the air that gave her a cold chill on the nape of her neck.
She was very slowly getting used to Arylos’s unspoken language; his ability to sense and manipulate his surroundings. In the month since their argument after Reyz’s attack, she was starting to catch on to how Arylos operates and thinks, even if it is rudimentary.
Iris let out a chuckle after feeling the sensation and walked over to the dining room and looked to the library at the far end of the house, but the Titan wasn’t there. She set her bag on the table and took out something from it and went over to the library, clutching something small in her hands. She came over to Arylos’s desk and was about to set her gift down when she saw something.
It was his old Dreamcatcher charm, ripped open and soaked with blood, the wooden plates inside all but ruined. Yet it was left the way it was at the corner of his desk; no attempt to clean or repair it had been made and sat there as a reminder. Iris felt something pull at her; the charm is ruined and keeping it around could invite bad luck, so why did he keep it?.
She tightened her grip on a replacement Dreamcatcher charm that she was going to put on his desk. She felt curious about his actions. Confused more than anything.
BANG! “DAMMIT!”
Iris heard the sounds reverberate through the house and she made her way to the basement door, opening it quickly and running down the stairs. She found a shirtless Arylos rubbing his scalp and pouring water on the floor, extinguishing chunks of red hot metal.
“Are you okay?” Iris asked, slowly approaching the angry Titan.
“I’m fine,” Arylos responded with anger in his voice. “I just can’t get this right.”
“Get what right?” Iris asked, examining his work station.
Arylos put the bucket of water away and with a set of tongs started picking up the squealing chunks of metal and throwing them in a bucket off to the side. “I’ve gotten rusty, that’s all,” he told her with a sigh. “I haven’t worked metal since I made your scabbard, and even that took trial and error to get back into the rhythm. So far, I can’t get the heat and the pressure right and everything I make keeps breaking.”
“Is it anything I can help with?” Iris asked.
“No, I just need to practise again until I get it right,” Arylos growled, angry with himself. He caught a glimpse of a familiar blue and gold object in Iris’s hand. “What do you have there?”
Iris loosened her grip and showed her the new charm she bought. “Your old one was broken and so I bought a new one. They don’t make many of these so I had to custom order it. I’m sorry it took so long.”
Arylos picked up the charm and admired the colours and the handiwork.
“Why did you keep the old one?” she asked, trying to hide her embarrassment.
“Because it’s still special to me,” Arylos responded, smiling at Iris’s gesture.
“But it’s broken, you should replace it,” Iris added. “You shouldn’t keep it because it might bring bad luck now.”
Arylos chuckled and handed the charm back to Iris. “I don’t discard broken things because I don’t have a use for them anymore,” he told her in a soft voice. “I still have mine, so you should keep this for yourself.”
Iris shook her head and pushed it back towards him. “I bought it for you,” she reminded him.
Arylos chuckled and placed the charm on a shelf on the wall behind him. “Then it will go here so it can bring my metalworking skills back,” he said with a laugh.
Iris saw him in a different light that she didn’t understand. There was something in his smile, seeing him experiencing joy, it made her feel warm. She watched the Titan reposition his tools and take out and examine a bar of a dark metal. She examined his exposed tattoos and his furrowed expression as he calculated how to approach his work. She remembered what he was like when they met, how cold he seemed to feel most of the time, how emotionless he was. Now he’s openly wearing his emotions and it made her happy.
“Can I watch you work?” she asked while taking a stool next to his anvil. “Maybe if you talk me through it, it will help you get it.”
“It’s pretty boring stuff,” he explained while pumping the bellows of the furnace and putting the metal bar into the hot coals. “Temperature, cooling techniques, metal quality, soil, and so on. It’s all pretty technical and boring.”
“I find it entertaining to watch you work,” Iris responded, resting her chin in her hands and watching him intently.
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Arylos chuckled and worked the bellows as the furnace roared with fury and Iris watched the flames dance within. “You can control fire, why don’t you just do that?” she asked while watching him work up a sweat.
“Because then I would get lazy,” Arylos responded as his muscles bulged and he watched the flames, changing his tempo to match his desire. “It’s not just the creation of the final product, but the steps along the way. That’s what interests me. For example, I can judge the temperature based on the colour of the flames alone. I can then measure to get an exact number to dial it in perfectly.”
Arylos reached for a set of tongs on his belt and reached into the furnace, taking out the bar of metal that was now bright and hot. He then took out a heavy hammer and in a hypnotic rhythm, struck the metal along the centre.
