The black soot was… thick. And mixed in was lots of sand too, though I wasn’t entirely sure where it kept coming from.

This was the second time I’ve swept the floor of the furnace building, and somehow it felt as if there was more this time than last time. How was it possible? There wasn’t any ash or gunk in the air, at least none visible… and…

“You’re a quick learner Renn… plus you’re strong. Stronger than me. But you really need to learn to control your strength,” Lellip said from behind me.

I turned around mid-brush and saw her lift the bucket I had just tried to fix. She tilted it just enough that I could see the small hole near the end of the pail, indicating I had hit it far too hard or too much.

“Uh…” I sighed as I nodded in apology. That was the second time today I had failed, it seemed.

“It’s all fine. That’s the good thing about metal, Renn. You just hit it again. And again, until it does what you want it to… though I guess in your case it’s try to not hit as much?” Lellip chuckled at herself as she tossed the bucket into the pile of other failed metalwork. Although not all of that pile was mine, it sure did feel like most of it was.

“Sorry Master,” I said as I pushed another pile of black soot into the sunken hole in the corner of the room. Supposedly there was a larger hole beneath it that led outside, but Lellip hadn’t showed me how it worked yet.

“As I said it’s fine. That’s the cool thing about metal. You can reshape it as many times you want. Add to it. Fix it. Break it. Make it into something else. You can give it life and purpose again,” Lellip said as she tossed another metal object into the pile. Something she had been working on earlier this morning. Some kind of box shaped object.

“Does Vim fail?” I asked.

“He and my grandfather failed all the time. The problem with them is their failures were still… perfect to my eyes. So I’m not sure if I should say they failed or not,” Lellip said honestly.

She held her grandfather in high esteem, so it was always a surprise to hear her include Vim when she spoke of him. She not only admitted, but accepted with ease, that Vim was as good if not better than her grandfather had been.

Which was a shock. How did Vim know how to do it so well? Was it simply because he was so old? That he had so much time to know and learn things?

Did that mean no matter what, as long as I dedicated time to it… I’d be able to master things too? Would I one day be like him, then? Able to build, fix, travel, and wage war all the while doing so flawlessly without failure?

“See this? This is one of the knives Vim made earlier. He gave it to me because he said it wasn’t good enough, but I can’t see any flaw in it,” Lellip said as she hurried over to me.

I stopped sweeping as Lellip pulled out a small hand sized knife. Something told me it was more of a kitchen utensil than one for war and battle, but I kept my mouth shut as she turned the blade over to show me. She had already given it a handle and hilt, and she had designed little symbols into the middle of the blade already too.

“See that part? The fuller here? It’s off too much, in his opinion. But honestly if I saw this hanging up at any other blacksmith’s shop, it’d be considered a work of art, not a failure. My grandfather would have done the same. He’d have tossed it, even though it’s perfectly fine,” Lellip said with a hushed voice.

I nodded, even though I had absolutely no clue how to tell. It was… silvery, like the other things Vim had made. Which supposedly wasn’t silver at all, but something else. Something special that didn’t exist yet. Which made no real sense; since it was obvious they existed.

Reaching out, I tapped the edge of the small knife with a fingernail. The feel and sound told it me it was very sharp already.

So sharp that it made me shiver at the thought of Vim’s other weapons being sharpened too.

“Sharp, yeah,” Lellip nodded as she quickly hid the knife away. Likely to keep it safe and close, but also to make sure her mother never saw her with it.

Lellip didn’t cherish it because it was a weapon, though. But because of its importance. What it was made of, and who made it.

“Would Vim’s swords get that sharp?” I asked her.

“Oh even sharper,” she said with a nod.

Great.

I had been swinging that sword every day for the last week under Vim’s guidance… and honestly I was starting to realize just how dangerous it actually was.

