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Chapter Text

Once, long ago and far away, the Sun and the Moon met each sunrise and sunset at an old willow tree by a duck pond to exchange greetings and office. One summer evening, as the Sun approached their agreed-upon spot, the Moon met her with a larger than usual smile.

It was an evening made to smile upon. The deep indigo of the sky seemed so close and soft you’d need only stand on your tiptoes to reach up and run your fingers through its star-dusted velvet. Now and then a slight breeze would stir the warm air, setting the reeds sighing and the willow-leaves rustling, dragging ripples through the pond's reflection of the sky and surrounding woods. The rose-rimmed horizon was the only thing left of the day, growing dimmer with each step the Sun took.

“My dear Sun,” The Moon began when she entered the canopy of the willow’s branches, “I trust there was nothing to delay the passage of your official rounds?”

“Nothing whatsoever my dear Moon,” she returned, “I pray there has been no complaint?”

“No complaint” replied he, “But an observation my Lady of the Dawn; for though I spend my days perusing the astral libraries of Isis and Thoth, and contemplating the mysteries sacred and profane I cannot but notice that as of late your rays linger at the door of a certain blacksmith; you send the four winds to blow and stoke the fires of his forge, command the Brùnaidh to calm the horses that he shoes, and blaze so fiercely at the high noon he strips to his breeches when he works outside lest he die of the heat.”

And here the Sun smiled as well.

“You observe with as clear an eye as ever my Lord of the Dusk, but I wonder that you comment at all; for though I spend my nights ripening the fruits of the fields into their proper colors, and debating the Archons and Aeons in their immaterial halls, I cannot but notice that as of late your rays shine bright through the window of this same blacksmith; that you set your light upon his late night labors, that you hush the crickets 'round his dwelling lest he be disturbed in his sleep, and set the Hyades running about this countryside when he leaves his clothes to dry outside overnight, so he must collect them in the rain while bare-skinned.”

At this they both laughed, for they were after all the closest of friends

“Well you bring him up,” said the Sun at last, “For he is well worth speaking on; as comely as he is clever, and as clever as he is caring. If you are sincere in your pursuit of him, I will not obstruct, though it pains me to give him up.”

“Where comes this surrender before battle even declared? I speak not to stake my claim but to share it. Have we not since those most ancient of days shared one sky, one duty, one goal? Have we not on the days and nights of eclipse danced in each others arms, two halves of an essential whole? Let us court this charming mortal together, that our conquest may be all the more assured.”

“Ah!” And how the Sun’s eyes gleamed at that thought!

“But we tarry too long, I’m afraid” continued the Moon, “and already the owl and the wolf stir in their dens, and the lovers and poets cry to start to their pursuits. Let us talk more in the morning. ”

“Indeed, even now the skylark and hedgehog wend to their dens, and the farmers and merchants grouse to end to their labors. We shall indeed talk on the morrow.”

“Good night, Aurora”

“Good night, Astraeus”

And the Sun retired along her path, leaving the Moon to watch her retreat. Only once she’d disappeared into the woods, drawing down the last traces of pink and purple from the sky did he turn and continue into the night.


Chapter Text

 Now this certain blacksmith lived some ways away, in a rude cottage snug to his smithy with only a horse and cat for company.  He stood halfway between the lord’s manor and the local village, and so received good custom from both sides, all the more due to his skill at hammer and anvil.  From sunrise to sunset his bronzed hands and body kept busy at work, and even when the day was done his mind was a heap of hot embers, needing only the slightest tinder to set it aflame once more. 

Some time after the events first mentioned, early one morning, the blacksmith was readying his shop for the day.  He’d just started the fire of his forge when he heard singing and strumming come through the open windows of his workshop, light and golden as the sunbeams that entered the room alongside it.  

You ask me where I live

Don't you know I live here now

But where is my one real home

This minute with you now

Such a voice caught the blacksmith’s attention at once.  Going outside, he met the source walking up the lane.

It was a woman, such as the blacksmith had never seen and never dared hope to see. Under a black silk shawl wrapped around her head she wore a fiery red kirtle that billowed about her, now clinging to her figure, now floating in great folds like the petals of a blooming marigold.  Her face was a series of warm browns curves weaving through each other, the arch of fine eyebrows swooping down unbroken into the button nose, the bow of the chin mirrored in the full plum-colored lips through which her voice rose.  Golden were the freckles that dappled her cheeks, the charms woven into the umber locs that spilled from her hood, the girdle looped round her waist and breast, and the sandals laced up her leg.  She accompanied herself on a mandolin of blonde wood, with gold strings, gold frets, and a rose in the pattern of the sun.  She waltzed as she walked, eyes turned down, laughing with each line she sang.

Home has been so many roads

That I walk down in my sleeping

Here with you I'm home at last

But it's not home for my keeping

And as the blacksmith watched her approach he felt keenly the shagginess of his nut-brown beard, and the scuffs of his leather apron and the holes worn through the knees of his rough woolen pants, and the coal dust that he’d long given up trying to clean from beneath his fingernails and out of his calluses.  

But before he could do anything about these the lady’s eyes fell upon him, and all the horses in all the worlds could not have torn him from the spot where her gaze pinned him.  Eyes of green faded to gold she had, containing in them the gaiety of spring and when she smiled - no doubt the reader may imagine for themselves what he felt at the sight of it.

“Good morning, sir.” She spoke no less melodically than she sang, her accent lilting.

“Good morning m’lady.  May I serve-help you?”

She laughed and if the blacksmith could have done so he would have set that laughter in the finest of crystal to place on his highest shelf.  “You may help me by tarrying a little while, and talking with me." And she sat on the low stone wall that rounded his property.  “For I’ve come a long way, and I’ve a long way to go yet, and I would like to rest."

"Rest as long as you like, I enjoy company while I work."  Which was not quite true - he didn't mind visits from people like the bookseller's son or the young lady of the manor, who knew what sort of questions to ask and when to let him work in peace.  But customers who pestered him with quibbles and queries were a different matter, and he fervently hoped the lady was not the latter.  "You may sit inside, out of the sun if you like."

The lady laughed even further at that, but she entered when he opened the gate, and settled herself with queenly grace on a splintered workbench he hastily cleared of tools and covered with canvas.  In the dim haze of his smithy she grew even more radiant, a ray of dawn’s light who’d somehow wandered inside the soot-dark shed.  The dust of the road and the workshop that hot morning did not seem to touch her - or rather, it became rarefied in touching her, turned into the dust of ground diamonds and pearls to shimmer in her glow.  

By contrast she delighted in the grit and the grime that surrounded her, eyes wandering over every inch of the shop.  While the blacksmith fed the fire with coal, she played with the metal whimsies on the table beside her, holding this or that up to the light and asking him about it.  The blacksmith swung between pleading she be careful, lest she hurt her fingers on an errant edge, and preening under her attention, elaborating on each device’s function and how it would better the lot of the common man.

And if he perhaps seemed to exaggerate an invention’s efficacy, or dramatize the tribulations he encountered in his work, the lady did not comment.

At last, the blacksmith’s guest rose to leave. The blacksmith entreated her to stay longer - the hot face had only just reached proper temperature, and if she was so interested in his work she must stay to see him forge something.  But the lady shook her head.

“The charm of our conversation has delayed me too long already.  But do not doubt we shall see each other again.”

“When, do you think?”  And the blacksmith hoped his beard and the glow of his forge covered his blush.

“Perhaps, tomorrow, perhaps the day after.  But” - and here she beamed widely - “My husband comes this way on his own rounds and you may see him this evening.”

The word “husband” entered the blacksmith’s heart like a needle, but he let it pass through.  “And how will I know him?” He said, keeping his tone courteous.

“You will know him as the fairest and finest of men, a wandering troubadour like me.  He is also a thinker and tinkerer like you, and I know you will be the best of friends when you meet him.”

The blacksmith doubted this but held his tongue.  “Thank you, once again for stopping by.”

“The pleasure was all mine.  May I keep this?”  And she held up an iron lug nut, pitted with rust.

“Oh - but surely something nicer  - “ The blacksmith gestured to his window.  “Take one of the roses on the wall, my mother planted them long ago and I don’t think there are any finer anywhere.”

“They are beautiful, but bound to fade, and I would prefer something substantial to mark this meeting.  You made this with your own hands, and if as the wise men say great artists put a little piece of themselves into everything they create, it shall be a piece of you to accompany me wherever I go.”  

The blacksmith struggled to say something as she tucked the nut into a pocket - that he was not a great artist but a simple blacksmith, that she would be taking a piece of his heart with the nut, that if she waited he could make something far more worthy of her - but all that came out was “If it please you, ma’am.”

“It pleases me very greatly.”

The blacksmith collected himself enough to accompany the lady to his door, then the gate, and only watched for a little while as she walked on, singing and strumming once again.

And there's a sunrise brimming over the sky

And there's a swallow teaching its young how to fly

Up on high, see how fast the summer passes by

Finally he heaved a sigh, and folded his arms.  “Well Mercury,” he said to the gray cat sitting on the open ledge of the smithy’s great window.  “You don’t see a woman like that everyday, do you?”