“The colour of the metal will also tell you how pliable it is,” Arylos continued as Iris watched intently. “The outside of the metal will heat the fastest but you must heat evenly in order to get what you want. The core of the metal will always be the coldest and you risk stretching or introducing stress if the temperature is not even.”
Iris’s jaw went slack as she watched him closely, listening to the rhythmic striking sing out like a song in her ears. She watched him flex and sweat as he brought down the hammer with incredible but controllable force, noticing that all of his strength was focused and precise. She watched his glowing red eyes fixate on the metal, running up and down as he examined where he was hitting compared to where he needed to go next. His work was meticulous, precise, calculated. Iris felt something stir in her as she watched him work.
Oh shit, she thought as her mind went into a trance.
“You also have to be careful with the rhythm of your swings,” Arylos continued his explanation as if he was his own mentor. “Breaking the rhythm or the strength of your swings can make or break a piece. It differentiates what makes a great sword and a butter knife.”
Arylos turned the piece over, continuing his barrage of strikes, this time leading with a small position check hit before coming down, the smaller strikes singing out in half time with his main strikes. It was a strange and hypnotic song as Iris watched the metal change shape, flattening out into a sheet slowly but surely with each hit. The pull of the experience sucked her in and she forgot the world around her, focusing solely on this strange otherworldly man striking hot metal.
Ohh shit, she continued to herself, trying to break herself free from the hypnosis.
Arylos quickly brought the metal back to the furnace and pumped the bellows a few more times as the muscles in his back and shoulders tensed with each pump but Iris could see his hands were flexible and relaxed. She watched him work, seeing his skin stretch and his tattoos move with him and she admired the way he looked.
“And you have to be careful to maintain your heat,” Arylos continued his lecture. “Catch temperature fluctuations early and resolve them quickly. Keep the entire work heated evenly or you will be fighting against time and your own work process.”
Ohh shit, Iris repeated to herself as she took in the sight of the Titan, clenching her fists in confusion and denial as she admired him. She saw the fires dance in his eyes, his intense stare as he watched the flames melted her heart. She saw him run through calculations in his head as he stared into the flames and Iris felt that this cold and calculating version of him made something move in her. A part of her wished he would stare at her like that, with the intense stare that could burn a hole through her soul.
Oh shiiiiit! Iris finally realised. Am I seriously falling for him right now?! There’s no way! Her face went red hot and she covered her face, trying to mask the emotion. Nonononononono, this can’t be happening, she tried casting away the emotion and realisation. I mean, I like him, but do I like him? Do I love him?
She felt lightheaded as she couldn’t make up her mind, running through twenty different thoughts and emotions in the same instant to try and explain this. I mean, we’re just friends, she continued while trying to look away from Arylos. We just live together, that’s all. We have a good platonic friendship and that’s what’s important. I mean, he’s a Titan; he created our reality. How awkward would that be, right? How do you just date a god that created your whole universe? What if we break up? How do you break up with the creator of your own universe?!?
Iris ran through all of the scenarios, trying to explain this. Finding holes in the whole idea from how she could introduce him to things like starting a family. Do any of those apply to Arylos? If her parents were still alive, how could she introduce him to them? “Hey guys, this is my boyfriend; a Titan from another world and creator of our universe,” just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
Her heart then ran cold from one realisation that broke her whole train of thought. Something that was important that she should have considered from the start.
Does he even have a concept of love? she asked herself. Could he even love me like that?
The idea hurt her. She didn’t want this to be one-sided. The warm sensation he gives her was one of the best she’s felt and it was now cold as she thought about him not being interested, or maybe not interested in her but interested in someone like Bellona. She turned back to Arylos and saw him still gauging the fire’s heat as he prepared to remove the metalwork from the flames, swapping out hammers to a lighter one with a ball on one side.
Fuck it, Iris told herself, feeling the warmth inside her again. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation he gave her. Her doubts were dispersed once she opened her eyes and admired him going back to work on the metal, watching his hammer strikes and the look of a predator in his eyes. She loved that inhuman look; that stare into your soul as he judged you like the carnivore he is. She thought the idea was funny in a strange way but she couldn’t deny the sensation. She remembered what it felt like when she thought she lost him; the pain she felt deep in her core. It was enough to remind her how she really felt.
Fuck it all, she reminded herself, watching the Titan’s lips move in words she couldn’t hear anymore, lost in her own thoughts. She abandoned the fear that he would never understand and was happy, at least for now, with understanding this emotion deep inside her.