Even as a blunt piece of metal, it was dangerous. For it to also become that sharp…

I squeezed the wooden rod handle of the broom I had been using, and imagine swiping the sword through it. While it was dull, I’d snap it in half without a thought. Yet while sharpened…

Would I even notice it? Even though this handle was nearly as wide as my wrist? And the wood was old and hard? Tempered and lacquered?

A part of me wanted to see what it felt like, yet the rest of me hoped I never found out.

Especially since it’d tell me just how easy it would be to cut into flesh and bone.

“Not much left. Here I’ll help,” Lellip noticed how little soot was left on the ground and hurried away to grab another broom.

I didn’t try to stop her. She honestly was a bundle of energy. She always was running around and doing stuff, either working in the smithy or out in the fields that they used to grow food. There were also animals here they tended to, like chickens and a few goats.

Yet no matter how much work we did, there always seemed to be more and more. Like the soot we were sweeping up… We had just cleaned this up a few days ago! Yet here we were, doing it again.

I didn’t mind helping, at all… but it did kind of feel like this place had been built with more people in mind. As if we were a dozen hands short.

It made me wonder what Vim did most the day, since he seemed to disappear sometimes. He did help out, whether on the farm, in the house, or here inside the smithy. Half of the day Lellip was teaching me by learning herself, while we both watched and helped Vim as he worked.

The oddest part was Vim always taught Lellip as he worked. Showing her and teaching her as he did… yet never did so for me. He’d let me watch, and I did so, but it was almost as if he was making it a point that he taught her and she taught me.

Returning to sweeping, I ignored Lellip’s happy humming as she also went to sweeping nearby. With her help it’d not take much longer at all to finish up.

The floor was sand and dirt, mostly… Lellip had said it was so that no fires would get started. But there were also some sections of the floor that had brick. I had to be careful walking on them, since sometimes I’d trip on a brick sticking out of the dirt.

Once Lellip and I had gathered most of the black soot into the single corner, and started sweeping them into the hole that they used for it, I noticed the way her hands gripped the broom’s handle.

Her hands were nearly as big as mine… and her thumb was twice as long as my own, and looked almost as if it had an extra joint. But that was a trait of her bloodline. Her parents had the same hands.

Those hands probably helped when she worked. There were a few tools I wished were a little smaller or my hands a little bigger, when I used them.

“Is a war coming, Renn?” Lellip then suddenly asked as she swept up the last bit of soot.

I flinched at the question, since it had sounded so… sincerely worried.

“Uhm… no? I hear there’s a war in the south, but Vim thinks it will end soon I guess?” I said carefully.

“My parents worry a war is coming to us. To the Society,” she said as she patted her broom against the dirt floor, as if to clean the bristles free. They were stained black from the years of soot, something told me they’d never get clean.

“I uh…” I wasn’t sure what to say at all.

“Vim’s never taught someone how to fight like he is for you, I guess. Is that why you’re here? To learn how to make weapons, since we won’t?” Lellip asked as she looked up at me with a worried expression.

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My heart tinged in pain as I realized the poor girl had been holding this in for some time. It bothered me that I had allowed, and Vim as well, this very happy and energetic girl to get like this.

“I’m not planning to fight in any war, Lellip. Nor am I learning how to make weapons. Vim’s teaching me to defend myself, thanks to my own request. But to be honest… if war actually came I’d probably be too scared to fight in it,” I said to her softly.

Lellip stared at me for a moment, and then smiled. “You are a cat after all!” she said.

I smiled too, since I was glad to see her smile and hear her laugh… but it was a little uncomfortable to have that be the reason.

I was a cat, but was I being that scared of war so easily believable? I had actually thought my comment would have been interpreted as a lie… for her to have believed it so readily…

But that was for the best.

“Come on, let’s put these back,” Lellip quickly hopped around me and hurried to the spot where we hung the brooms on along the wall.