But if Mercury had any thought on the matter he kept it to himself, and went on washing his face in silence.

The blacksmith worked steadily that day, though his blows to heated iron landed a touch harder than usual, and when he quenched his pieces he drove them into the water tank with greater vigor than required.  But by sunset, he’d calmed himself enough to feel shamefaced about his behavior that morning.  

“I’m being a idiot is what it comes down to,” He said to Mercury while he closed down the shop.  “Cooped up inside, working day in and day out - and when I go to the village, it’s always the same faces!  So when someone new comes along, someone shiny and pretty - well, it’s not wrong to say she was pretty, a blind man could see she was! - I lose my head a little.  But if I see her again, I will be used to her, and will be able to receive her as an ordinary friend.”

Mercury’s response to this sound reasoning was a yawn and a stretch.

“Likewise,” he continued to himself as he walked round with grain to the stable.  “If her husband does appear this evening, I will be able to receive him as a friend.  For she was more than pleasant and intelligent, and it stands to reason her husband would be likewise.  If he is as she says I will enjoy him well enough, though - well every wife tries to see the beauty in her husband.  And if he is handsome as all that what of it?”  This last question was directed to Hammer the packhorse, who rivaled his master in strength and shagginess.

Hammer merely nosed at the grain bucket for his dinner, and the laughing blacksmith filled his trough.

After his own dinner the blacksmith settled in his favorite chair in the front room, lit a lamp, and set forth on his fifth attempt to finish Recordes Of The Passage Of The Flayme Being A Historie Of The Greate Craftsfolk of Shuryma.  Now and then his eyes cast a longing glance at the shelves in his study, where much-loved adventures and romances beckoned.  But each time he would shake his head and return with even greater purpose to his history, reminding himself that if he was going to buy five new books every time he passed the bookseller’s door, he owed it to his wallet that he at least read one of them eventually.

So intent was he on finally getting past chapter seven that it took some time for him to notice the sound outside.  But once he heard it he could not stop listening, a clear tenor accompanied by delicate chiming that wafted through the opened window, soft and silvery as the moonlight pouring through it.

Home is where I stayed last night

Tomorrow's anywhere

If you let me stay with you tonight

Tomorrow's home will be here

And even if he had not recognized the words as the same song from that morning’s lady, he would have known in his bones and the marrow of his bones that the singer was her husband.  He looked out the window.

It was a gentleman, as different from the lady as could be conceived and as beautiful.  Over a midnight blue cloak swirled with subtle indigos and violets, the man wore a white hood pinned about the throat with a silver brooch wrought in a curious design.  Silver infused the man’s whole being, from the way his shoulder-length hair faded from russet to silver, to the tips of the silver sandals that appeared from beneath the folds of his voluminous robe as he walked.  His face glowed from the depths of his hood, skin the color of bare bones or perhaps new parchment, and dotted with moles like specks of ink.  Grave thoughts had etched themselves in the furrow of his brow and lips, and carved hollows into his cheeks and angles into his nose.  With one hand he played a finger harp hanging from his pearly belt, made with ash-colored wood and argent tines, while the other hand gripped a gnarled walking staff made from the same colored wood, a glass lamp paneled with the faces of the moon hanging from the hooked end.  His voice was somber, almost a chant, as his face looked to the sky.

But I’ll tell you of the place that is never my home

Where I’ve lived all my life

Where I sing

A wishwanderer’s song

Without realizing it the blacksmith had walked to his window and leaned out.  Only when the gentleman reached the gate did the blacksmith realize where he was - but then the gentleman looked at him, and the smith was as pinned by his gaze as he was by the lady that morning.

Brown eyes, faded to gold, with the gravity of autumn in them.  They pierced him, mapped and measured him to the last atom and did not find him wanting.  The thin lips were stern, but held a surprising amount of softness for the lines about them.

“Good evening, sir.” The gentleman said as he approached the gate.  His accent rolled the words out of his mouth, low and musical.

“Good evening, sir.” And the blacksmith gave a slight nod.  “I’m afraid I’m closed for the day.”

“That is all right.  I only need use of your wall.” The gentleman sat at the same spot where his wife had that morning.   He looked to the sky, back to the blacksmith, with the air of one prepared to remain in place five minutes or five millennia.

The blacksmith lacked such patience and at last blurted out, “What brings you here?”

“I am a bard, a traveling singer,”  The gentleman turned slightly, his profile striking even in the dim glow provided by the starlight and his lantern.  “I and my wife go from town to town, bringing news in and bearing it out.  We tell people the new songs to sing, and if there are no new ones we write them ourselves.”  He ran his fingers along the finger harp, sending out a descending ripple of notes.

The blacksmith, knowing he could avoid the question no longer, rested his elbows the window sill with a sigh. “Sir, I believe I met your wife earlier today.”

“Did you now?”  Now the gentleman turned his whole body to face him fully, and just the hint of a smile set a flutter in the blacksmith's chest.

"Yes, she stopped for a rest as well.  She...spoke highly of you.  She said you were a tinkerer and a thinker."

The gentleman broke into a full smile and the flutter became a flurry of butterflies, for the blacksmith sensed the gentleman’s smiles were a rare thing, to be privileged and treasured.  

"She is sweet, to flatter me so."  With the end of his stick the gentleman started tracing patterns in the dirt of the blacksmith's little courtyard.  "Myself I count myself lucky to be married to her."  His gaze suddenly narrowed and his grin grew sly.  "Is she not one of the loveliest beings of creation?"

The blacksmith started, stuttered, and finally stammered out, "I couldn't honestly say such a thing, not having seen all of creation."

The gentleman laughed. “Clever and comely, a rare combination." He continued scratching lines into the dirt.  "Myself I am as my wife says a tinkerer and a thinker, and so I leave the talking to her.”  He gave a sidelong glance up to the blacksmith, his voice lowered “She is the one with the clever tongue, while I prefer to work with my hands."

The blacksmith felt the butterflies in his stomach again.  Then he took a proper look at the design the gentleman had etched into the dirt, and even upside down in the low light the excitement of recognition ran through him.

"That's a rune circle!"

"You recognize it?"

In one blink the blacksmith was at his library shelf rummaging through books and in another he was outside, excitedly showing his new companion his highly marked copy of the Chrysopoiea of Cleosauri and how he'd tried to use her alchemy to refine the metal ores he used in his work.

Discussion moved indoors where the light was better and the blacksmith could show the gentleman his library and notes.  The study-cum-workshop where the blacksmith tinkered with his designs was barely more polished than his smithy; scraps of paper and scraps of metal mingled freely on every available surface, the drawers were stuffed with abandoned prototypes and the blacksmith had only one chair with a broken back to offer his guest.  But the gentleman settled in comfortably at the desk, and studied the blacksmith's rude pages as if they were the work of the greatest thinkers.

Not a word or equation seemed to go by without the gentleman having some comment of high praise or gentle critique, and soon enough the blacksmith was bent low, arms resting on the desk, shoulder to shoulder with the gentleman to watch as he talked.  He was quick to grant his guest a pen with which to make annotations in an elegant hand, somehow always managing to find space to write the essence of his ideas among the blacksmith's scrawled notes and scribbled diagrams.

And if the blacksmith had a number of notebook pages devoted to practicing his signature, the gentleman said nothing of it.

At last, the gentleman set down the pen, and declared he must be going.  “For you've already kept me too late with your ideas, and I must get back to my wife.”

The blacksmith blinked, then remembered.  He was one of those souls capable of such focus that they forget past and future exist outside the present, and consequently need assistance in recalling both. 

“Your wife said you were wandering musicians."  He stood up to stretch, now painfully aware of how long he'd been leaning over.  "Will you pass by this way again?  I enjoyed your company - both of you.” He added hastily.

“Of course, though I cannot promise anything regular.  In the meantime - “ The gentleman picked up a stray brass cog from a corner of the desk.  "Allow me to take this, as a memento of how much I enjoyed our little symposium."  

"Please, let me get you something nicer."  Recalling the morning, the blacksmith went to the top of a nearby shelf.  "My father and I loved to collect stones when we were traveling - this one - " From among several rocks he selected one split in half, revealing the developing gems within.  "It's much nicer don't you think?"   And he held it up between thumb and forefinger, making it sparkle in the lamplight.

But the gentleman shook his head.

“It is beautiful, but the beauty belongs to nature and the mindless laws of heat and pressure.  This - ” and he held up the cog “- could only have been designed and made by the ingenuity and hands of man.   Your hands.  Will you let me keep it?"  And the grave brown eyes suddenly turned so warm and pleading as they looked up to the blacksmith that he could not have denied them anything, not even his own life.

"Of course you may."  

The blacksmith was pensive as he accompanied the gentleman to the door to collect his staff, and could only manage a low "Good night," when the gentleman bid him farewell at the gate and set off singing again.

Just another diamond day

Just a blade of grass

Just another bale of hay

Hope the horses pass

Just another life to live

Just a word to say

Just another love to give

And a diamond day

He watched until the gentleman disappeared around a bend of the road, then returned inside, still contemplating the day.  At last inside, he locked the door and turned to Mercury, who was laying fast asleep on the front parlor chair.

