A Blacksmith's Guide to Falling in Love
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He shifted beside her and finally looked over, though his gaze only lingered for a heartbeat before dropping back to his drink. "Why'd you actually ask me to come up here?"
Jasper blinked, caught off guard, "What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean." His fingers tightened around the mug as the defensive edge had crept back into his voice. "You don't exactly make a habit of inviting me places. So, what was this? Pity?" He gave a short, humorless huff and looked away again. "Some kind of joke?"
Jasper's brows rose. There it was. The March she'd come to know, the one who could turn a perfectly harmless question into a challenge the moment he felt himself getting too close to something he didn't know how to handle.
She set her mug down in the grass and turned a little more toward him, studying the side of his face before answering. "Newsflash March. I don't invite you to shit because you're mean to me all the time. And yet, despite the fact that you don't like me, I still enjoy your company."
March looked at her then, properly this time, and his eyes widened. "I don't go around intentionally jabbing at you."
She gave him a flat look. "March."
"What?"
"You absolutely do."Series
- Part 1 of A Blacksmith's Guide to Falling in Love
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"You could ask for more time?" His brother smiled at him in the soft way he always did when he was mentioning something difficult, "And… more help?"
March's eyes lifted.
Olric took a drink of his coffee, buttered foam leaving a faint mark against his upper lip. "From the Capital, I mean. Or talk to Balor or Ryis? Maybe somebody knows of another shipment coming through."
"I know where the iron comes from."
"Yeah but–"
"I can do this." March snapped his words and then his attention back to the ledger. "We don’t need to go begging the Capital for anything."
Olric stood there for a moment, drinking his coffee while he sorted another handful of scraps into another absurd arrangement. The silence stretched until Olric wandered around the side of the workbench and started looking to the crate beside him.
"I could go back in the upper parts of the mine and get more peat?" Olric suggested, "Errol's doing somethin' in the museum I don't think he'd notice if I popped a few boards off the entrance and squeezed in."
"You're not doing that," March reached for the box of fuel before Olric could get to it. "'nd stop going through everything, you'll get my piles mixed up."Series
- Part 2 of A Blacksmith's Guide to Falling in Love
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Jasper moved another step closer, angling herself enough to see what March was doing without interrupting him. Fine lines had been worked into the copper, curling outward from the base of the head in the shape of twisting vines. The pattern continued along the side in delicate loops, each leaf and tendril cut with such precision that it was difficult to reconcile the work with the same man who had been so dismissive of the old axe when she'd brought it in.
She had known he intended to melt the old head down and start over. He had explained exactly why he'd needed to, in considerable and almost irritating detail, and she'd left the shop assuming that was the end of the matter. She didn't expect him to spend extra time engraving the replacement, much less to do it with the kind of concentration that made the rest of the room disappear around him.
March's brow was furrowed slightly as he worked, his mouth set in a thin line of concentration. Every so often he would pause, shift the angle of the axe head by the smallest amount, and continue the next section of the vine without seeming to think about the movement.
Oh… she was staring.Series
- Part 3 of A Blacksmith's Guide to Falling in Love