I joined her in putting the brooms up, and decided to take the time to make it clear to her over the next few days that Vim wasn’t teaching me how to wage war. It wasn’t the truth after all. He had been teaching me how to hold a sword. How to swing it without hurting myself. How to block, and parry, and…

I hesitated as I wondered if maybe that really was war. In my mind war was something grandiose. Something massive. Something that took hundreds, if not thousands, of people… but…

At the end of the day maybe that was all it was.

Pure violence.

“I think part of the reason you’re still struggling with hammering is because you’re swinging the swords too much. You need to be more gentle, and Vim’s obviously not teaching you to be gentle!” Lellip said as we headed for the exit. She spoke nonchalantly, as if making small talk… but I knew she was mostly serious in her statement.

“That is possible,” I agreed. Even though Vim had been intentionally trying to make me swing the sword with less strength lately.

Opening the large furnace doors alongside Lellip, we both paused as the door came to a stop. Vim peered his head out from behind the door, signifying he had been the one to stop it.

I pushed on it a little harder, even though Lellip immediately gave up. Yet no matter how hard I pushed, nor how abruptly, it didn’t budge.

Just how strong was he…?

“Let’s go Renn,” Vim then said.

“What? Where are we going?” I asked. Surely he didn’t mean leave as in… leave? We’d not been here a month yet, and he said we’d be here until the passes cleared! The nearby mountains were still covered in white snow!

“The mine,” Vim said plainly.

Oh. I released a small breath of relief as Lellip groaned. I glanced at her, wondering what was wrong.

“I can’t go there anymore…” she mumbled dejectedly.

“For good reason,” Vim said.

“Then why are we going?” I asked. As far as I was aware most the mine was still empty. The village was still mourning the loss of those taken in the last cave-in, and were even debating not opening the mine back up at all and starting another elsewhere.

“Do you have a helmet for Renn, Lellip?” Vim asked her, ignoring my question and concern… which didn’t make me feel much better about it.

“Sure do! Won’t be one of her buckets either!” Lellip said as she hurried between the large door and Vim, heading for the storehouse.

Vim watched her go for a moment, and then glanced at me. “Bucket?” he asked.

“I uh… left a hole in one. That I was supposed to fix,” I said with a shrug.

“Well buckets are supposed to have holes,” he said.

“They are…?”

“One big one. At the top,” he said with open hands.

“That’s a bad joke,” I said.

“It is full of holes,” he nodded, agreeing.

I couldn’t help it; I scoffed a laugh as I headed out of the furnace.

Vim closed the door behind me as I left, and I shook my head. “That was even worse!”

“Give me a second, I’m sure I got a better one in my bucket somewhere,” Vim frowned as he spoke, as if he was actually contemplating what to say next.

We headed for the storehouse, and I watched as Lellip opened the storehouse door and went in. She seemed excited.

“Can she come? Since you’ll be there?” I asked him.

“No. Her parents laid down the law. She’s not allowed to go there anymore, if ever,” he said firmly. He no longer had that tone he had just used, for making stupid jokes.

“I see…” I said softly.

“It’s for her own good, Renn. Things happened,” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t know the full story of course, but had heard a general summary of it all.

She had been flirting with one of the young miners. One who had gotten stuck in the original cave-in… and her grandfather had gone in to save him. Resulting in more deaths than necessary.

While we walked towards the storehouse, I took the moment to glance around… and made sure no one else was within earshot. Lellip and her family couldn’t hear as well as I or Vim, but they still had better hearing than most humans.

“Lellip and her family are worried. About me… or well, about what you’re teaching me,” I said softly.

“They should be,” he said, in his normal tone.

I groaned, since that was not what I wanted to hear at all.

Maybe I was getting involved in something I didn’t know about…

“What… what am I allowed to speak of, Vim? You’ve never really said,” I said quietly.

Vim frowned as he paused for a moment. “What aren’t you allowed to speak of?” he asked me.

“That’s just it, I don’t know?” I asked back.

“You’re free to tell anyone anything you want Renn. Just make sure you know what you’re saying and who you’re saying it to,” he said.

“All that tells me is there are things you don’t want me to talk about, yet won’t stop me from telling them either…” I groaned.