“Well Mercury" He said, waking the cat.  "I suppose he’s certainly a worthy man for that lady, eh?”

Mercury gave an irritated look then went back to sleep.

Chapter Text

Thus did the blacksmith look forward to the lady and the gentleman.

They varied their visits, now one, now the other, now both or neither appearing each day.  Sometimes they would visit for several days in a row, then almost a fortnight would pass before he saw them again.  Sometimes they would only talk for a few minutes, sometimes they would stay well on an hour.  The one constant was the lady only visiting during the morning, just after sunrise, and the gentleman only visiting during the evening, just after sunset.  

The lady always had some new question or comment about his latest work and idea, and proved a willing ear to even his most outlandish ideas.  In time the blacksmith invited the lady into his study as well, where she took note of his travelogues and atlases.  He had only travelled as far as Frostheld, he explained, as a child when his parents took him on one last trip in hopes of studying the great Frejlordian craftsmen.  Alas, the northern smiths jealously guarded their craft, and all that the blacksmith’s family brought home were a great ram’s horn carved with the mark of Ornn and the memories of the great trek there and back over land and sea.

“We always hoped to travel again” He said as the lady sipped the tea he now prepared each morning in hope of her. “But my mother’s health faltered after such a great journey, and by the time she improved my father passed away, so I took up his place here.  And now…if I left, who would be here to fix the people’s things when they break?”

In turn the lady told him of her own travels, where the authors had gone right or wrong in describing the Serpentine Delta or the Kumungu Jungle.  

“Every author has a reason for the way they write, and the things of which they write.  Fiore was a Noxian general seeking conquest and so sought to show the Kumungi as savages in need of a firm hand, while Ux’ik was a fierce patriot of her tribe and so sought to claim the Delta under ancient tradition.  History is the curation as well as collection of facts, and what facts are chosen say as much about the writer as the written.”

“Is it all so bad?”  The blacksmith frowned.  “You make it sound as if no one ever writes for the simple pleasure of putting down facts.”

The lady shrugged.  “Man does nothing without reason, even if that reason is no more than simple pleasure.  Pleasure, pride, profit…there is always some hope of gain, behind his actions.”

“What about charity, or giving gifts to someone who has no way of repaying?  What gain is there in that?”

“The pride that comes with knowing you have the power to provide something for someone, the pride of appearing a good person to others…” She sighed, sounding as if she wished not to believe her own words.  “The pride and pleasure of thinking oneself a good person.”

She looked away from the blacksmith.  “Forgive my cynicism, I have see much of the world, and much in it…disappoints me.” 

“I am sorry to hear that.”  The blacksmith reached out one hand to comfort her, then dropped it to the table, afraid to overstep.  “I must admit I - I think I feel the same way at times.  Even just from reading books - there is so much wrong and so little I can do to fix it.”  He clenched the hand on the table into a fist.

She rested her warm hand on his fist.  “But I have seen you work, and heard the way you talk of your friends.  You give all that you can give of yourself, your strength and your skill, and as you said you take joy in giving yourself.  That is all anyone can do.  And as I’ve said I’ve seen much of the world, and I’ve never seen anyone - anything - quite like you.”

And she gave the blacksmith a smile so bright he ducked his head to hide his pink cheeks.

The gentleman likewise talked of the world with the blacksmith, though their conversation was mainly on the laws which govern its workings, and how such laws may be broken, or at least circumvented. As he had brought the lady into his study, so he brought the gentleman into his forge.  There the blacksmith proceeded to show the gentleman his work in various stages of completion, the commissioned work of plowshares and scythes and horseshoes, and the personal work of machine components and prototypes.

“Look at this,” The blacksmith held up a yoke for oxen, engraved with runes.  “This enchantment makes the load lighter on the oxen, and allows them to work longer.  But I try to sell it to farmers and they shake their heads, saying ‘I can’t be troubled with some new-fangled thing, just give me what I always get.’”  

The gentleman frowned.  “Why not demonstrate its efficiency to them?”

“I’ve tried, but they still don’t listen.”

The gentleman frowned, but did not comment.

From there the two men inspected the workings of the smithy.  A great building of grey stone and slate roofing, it had been built by the blacksmith’s great grandfather and every inch bore testament to the labors of four generations.  The interior was rough but sturdy, the paved-stone floor worn flat from decades of feet around the hearth and anvils, the rude log tables and benches splintered and grooved from countless projects, the timbered roof beams stained with layers of ink-black soot.  Piece by piece the blacksmith showed the gentleman the various improvements he’d made to the building - the great chain-powered bellows to pump more air into the fire, the custom tools and grips he’d designed, and the modifications he’d made to the forge to better preserve the heat.

“Truth be told, I have an entirely new design for the furnace in my notebooks,” the blacksmith said as they sat upon the hearth of the forge.  “If my theories are correct, it will be able to produce higher quantities of iron, and of better quality”

“What holds you back from building it?”  The gentleman, sitting beside him, ran his fingers along the rough brick.

“Time and expense, mainly.  And besides…” the blacksmith gave an uneasy shrug.  “I’m not entirely sure my theories are correct, so I will have torn down my forge for nothing.”

“If your previous work is anything else to go by, I’m more than sure your theories are correct.”

“It needs to be certain, not just ‘more than sure’.  This - “ and he placed his palm flat on the brickwork between them “ - is where my forefathers worked, where I first learned to smith.  I do not think I could bear to take apart that history with my hands.”

The gentleman arched a brow.

“Well aren’t we the hypocrite?”

The blacksmith bristled.  “Hypocrite?”

“You shame your customers for not adopting your new methods, yet when the time comes for you to change, you cannot bear it?”

“You cannot compare the two, you ask me to give up my history”

“I ask you to sacrifice the dead for the living.  Must we ask the permission of ghosts to change the world?”  

Here the gentleman started to rant, in the voice of one who long rehearsed a speech in their mind and leaps upon the chance to share it with the first willing ear.

“Everywhere I see men caught in the noose of history and tradition, doing things the way their fathers did because they are too afraid to do otherwise.  They see the world and think it will always be like this, that their fields will always grow the same crops, that there will be the same people to buy those crops, that the woods, the water, the clean air will always be there for them.  They do not think that soil grows poor, that people move away, and that resources dry up, until it’s too late.  What then?”

The blacksmith finally got a word in.  “What you describe is true, but these things take time to happen - ”

“But they will happen, regardless of how long it takes. Time proceeds, indifferent to our pleasures and pains, and all the money, strength and prayer in the world cannot buy a second of it back.   And with time comes change.  We change or we die - and what is death but nature making the decision of change for us?”  

The gentleman stopped, suddenly abashed.

“I - forgive me, when you have studied and travelled much as I - it can feel the rest of the world is blind to its own self-caused suffering, and I struggle with why others do not see it so.” 

The blacksmith, who’d done his best to follow along, gave the gentleman an awkward pat on the back.  

“I - must admit I am not one for deep pondering on the workings of time or the world.  Such thoughts tend to all go over my head, or else send me spiraling.”  He hesitated, then let his hand go to the gentleman’s shoulder.  “But know at least I sympathize with wishing the rest of the world could see what you see.  I try to tell people my ideas but - I do not know the words to explain them, or else the words haven’t been invented yet.”

The gentleman laid his own cool hand over the smith’s where it rested on his shoulder.  “For what it’s worth I’ve enjoyed listening to your ideas, and telling you mine.  Perhaps the fault is not in the words but in the listeners, and only now have the two of us found another with the mind to understand us.  I have been unfair in calling you a hypocrite, for you at least recognize the need for change.  Forgive me, my dear smith”

He leaned into the smith with a sigh, closing his eyes and resting his cheek on the other man’s shoulder.  And the blacksmith, trembling, declared the gentleman forgiven.

So the blacksmith found his days brightened by his new friends.

Chapter Text

One thing did trouble the blacksmith about their visits though; for all that the lady and gentleman cared to question and cajole him, they were remarkably diffident about themselves.  Once he grew bold enough to ask each of them where they lived, that he could come and pay them back all the courtesies of their visits.  But both lady and gentleman declined his offers, saying he could not visit at the moment, giving riddling answers each time he pressed them on this point.  The same would happen when he questioned them more deeply about their pasts - their childhoods, their romance, their daily encounters, all was met with the same ambiguities and evasions.  Eventually the blacksmith gave up questioning, and accepted their presence in his life as a pleasant mystery.

Here and there, though, he would get some glimpse of their lives that would set him wondering more.

One morning, still muggy from last night's rain, the blacksmith found himself sweltering from the moment he woke up.  Between the stuffiness of the air and the blast of the forge he’d abandoned his shirt, and now worked with only his apron for protection as he pumped the bellows.

"I see this humidity affects you as well."

He spun, almost tangling himself in the bellow chains.  The lady was leaning into the opened window of the shop, elbows on the ledge, watching the blacksmith work. She'd removed her own black shawl, exposing the full extent of her riotous curls and décolletage.

Whether it was the sight of all the lady’s skin, or the awareness of his own, it took the blacksmith some time to regain his speech.  “I - excuse me, I’m not properly dressed.”