Before any more could be said Lellip appeared. She hurried out of the storehouse carrying metal helmets, and… some kind of weird looking glass box.

“Here ya are! I wasn’t sure if you wanted one Vim,” Lellip said as she handed him the pair of helmets. They were black, and looked and sounded like iron made.

“I did. Thank you. The humans would find it odd if I entered a mine without one, after all,” Vim told her as he put one of the hats onto his head.

Once on, Lellip and I stared up at him for a moment… and only Lellip seemed unable to contain her chuckle at his appearance.

“What? I’ll have you know I used to wear helmets like no one else’s business,” Vim defended himself, but had a smile as he did so… telling me he was fully aware of how silly he looked.

I reached out for the other helmet, and felt a little excited to try it on. I’d never worn a metal hat before.

But before I could grab it, Vim lifted it upward and over my head. I went still as he slowly lowered it on my head. I hurriedly laid my ears down flat, and was very thankful for him placing it on my head slowly. It would have hurt my ears had he just dropped it on my head.

The thing blocked some of my vision, and I had to push it up a little. “It’s too big,” Lellip groaned.

“Got any smaller ones?” Vim asked.

“That was the smaller one!” Lellip complained.

“Could make one real quick?” I suggested.

Vim sighed, and I could tell he wasn’t in the mood to do so.

“I’ll get you some pads, one second Renn,” Lellip reached up, and I took the hat off and handed it to her. A moment later she bounded away, leaving the little glass box behind.

“Much better than making a new one,” Vim nodded.

“Sorry my head’s so small,” I complained as I bent down to inspect the small box she had left behind.

Was it some kind of lamp? It had glass… windows on all four sides, yet something reflective on the top and…

“It’s a lantern, Renn. Just made for the mines is all, so a little odd looking,” Vim told me.

“Ah. What’s that reflective stuff inside it? It looks like the stuff on some of the windows in the workshop,” I said.

“Mirrors, Renn. Don’t you remember the one at the mansio in Telmik?” he sounded concerned I hadn’t noticed.

“Those are mirrors!” I picked the little lantern up and was shocked. Of course they were! Why hadn’t I realized it…?

Well… maybe because the idea of using mirrors in such a way had been beyond me. They were so valuable… why waste them like this?

While inspecting the little metal box, I smiled as I stared at Vim through the translucent glass. He was visible, but it made him look odd. As if deformed a little.

“Did the hat hurt your ears?” he asked.

“No. It will be uncomfortable, but I’ll be fine,” I said. I used the lantern to hide my smile; he had been concerned over it.

We stood in silence for a moment, and I wondered if I should go help Lellip. She was adjusting it for me after all… and…

“Were you cleaning the furnaces?” Vim then asked.

“Huh?” I stopped messing with the little lantern as I suddenly became aware of something I usually didn’t notice.

I was dirty.

“We uh… swept the soot out,” I said, and wondered if I was as covered in the stuff as I probably looked. Had Lellip been as dirty? I hadn’t even noticed…

“Well, you’ll blend in at the mines at least,” Vim said with a smirk.

“Exactly!” I agreed, even though my smile felt a little forced. Usually he didn’t comment on how dirty I got, unless it was to tease me. Yet that hadn’t really sounded like teasing earlier…

“Don’t worry about it. You can bathe when we get back,” he said.

“I wasn’t… worried…?” I hated how my voice sounded. I had been worried, and hadn’t sounded convincing at all!

“Hopefully this is all just needless worry,” Vim then said softly.

Glancing at him, I hesitated as I noticed the way he was looking at the workshop. He wasn’t looking at it, but something else. Something far away.

It was the same look he had back during the fires. When we had put the paintings of the Sleepy Artist to flame, to protect the Society.

“Vim…?” I wasn’t able to say much else as Lellip emerged once more, this time holding the helmet high over her head, as if declaring victory over a triumphant enemy as she hurried back over to us.