“Who could be, in this weather?  I wonder that you work at all - no don’t bother,” For the blacksmith went to grab his shirt.  “I will not discomfit you in this heat.”

Obedience (and perhaps a little vanity) won out over modesty, and the blacksmith remained bare chested.  He returned to the bellows, feeling the eyes of the lady on him as she entered the shop.

“I wonder that you walk at all in this weather - “ He said when he paused to add more coal to the fire.  “ - it must be more wading than walking, in so much damp.”

“It is, but I’m afraid duty calls.  Ugh,” She pulled the skirt of her kirtle away from her, revealing a shapely leg gartered in a thick gold band about the thigh.  “Everything sticks to everything else.  Would I could not bother with clothes and walk about naked."

The blacksmith gave a choked laugh at this, then a yelp of pain; a toss of coal sent a cluster of sparks flying, hitting him in the shoulder.

The lady ran to him, frantic and apologizing, but he shooed her away.  "Burns are a part of a blacksmith's life.  Get me the box under that bench, and I'll have it fixed."

In a blink, the lady had fetched the little cedar case and set it by the table against which the blacksmith now leaned.  She waved away his hand as it reached for the box, and opened it herself.  "I told you not to wear your shirt and now you suffer for it.  Tell me how to tend to you so I may make amends."

Obedience (and perhaps something else the blacksmith dared not examine) won out again.  Under his instruction the lady cooled the wound with water from the quenching vat, ground up the herbs and oil for a poultice, and prepared to apply it to his shoulder.

"Your hands are marvelous swift," He told as she pressed the salve into the burn.  "I suppose it comes from all your playing music."

"Playing and painting.”  Her hand applied the paste with a deft yet gentle touch, her fingers soft and warm against his skin.  “I've much experience in grinding and mixing pigments for my artwork."  

"You paint?"

She met his eyes with a strange, secret smile.  "Yes."

"Will you show it me one day?  You've seen so much of my work, I should love to see some of yours."

Still the strange, secret smile.  "There may be some difficulty in that.  My art is not always easily moved from where it is displayed."

The blacksmith prepared some question for this, but the lady now moved to wrap the blacksmith's shoulder in a clean bandage, and the gesture brought his attention to the gold jewelry of her neck and chest.

Jewelry barely described it - the gleaming bands wrapped around her and moved with the flexibility of a second skin, yet possessed the shine and texture of metal.  He'd caught glimpses before, but without her hood and shawl he could now appreciate the full extent of her decorations - interlocking chevrons at the shoulder, a high collar pattern around the neck, thin curves along the collar.  A tactile man, he longed to move his hands along those intricate lines and plates, and examine how they blended so cunningly with her skin - but would have bit his own tongue off before he dared ask to run his hands over the chest of his friend and his friend's wife. 

"I don't think I've ever seen you this quiet and still, smith."  The lady said as she tore off the end of the bandage from the roll.  "What occupies your mind?"

The blacksmith started, then realizing the angle of his eyes, stammered quickly, "I was only admiring your...jewelry," 

"Ah, yes."  One of her hands went to her neck to skim along the markings there.  "These are...old accessories, acquired in youth.  A gift, of sorts, from my family."

Further questions came to the blacksmith, yet even his unworldly nature could not miss the fade of her smile and the melancholy in her voice.  So for once he swallowed them.

The lady tied off the wrapping around the arm.  "There, that is taken care of."  She pressed her fingers to the white cloth.  "I am sorry, again."

"It's all right.  Can you pass me my shirt?  One burn is more than enough for the day."

Laughing she walked to the opposite table and tossed the garment to him; and so conversation turned to lighter topics until the time she left.  The wound, meanwhile, healed much more quickly than the blacksmith expected, for when he took the bandage off to inspect it at the end of the day, there was nothing on his shoulder but a flame-shaped red mark, more a sunburn than a scar.

The rain could not make up its mind to stay or go the rest of that week, now pouring, now drizzling, now merely lurking in grim grey clouds at the edges of otherwise clear skies.  The blacksmith had high hopes for good weather when he set out that morning with Hammer to market day, but as the evening closed in so did the thunderheads.  By the time the blacksmith got his pavilion packed away it was pouring, and by the time the blacksmith and his wagon had reached sight of his house, it was already dark and he was tired, muddy and footsore.

But then through the gloom he saw a familiar light and figure waiting at his wall, and that did much to ameliorate his soggy and sullen state.  He sped up to a trot and tugged Hammer’s reigns, lest he leave his guest waiting further in the dreary weather. 

“You could have waited inside, under the porch!” Said the blacksmith as he approached the gentleman.  But the gentleman shook his head.

“I did not wish to trespass.  Let’s get in before we both drown.”

The blacksmith quickly let him into the courtyard and house, before taking Hammer around the back to his stable.  When he finished unpacking and feeding his horse, he hurried back inside to find the gentleman in his kitchen, his drenched hood and mantle hanging from a hook. 

“I hope you don’t mind me taking the liberty of starting a fire and putting on a kettle.” Said the gentleman as the blacksmith entered.   When the blacksmith didn’t respond, the gentleman looked down to see that the thin cowl he wore was soaking wet.  It now clung tight and translucent to his body, revealing extensive metal braces wrapping the full length of his leg and around his waist and ribs.

“I do not blame you for your shock,” The gentleman said, stretching his arms.  “I suppose it’s rather a lot of metal for one as slight as I to wear around,”

In truth the blacksmith had been staring more at the raindrops trailing down to collect in the hollows of the gentleman’s delicate neck, and the wet strands of hair plastered to his alabaster forehead.  But he gladly seized on the less embarrassing excuse.  

“I'd noticed the leg brace before, but I did not wish to pry.  If I may say so the craftsmanship is extraordinary.”

“Indeed it is, for I made them.  May I trouble you for a towel or blanket with which to dry myself?  You may want to dry yourself off as well.”

The gentleman gave the blacksmith a meaningful look downward, making the other man realize his own clothes stuck all too tight to him as well.  At once he flew to his bedroom to fetch linens and dry clothes.

He returned to the kitchen in more suitable attire, with thick blankets and a set of clothes for the gentleman.  By then the kettle was whistling, and the gentleman pottering around the kitchen looking for tea and cups.

A minor quarrel sparked when the blacksmith and gentleman argued over who should prepare the tea, followed by another over whether the gentleman would borrow the blacksmith’s clothes while his remained to dry.  The blacksmith won the former, almost pushing the gentleman back to his seat and wrapping him in a blanket while fetching the tea ware himself.  The gentleman won the latter, saying that given the blacksmith was twice his size, his clothing would just fall off.  

They did use the clothes to pat dry the metalwork of the gentleman’s various braces, the blacksmith growing bold enough to examine them closely.  Flat curved panels of purple-grey metal that ran parallel to the calf and thigh formed the structure of the leg brace, held in place by thick leather straps around the limb and hinged at the knee and heel.  A dark brown leather bodice lined with wool wrapped around the gentleman’s rib cage, with more leather straps running down the waist and along the hips for additional support.  Along the length of the spine ran a interlocking chain of brass and steel gears, cunningly fitted together and capable of bending and twisting like flesh-and-bone vertebrae, reinforced on either side by curved brass and steel plates.  A smaller chain identical in construction, ran down the front along his sternum, and one final leather strap looped over one shoulder. Both leg and spine braces tread the fine line between strength and flexibility.  

"I cannot believe how delicate these joints are.” The blacksmith declared.  The gentleman had graciously permitted the blacksmith to kneel at his feet so the smith could more closely study the workings of his leg brace.  “I could not manage anything as fine with this, in my workshop.  Is that your work as well?”  The smith pointed to the gentleman’s cloak, to which was pinned his silver brooch with its still-strange symbol - a teardrop shape looped into a horned circle.  

“Ah…” The gentleman suddenly looked abashed.  “I made it, but the design was inspired by an old, dear friend.  She passed away, a long time ago.”

The blacksmith cursed himself for bringing up something so sensitive, even if he had no way of knowing.  “I am sorry to hear that.  She had a true talent if your brooch is anything to go by.”

“She did.”  The gentleman’s eyes remained on the brooch, looking far away.  “She was a gift I did not appreciate until it was too late.”  He closed his eyes with a sigh, put his head in his hands.

They remained silent for some time, the blacksmith wracking his mind for anything useful or cheering to say.  All he could manage was setting his hand on the gentleman’s braced knee, hoping that touch could say what words could not.

Slowly the gentleman lifted his head and opened his eyes.  They caught the fire just so and turned the color and radiance of sunlight through the leaves of a fall forest.  Looking to the blacksmith he leaned down, pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen in the blacksmith’s face.

“She would have loved you, dearly.  Get up, I’ve had you on your knees too long and your tea is getting cold.”

The blacksmith, blustering that his knees were fine, still got up and returned to his chair.  They talked of more pleasant things until the gentleman’s departure, promising the blacksmith that he would not stay out one moment longer than necessary in this foul weather.  It was not until next day, when the blacksmith caught his reflection in his mirror, that he noticed the strand the gentleman had touched had turned silver blond.

Chapter Text

The blacksmith could not tell when things began to change with the lady and the gentleman, or if things had always been this way and he’d been too shy or simple to notice.

Far from growing used to the beauty of the couple, each visit brought another moment of loveliness out for the blacksmith to cherish - the light of the sun outlining the shape of the lady’s waist and hip as she leaned by the smithy window, the sharp ridge of the shoulder peeking through the gentleman's collar if if he tilted his head just so, how the lady could tuck away a loose loc of hair with the simplest sweep of her hand, the way the gentleman’s fingers could bend at almost impossible angles to find the troublesome part of a faulty mechanism.  

Of course, the blacksmith saw nothing amiss in admiring them.  It was no different, he said to himself, than admiring the plants in his garden, or a completed tool in his smithy.

There was certainly much to admire about both recently.  In their youth the blacksmith’s parents had travelled, and his mother collected seeds or cuttings from each new locale for their home garden.  They grew to varying degrees of success around the premises - some plants had flourished in the foreign soil, while others managed no more than a few token leaves and a half-hearted bud each year as a sign of continued survival.  This summer, however, life infused even the most reluctant of bloomers.  Along the walls of the house the native nasturtiums and mandevillas clambered over and on top of one another, blossoms in every shade of orange and red bursting from beneath each leaf.  The hibiscus and althea collected from Ixtal opened their great pink petals, revealing magenta hearts and purple stalks that drew in the butterflies and bees.  All over the blacksmith’s little property, flowers of every shape and color -  yellow buttercups of the Frejlord, white jasmine of Shurima, even the mysterious violet nightshade of Icathia which was said to live forever but only opened its flowers in the presence of things from beyond this world - put forth their scent and blossoms.  

Most splendid, however, were the roses which flourished around the shop’s window.  Each day more of them flowered, crowding along the window ledge and filling the smithy with their sweet perfume.  Never had they grown so big that one bloom overflowed even the blacksmith’s generous palm, nor so soft and smooth that touching a petal was like touching silk, nor so brilliant in color - scarlet, powdered with gold when held in the light of the sun.

The blacksmith’s work took on unusual traits that summer as well.  His smithing was already of the finest quality - he’d well absorbed the lessons of his father and grandfather, and had furthered his knowledge considerably through his own study and experimentation.  But skilled as he was, the simplicity of his forge and the variable constitutions of his supplies had before meant the blacksmith could never replicate each time the quantities of air and wood and the heat of fire needed to turn raw iron into the sought-for steel.  Yet just as the blooms of his garden flourished, so too did the blooms of his refinery.  The flames of his forge had never burned hotter and the resulting product never come out more pure nor more pliable to work with. When he set a dull plowshare to the whetstone, or scraped the rust off an ancient shovel, the instrument left the smithy not merely repaired but wholly restored, nicks and notches filled in.  What new tools he crafted - down to the common nails and blades - seemed made of ores far finer than ordinary iron, tin and bronze, smooth and shining in the fire’s glow.  His implements kept their shape and sharpness through the worst that man or nature could offer, his horseshoes held fast to the most temperamental of steeds or over the most perilous of terrain, and his jewelry and decorations had a detail and luster unsurpassed by even the finest craftsmen of the Navori or Frostguard.  Time and time again the reds and blacks of common iron that passed beneath his hands and turned the unmistakable silver sheen of true steel.

But these extraordinary occurrences only mattered to the blacksmith as much as they gave him further topics of conversation with the lady and the gentleman.  

Despite her earlier comments the lady did admire his garden, picking a different plant each time to adorn her hair or belt.  As she gathered her preferred flora, she would identify its precise shade and tint, according to her artistic eye, teaching the blacksmith the innumerable colors of the world.  Blue became cerulean, azure, lapis lazuli; green divided itself into jade, olive, emerald; purple contained lavender, heliotrope, and other words that made her smile when the blacksmith tried to pronounce them.  

“Oh-burr-gine.” She said, holding up a pair of irises in just that shade. “It’s another word for eggplant.”

“So just call the color eggplant!  Or dark purple.”

“Yes but dark is not specific enough - violet, grape and plum may be considered dark as well.  Besides aubergine is more refined than eggplant.”

“All the more reason I’ll remain with eggplant.  Blacksmiths aren’t meant for so many syllables.”

The lady gave an amused hum, threaded one flower into a loop of her coiffure and tucked the other behind the blacksmith’s ear.

Since she’d treated his injury, not a day went by where the lady did not find a way to touch the blacksmith.  Her shoulder would press against his when they leaned over some new invention, her hands would straighten his shirt or pull away a straying thread, and more than once she reached out to cup his face and turn it to her when she talked. 

Her tendency for proximity had only grown when he admitted to owning a lute, a relic of his father’s, and she insisted on him playing for her.  In truth he’d never bothered to properly master the instrument, for he struggled with completing any task or habit that he did not immediately excel at.  Yet the lady was so eager to teach him, so patient with his impatience, he began to take pleasure in learning to play, and met the challenge of memorizing notes and finger positions not with frustration but with determination.  

“Ach,” He stretched his digits, cramped from their latest bout of plucking at the old strings.  They had moved into the workshop to practice, the lady sitting sidesaddle on a cleared table, the blacksmith at a bench next to her.  “How can you remember so many chords so perfectly?  My poor brain has space for only one at a time, and the one it can remember it plays badly.”

“I remember it the same way you remember all that you’ve learned about smithing and metalwork; a lifetime of practice and the need to make a living from it.” She strummed her fingers along the strings of her mandolin.  “Still I would not wish to overtax a mind as wonderful as yours, so we will consider today’s lesson concluded.  Will you indulge me in listening to a new song?”

Both the lady and the gentleman were fond of performing their latest compositions for the blacksmith, and despite his protests that he knew little of music and less of poetry, they insisted on soliciting his opinions about them.  The blacksmith did his best to offer critique, for he knew very well how frustrating if flattering it is to find only praise when one is looking for improvement.  But the couple sang with such skill and wrote with such feeling that he oft found himself without words at the end of an offered song, struggling to think of what he could possibly add to such perfection.  And the way they looked at him when they performed - an expression of tenderness and longing that dissolved the external world, leaving performer and audience suspended in time and space, beyond reach of anything outside themselves.  

The lady now fixed him with such a look as she began:

I love your eyes when you look away

Thinking somewhere else of what ought to be

When they're suddenly brown for a moment of time

Then the colour goes when you look at me

I love your hands as a part of you

As they write a word just by staying still

When you talk they move, painting what you say

So I understand more than words can tell

Light and clear, the lady’s voice made the blacksmith think of the wind rolling across wide open farm fields and meadows, and the high clear cries of the larks as they rode and dipped upon the wind.  His heart rode and dipped with the song, and he gave a deep sigh when she’d finished.

“Well?” She set aside her instrument.  “What do you think?”

The blacksmith paused some time to collect his thoughts, warm under the lady’s look.

“Gorgeous.  But melancholy…I think I liked the beginning best, about the eyes and hands.”  He fiddled with his own, at once aware of how often he gestured when he spoke.

The lady strummed a few notes.  “I think those parts are my favorite as well.  One hears all sorts of tributes to blue or grey or green eyes, but no one appreciates the richness and subtlety of brown ones.”  She cocked her head, her own eyes large and limpid as they looked up to the blacksmith from under thick curling lashes.  “Personally I think a pair of brown eyes, set in the right face can be beautiful, yes?"

The smith, who had been thinking of how the lady’s eyes shone in the dawn’s rosy light, stammered “Yes, quite.”

The lady smiled, which did not help the blacksmith’s stammering.  "For instance..."

- And she picked Mercury up where he had settled in her lap, for he was ever drawn to the warmest spot in the house.  "This fellow here has the loveliest eyes I've ever seen in a cat."  She cradled Mercury in his arms.  "So bright, and such a pretty shade of copper they are!"

The blacksmith chuckled to cover up the inexplicable twinge of disappointment in his chest.  "Yes, he's a very handsome cat.  It's his only quality I'm afraid, he's useless as a mouser."

"His handsomeness is his usefulness."  The lady nuzzled Mercury, who accepted her caresses with closed eyes and purrs.  “Pretty boys like him aren’t meant for hard labor but rather for serving as objects of decoration.”

The blacksmith rolled his eyes, but joined her in petting Mercury.  “I suppose he excels in that regard, he certainly sleeps sound enough and often enough to qualify as a object.  Lazy cat,” (He said to Mercury) “I’m out every day sweating my brow and breaking my back to put food on the table meanwhile the only thing you chase around my house are sunbeams to sleep in.”

“Oh my, is someone jealous?  Does someone wish they could spend all day sitting in his master’s lap getting kissed and cuddled and spoiled?”

The blacksmith’s words of protest against desiring such indolence ran headlong into the pictures conjured by the lady’s words, visions of such voluptuousness that it was only with great effort that he could finally articulate, “Among other flaws in your logic, I’ve been far too big for anyone’s lap for some time now.”

The lady only offered a smirk for comment.

The gentleman, by contrast, did not initiate touch, but rather invited it.  He never outright complained of his aches, but he did became more open in showing signs of them - a wince as he shifted his leg, a rubbing of the shoulder where the strap of his brace lay.  The blacksmith quickly attuned himself to such signs, and when his friend leaned into his staff or gave a grunt of pain, he was quick to offer his hands against the ailing limb.  Never one to waste time, the gentleman would insist on reading the latest volume the blacksmith had purchased or inspecting some work in progress while the blacksmith tended to him.  For the most part this arrangement proved efficient, though the gentleman admitted to being distracted at times by how well the blacksmith could knead the soreness from his lax body.

“The legends about blacksmiths must be true,” The gentleman said during his own visit several days later, sat at the study table of the blacksmith while the latter massaged his shoulders.  They were looking at a new lantern the smith had designed, which in theory would give brighter and longer lasting light than ordinary candles.  “Your hands are imbued with magic.  Gods that feels good against my old bones.”

The blacksmith laughed. “You’re not old, you just act like you’re old.  Always fussing over something.”

“Like what?  What do I fuss over?”  This last was directed at Mercury who, always drawn to wherever was softest, had curled up in the gentleman’s lap and nestled within the folds of his robes.

“My handwriting for one, as if anyone else besides me or you will read it.  How the Nazumans don’t get enough credit for preserving the works of pre-Rune War Shuriman mages.  Bards who rhyme a word with itself.”

“I can list three separate times you failed to read your own writing,” replied the gentleman evenly, “The Nazumans are responsible for all we know about the Void, and I have the right to call out those who discredit the noble profession of troubadour.  This idea of soaking the wick in salts to make its light last longer is ingenious," The gentleman continued, returning to studying the lamp in his hands.  "But you are still limited by the small surface area of the string.  Perhaps you may soak a fine cloth mesh in the salt solution and use that as a wick..."

The blacksmith assented that such a solution could work, but then arose the issue of materials, and finding a cloth that could be easily obtained  From there, the gentleman suggested several possibilities, and the conversation went on for several minutes in this vein until the gentleman pulled his finger harp to him from where he had set it on the desk.  "I hate to interrupt such a fruitful discussion, but I have written something new, and wish your opinion on it before I must take my leave.  Will you indulge me?"

"You know I always will."

Sitting up and turning in his seat to face the other man, the gentleman watched the smith while he plucked the tines of his harp, eyes dark yet glittering as he sang:

I climbed the peaks of glass with you

And walked a world of brass with you

And gladly left the glaring streets

To share a bed of grass with you

You made the elder burn for me

And cut the bird-filled thorn for me

And through the ripening summer days

You bade the white road turn for me

A slow tune, the gentleman’s dark timbre provided compelling contrast to the high sweet notes of the harp, like a forest slumbering at midnight under the brilliant glimmer of the myriad stars.  Something rose in the blacksmith's throat at the longing in the gentleman's voice, and the way he drew out and faded the last lines. 

“It’s beautiful as usual.”  The blacksmith opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed until the end of the song.  “I cannot think of anything else to say to it.”

“You can tell me what you like about it.”

The blacksmith averted his gaze to the rough grain of the table, for the searching quality of the gentleman’s honey-colored eyes had a way of scattering his thoughts and words.  “The lines about climbing the peaks of glass and cutting the thorns, they remind me of old fairy tales.  And about finding someone worth abandoning the world for, to sacrifice glory for the sake of sharing a bed of grass.”  The blacksmith did not add that of late his own bed had been felt oddly cold and oversized, even as he layered on all the quilts and pillows in his house.  

“I cannot claim full credit for the line.  It was suggested by some lines from an old Ionian love poem.  ‘What need have I for a palace?  Rather to lie with your where the weeds grow thick.’ That is its essence but I fear it loses something in translation.”

“It's lovely, even so.”

“It is,” He began petting Mercury.  “Though the woman who wrote it was a noble lady living in an emperor's palace.  I suspect someone actually living and lying where the weeds grew thick would have a quite different opinion.  My goodness you are friendly today.”  This last was directed at Mercury, now occupied with rubbing his face and body into the gentleman’s hand and belly.

The blacksmith chuckled.  “He’s marking you with his scent, as a warning to all other cats that you are his property.  I doubt there’s not a corner of this house and yard that he has failed to rub himself against.”

“I suppose that includes you?”

“Of course,” The smith sighed dramatically.  “What is the saying? ‘In a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats’?”

“Indeed, though I daresay he’s a better master than most.”

“Oh yes, he’s most reasonable.  He only takes his constitutionals on my bed in the middle of the night, only gets underfoot when I am midway through the most difficult work and only catches mice when they are already dead and rotted.”

“Well I, for one, am honored to be owned by such a distinguished gentleman.  Is there someone else you would rather serve, my dear smith?”  And he scratched behind Mercury’s ears, eliciting happy chirrups from the cat.  

The blacksmith must have made some odd face, for when the gentleman glanced back to him he laughed.  "Very well you may have your scritches too, don't pout so."  And getting to his feet, the gentleman let go of Mercury to pat the smith on the head, making the latter smile even as he grumbled at why the gentleman would think he was jealous of his cat.

Chapter Text

“Dear smith,” said the lady one day as she prepared to leave.  “Would you be so kind as to do me a great favor?”

“Name it and it will be done.”  The blacksmith put down his lute and picked up his tongs.

The lady’s brow curved upward.  “You do not wish to know what I ask of you?.”

“It matters not.”  The blacksmith set his latest piece, a plowshare in the fire to heat. “You and your husband have brought me so much pleasure these past few months, I've long sought a way to repay it.”

This was severe understatement.  The blacksmith’s private notebooks were littered with ideas for showing his appreciation of the lady and gentleman, each one rejected, revisited, and rejected again at least a half-dozen times.  The most promising was a song - the melody had come quick enough, a happy skipping sort of tune, but the only lyrics he could come up with were far too intimate to be shared yet.

“It does matter.  What if I asked you for some impossible or immoral task?  Then you would have promised yourself to something beyond your ken or virtue.”

“But you would never ask me that,” The blacksmith said this in the same tone one would use to state the sky was blue, or two came after one.  “You are too sensible and too good to ask such things of me.”

The lady colored ever so slightly.  “May I be worthy of such trust for all my days!  But you are right, my request is simple enough.  I have been hired for business yonder, and will be away from home for sennight.  I sorrow to be separated from my lord and lover so long, as does he, for we are used to seeing each other morning and evening.”

“Indeed,” the blacksmith said, watching the iron heat. “So where comes the favor?”

“I ask that you look after my husband while I am away.  I ask you to be there for him in all the ways I would be, were I there.  Tend to him in my stead.”

The blacksmith cocked his head, amused.  “Where is the favor in asking of me something I already do?  At the very least I hope I have been attentive to him during his visits.”

“Oh, you've been wonderful to us both!  He loves calling upon you as much as I.  We adore talking of your latest doings amongst ourselves."

That he appeared as much in their thoughts as they did in his gratified the blacksmith beyond mere vanity, and he put as much of that gratitude as he could into his next words: "I am glad to hear it."

“But without me", continued the lady, shouldering her mandolin. "My husband will be all alone, and with his tendency to solitude I fear he will go a full week without conversation or company.  So swear to it.  Swear you will attend to my husband while I’m away, that you will not shirk anything he asks of you."

Now the blacksmith curved his eyebrow.  "And what would anything be?"

"Nothing that is not sensible and good I promise," replied the lady, chuckling.  "Just the natural continuation of what has already begun.  But as reassurance, I will give you something to pass on to him.  Come here."

Indulgent, the blacksmith walked to her, one hand out to take whatever she planned to give.  What she gave was a kiss to his cheek, standing on her toes to press her lips to the corner of his.

She was already back on her heels smiling up at him by the time he'd regained the presence of mind to react.  And all the reaction he could manage was to press his offered hand to his face, and wonder if the way his skin burned was only in his mind. 

“Promise you will give my husband that at least once while I am away."  Her expression grew serious.  “It will not trouble you, I hope, to pass that along to him?”

“No! - No not at all!” The smith replied, halting, "I have shared many such with my friends!"  Which again, was not quite true - exuberant as he was with his physical affections, at most he’d only given quick pecks of brotherly greetings to friends and family.  Nothing that had lingered the way the lady had.

Her eyes sparkled and she bit her lip, but she said no more on the topic.

The gentleman's nightly visits offered their typical pleasures of mechanics, conversation and song, but the blacksmith's mind returned ever to the promise he’d made to the lady.  Time and time again when they leaned in together to examine a page or a prototype the smith willed himself to lean in just a little further and brush his lips against that smooth skin.  Surely no one knew the gentleman better than his own wife?  Surely she would not have placed this prank upon him if she knew her husband would not at least tolerate it?  But each time his courage failed him, and he shrank back, and as time went on he could not miss the puzzlement that flickered across the gentleman’s face each time it happened.

Finally, the evening before his wife was due to return, the gentleman requested they go outside, as it seemed a pity to spend the whole visit indoors when such excellent weather beckoned.  So out they went, sitting side by side on the low stone wall and looking out across the small lane to the view commanded by the smith's house.

It shamed the smith a little, to think of how long it had been since he'd appreciated the prospect of his home.  All nature drowsed in the twilight, warmth and stillness settling over everything with gentle yet palpable weight.  In the daytime undulating meadows of long grass and wildflowers surrounded the property, sloping up to low hills crowned with deep forests gnarled by age and weather.  Darkness turned the landscape into shapes of varying deep blue shades, with only the tops of scattered trees catching enough starlight to be seen.  And such starlight!  A thick stellar band crossed the sky, blurred by clouds like a column of smoke rising from an unseen celestial fire.  And as a fire releases sparks, so did this one scatter further countless stars to wink and glitter across the dome of indigo sky.  In the dozing fields the fireflies winked and glittered in reply, intermittent green flecks of light drifting back and forth on a lazy breeze while their unseen cricket brethren pulsed and trilled all around.

Beside him the gentleman sang his latest, voice and instrument a murmur as if he dared not wake the scene.

I love coming home from far across the sea

I pick my little wee wifey up and set her on my knee

See how my eldest boy has grown whilst I've been away

See here's a boat I've whittled for thee, especially for thee

I've thought of you every day

I love coming home from far across the sea

And taking up my walking cane and passing through the trees

I wander on the hillside, the doggie at my heel

The bracken waves a welcome to me

"Where have you been? We've missed you a great deal"

“I suppose I am the wee wifey in the scenario, but the sentiment goes both ways.” The gentleman set his finger harp aside.  “Silly perhaps, to miss her when she will be back so soon.”

“Not at all.”  The smith weighed his words, then went on.  “When either of you miss a visit, even for a day, I miss you dearly.”

“And we miss you.  How easily you have slipped in between us!”  The gentleman moved closer, fingers brushing against the smith’s.  “My wife and I always considered ourselves formed perfectly for each other, yet somehow we have found places for you to fill in.  So it is from such care that I must ask you, what ails you?”

The blacksmith started.  “Ails me?” 

The gentleman rested his chin on the smith’s shoulder.  “You have been out of sorts this week.  I thought at first you shared my melancholy at the absence of my wife, but even with her returning on the morrow you still seem at odds with yourself.”  

The smith steeled himself, no longer able to avoid the promise. “Your wife asked me to give you something.”

“Well,” The gentleman said, all curiosity and innocence, “May I have it then?”

Taking a deep breath, the blacksmith kissed the gentleman’s cheek.  So short and brief, he barely bumped his lips against the hollow of the other man’s skin before sitting back, heart racing.

In the dim light provided by the stars and the gentleman’s lamp, the smith saw no trace of upset or alarm on his face.  Only half-lidded eyes and a smirk.

“Good smith, I know my wife’s kisses, and they are not this tepid thing.  Kiss me properly, as she no doubt kissed you.”

Panic followed on the heels of relief, the blacksmith swallowing to buy himself time.  Then, firm and deliberate, he kissed the gentleman again, making sure to set his lips to the same spot and for the same time that the lady had.  This time he only pulled back a little, hoping and dreading the gentleman’s response.

The gentleman wrapped one hand around the blacksmith’s head, drawing circles with his cool fingers through the blacksmith’s hair.  “Much better my dear smith.” He breathed against the smith’s bearded cheek.  “I felt her fire that time, and yours beside.  You have my gratitude and my wife’s.”

Then the gentleman kissed the smith on the opposite corner of his mouth, and whispered, breath hot against the smith’s lips.

“And that is repayment for your first attempt, trifling as it was.”

The smith had hoped, or dreaded, that would be the end of the topic, and indeed when the lady visited the next morning she made no mention of her request or his fulfillment of it.  Then, as she was preparing to take her leave she said, most casual, “Thank you for taking care of my husband when I was away.  He appreciated it as much as I did.”

“Oh, of course.”  The blacksmith emptied his second pail of water into the quenching vat, suddenly unable to look her in the eye.  “No trouble at all.”

The answer did not satisfy her, for she went with him outside as he walked to his well with the empty pair of pails.  “He did tell me though, that you had some trouble in passing along my token.”

“No! - No, not at all I just was unprepared for passing it along.”  He hooked one pail to the rope and lowered it in, trying to think of where even to start.  “I have to admit I am - less than skilled in such matters.”

“What, in kissing?  Surely not you.”  She leaned against the well, arms folded. “You must pardon my forwardness, but with parts such as yours, I’d imagined you’d be quite the charmer among the village.”

The blacksmith gave a rueful grin.  “My apologies for disappointing you, but I’m afraid I’ve not much experience beyond a few stray kisses and groping.  I do not have you and your husband’s gift for words, so proper wooing is beyond my skill.”  The pail now full he began pulling it up.  “Perhaps a man of my age ought to have sown his wild oats better, but it is what it is.”  He replaced the first full bucket with the second empty one.

The lady’s tone grew pensive, her eyes tender.  “A man may sow his oats whenever where ever and however much he pleases, it is no one’s business but his. Here, let me.”  She took the rope from him and with a strength that belied her slender frame she pulled the second bucket up and unhooked it.

The blacksmith thanked her, then picked up a bucket in each hand and started walking back to the vat, slower to avoid splashing.

“Still,” The lady followed behind him, returning to her usual playful manner.  “It seems a shame that natural gifts such as yours would go unappreciated.”  At once at his back, her arms suddenly wrapped around him, and all his strength fled when those fine chestnut hands brushed him, her body pressed against his spine.  “These apples in the cheeks untouched - “ She stroked his cheeks “These cherry lips untasted - “ she tapped his lips - “these ripe firm peaches unbitten - “ She cupped his chest, giving his paps a good squeeze.

The blacksmith nearly dropped his pails, yelping.  The lady let go, laughing as she twirled in front of him.

“Pardon me again for my forwardness, dear smith, but I never could keep from touching beautiful things.” And she hopped up to steal a giddy kiss on his nose.

Still laughing she skipped ahead through the smithy and away, leaving the sputtering blacksmith to recover his balance and his buckets lest he spill his load.

The gentleman’s visit the following night started ordinary enough, meeting in the smithy to review new improvements.  But during a lull in the conversation, the gentleman sighed, then hoisted himself up to take a seat on the work table by the opened window.

“I appreciate your discretion, good smith, but I’m afraid I must apologize for my wife’s giddiness yesterday.”

“Her - oh yes!”  The tips of the blacksmith’s ears heated.  “It was nothing, just playfulness.  I assure you, I bear her no ill will.”  Quite the opposite, in fact, but the blacksmith had no intention of mentioning that.

“Still, we’ve agreed you are owed a chance at retribution.  Allow me, therefore, to pay my wife’s debt.”  Cool as you please he undid his belt and pulled open his shirt.  “There, now take whatever liberties you like with mine own person.”

The blacksmith moved back in alarm, as if the expanse of pale skin now gleaming under the moonlight would bite if he got too close.  “I - it is hardly fair you should pay for your wife’s indiscretion, sir.”

“You’re right, I fear my bosom is nowhere near so luscious as hers, and therefore it is not quite an equal exchange.”  The gentleman looked down mournfully, a hand resting on his chest just above the top of his brace. 

“That’s not - sir, removing your shirt was unnecessary, I was clothed when your wife touched me.”

“Were you now?  Well consider this bareness interest to accompany the principal.”  With a long suffering air he arched back and pulled his knees apart.  “Now, good smith, inflict your vengeance for my wife’s dissipation.”

Realizing he’d lost in more ways than one, the smith stepped forward between the gentleman’s legs.  He did his best not to think about how the gentleman’s neck curved long and white as a swan’s, or how his grip would span the width of the gentleman’s waist.  With great effort he managed a quick pat of the latter’s chest with both hands.  

“There, all paid.” He tried to back away but the gentleman’s thighs sprang tight around his hips, and again for all his strength he was trapped.

“Was that really all she gave to you?”  The gentleman pouted as if disappointed with the laxity of his punishment.  “You are not holding back are you?”

“No, not at all!” The blacksmith’s voice squeaked more than he intended, so he swallowed before continuing his lie.  “It really was no more than that, I barely even remember it.”

“Very well I suppose, but there’s still one part I haven’t paid for yet.”  The gentleman sat back up, his face now inches from the blacksmith’s.  “My wife mentioned she went so far as to kiss you on the nose.”  He shrugged. “Again my nose is perhaps not so dainty as hers - “

“It’s lovely,” It slipped out before the blacksmith could stop it.  For it was a lovely nose the gentleman had, charmingly crooked in the way it broadened and narrowed down his face.  Its sharp tip now scrunched in amusement as the gentleman smiled up at the smith.  

“You really think so?”

“Yes,” And before he could lose his nerves or find his sense the blacksmith popped a kiss to the bridge of the gentleman’s nose, then the tip.  “There!  Would I kiss you again for free if it were a punishment to kiss such a nose?”

The gentleman, at first dazed, laughed heartily as he hugged the smith, nuzzling his neck.  “I shall allow it this time but don’t think you can kiss your way out of future arguments, good smith.“

He kissed the blacksmith’s nose back with a loud smack, then rubbed his cheek against the smith’s beard and purred into his ear “I do, however, look forward to seeing you try.”

All that night the blacksmith tossed and turned in bed, kept awake by longing and craving for the couple.  Even when he finally fell asleep he was tormented with dreams of kissing first one, then the other, then both kissing him, then neither kissing him but kissing each other, and further visions of such lust and lubricity that for the sake of his dignity they will be tactfully skipped over.

The day proved no less a trial.  Long after the sun had risen and it had become clear that the lady would not come that morning, his forge remained unlit, his tools idle on their benches.  All thoughts of ordinary work were lost as he paced and lay about, dizzied by the heights of raptures and pits of his despair.  When night came, without the arrival of the gentleman, he flopped back into bed exhausted from sheer thinking.  And when he awoke, he realized then what he must do.

This time he managed to light the forge, but instead of working he waited at the threshold.  With relief and anxiety uneasily mixed, he heard the lady’s voice and watched her come up the lane.

He sat on the doorstep

With his arms around his knees

Watching the passers by and wondering why

They don’t see what he sees

He stands on your doorstep with his life under his feet

Arms full of roses watchfulness

He’ll be what he will be

Her song came to a jarring stop when she saw the blacksmith at the door, and rushed up to him. 

“Smith, you’re trembling! Are you ill?  Are you injured?  What’s wrong?”

“No further!” He stepped back from her outstretched arms.  “Touch me not, until I say my piece.”

Now it was the lady who trembled, and she dropped her arms reluctantly. Even so it was several long moments before the blacksmith spoke.

“What am I, to you and your husband?”

The lady gave a confused smile “You are our blacksmith.”

How could that answer give him so much pleasure and pain?  “I may be yours but are you mine?”

“Of course we are - “

“No.” The torrent came loose inside him.  “How can you be?  You know everything of me.  You have been in every inch of my home, save the bed- You have eaten my food, drunk my tea.  And what am I given from you?  A few hours of company a week?  Some idle talk and songs?”

What was left of the lady’s smile withered away.  “Idle talk?  Is that all our friendship is for you?”

“That is all you allow it to be!”  The blacksmith paced the inside of his smithy, overcome.  

“I cannot stand it.” He finally said.  “I cannot live only in the moments you deign to give me - yes deign,” for she exclaimed at this, “for you are always coming and going on your own terms, in your own time.  And I am left to wait and wonder when - if - I will see you again.”

For the first time in knowing her, the blacksmith found the lady speechless.  She looked everywhere but him, wringing her hands until she found a thin, timid voice.  

“We had no idea - please let us make amends.  What do you want from us?”

“What do I want?” The blacksmith barked a broken laugh.  “I want to have you day and night.  I want you to paint the walls of my cottage and smithy in all the colors you know.  I want your husband to do the fine metalwork that my hands are too big and clumsy to manage.  I want you both to give me your poetry and music because I have nowhere near enough of either to voice what you make me feel.”  He paused, drained after dredging up such truths from the depths of himself.  “All this I want.  But I will settle for knowing just who or what you both are.  I will not have any more secrets between us.”

For the second time, the lady was speechless.  She covered her opened mouth but her chest and shoulders still heaved with the strain of breathing.  Realization and shame dawned in her eyes, now rapidly blinking away wetness.  She drew her hand down just long enough to force out:

“You would not believe us if we told you.”

“Why not?”  The blacksmith’s voice took on a note of hysteria.  “Am I too untrustworthy or merely too stupid for the truth?”

“No!  No - never!  Call us stupid and untrustworthy - not you, never you!”

“Then give me the truth or leave, before uncertainty wrecks me - “

She swallowed the rest of his words with her mouth, throwing her arms around his shoulders as she kissed him.

She kissed the way she sang, all consuming and all embracing of his senses.  The spiced scent of her hair, the desperate noises at the back of her throat, the heat of her body through the silks of her dress, the sweetness of her mouth flooded through him, and how he wished he could drown his anguish in them, forget his doubts and let things remain as they were - 

 - but no, a blade of grass cannot be bent forever back upon itself, nor can a wire of metal be stretched into infinite thinness.  All things have their breaking point, and the blacksmith had reached his.

With all the effort he could summon he broke off their kiss.  Neither spoke, merely looked at each other.  Her gold freckles sparkled bright under the sheen of their mingled tears, her plumped lips trembled as she tried to keep down her sobs.  Then the lady unwrapped her arms from his neck, and shifted back.

“Accept that as apology, and thanks for the pleasure you have given us this summer.  I grieve that my husband and I allowed this…affair to affect you so much.”

The lady turned and walked back to the open door of the smithy, for once leaving the mandolin strapped against her back.  She stopped, one hand resting against the door resting against the doorframe. She turned her head enough that the blacksmith could see her rounded features in stark relief against the morning light pouring in, their outline so sharp that he fancied he’d cut himself if he’d indulged in his whim of tracing the curves of her face.

“I take my leave of you, and promise this will be my last visit.  Neither I nor my husband will trouble you again.”

Then she turned out the door and was gone, with not even her usual singing to mark her walking away.  The smith folded his hands, looked down to his feet and willed them not to walk to the door so he could follow her departure with his eyes.

As the blacksmith had - not hoped, but assumed as probable - the gentleman appeared that night.  The smith had waited for him as well, sitting on the wall in the place where the gentleman had first sat so long ago.  Eyes fixed ahead on nothing in particular the blacksmith did not turn to look when he heard the mournful song.

Hidden in your every move

Are the words that you will never say

Stars and moons are not your style

I've known for a while this is not your way

There was a rustle of fabric, a tap of wood against stone as the gentleman sat next to him, and still the blacksmith did not turn.

“Good smith,” the gentleman said at last, in a halting tone not at all suited to the regal voice the blacksmith knew so well.  “I have come to offer my own apologies.  Believe me when I say we are sincere in our affection for you, that we never dreamed we would hurt you this way.  Were it in our power…”

A pause, then a slim hand on his shoulder.

“I swear this will be the last time.  Please, one word before I go, though I do not deserve it.”

The blacksmith turned, and crushed the gentleman in his embrace as he kissed him.

Even in his passion he was mindful of the gentleman’s condition.  One hand went to support his spine, the other to bury itself in that fine soft white-brown hair.  For all his bones and angles the gentleman proved pliant against the smith, as if the heat and fire of his heart had melted the other man, made him pour like molten metal into the crevices of the smith’s body.  When the smith broke off the kiss the gentleman rested his head against the smith’s chest, shaking with eyes tightly shut.  The smith indulged one last time in running his hand along the gentleman’s back, making him shudder, then pushed him gently away to look him in the eye.

“Repayment”, said the smith, “For what your wife gave me this morning.”

The gentleman stared at him, misery all over his face.  His lips moved silently, as if he’d one last thing to say, but in the end he only shut his mouth and gave the smith a stiff nod.  Stiffly and slowly as well he got up, picking up his stick and pulling up his hood.  Then silent he glided down the path, stopping once just before he went out of view and making as if to turn, then continuing on.

Chapter Text

Only an iron will and commitment to his custom kept the blacksmith working through the following days of wretchedness.  He’d locked away the journals with their writing, thrown the prototypes they’d worked on in his scrap heap, and countless times was on the verge of flinging both into the fire, only to curse his own cowardice when he pulled back from the flames at the last minute.  He worked with a fury, hammering and quenching and pumping the bellows from before dawn to after dusk, exhausting his body that his mind would be likewise empty, falling into dreamless sleep as soon as head met pillow.  What little spare time he left himself, through lack of orders or waiting on supplies, he threw into studying, repairing, cleaning - no task was too small, no chore too tedious if it promised the possibility of distraction.

All proved in vain.  The entirety of his shop and home seemed infected with the memory of the couple - a new flower blossoming would recall the lady’s discussion of color, a request for some delicate piece of machinery bringing to mind an idea suggested by the gentleman.  Mercury would spend his mornings and evenings at the shop window, eyes fixed on the lane, and gave the smith puzzled meows when his former favorites did not arrive.  Even the smith’s hands betrayed him; oftentimes when he’d idly sketch on some scrap of paper he found himself tracing the patterns of the lady’s jewelry, or the designs of the gentleman’s staff.  The offending paper would be quickly flung to the fire or rubbish heap, but memories are less easily discarded, and thus the rest of the day would be spent in bitter reminiscing. 

Market day brought blessed relief as an excuse to leave home and rejoin the human race.  That morning he at last gave his long-neglected beard and hair a trim, put on fresh clothes, and overall made effort to be fit for society, in dim hope that external care would bring internal composure.  With a full wagon of wares he set out, trudging alongside the ever-dutiful Hammer.  

Market day proved busy as usual, the flow of customers, peddlers, and gossipers coming so fast and thick to the smith’s little pavilion that for brief moments he forgot his troubles in the hubbub of talk and trade.  But at last sunset finally came, and the blacksmith knew he must pack his remaining goods and leave.  Unable to bear the thought of going back to his empty cottage, he delayed his return further with a stop at the town tavern.

The tavern was in every sense - geographically, historically, metaphorically - the heart of the village.  No amount of mopping or spread sawdust could keep ones' feet from sticking to its flagstone floor, nor could any length of airing and cleaning keep its ramshackle furniture and aged timber ceiling from smelling of whatever had been cooked the previous two weeks - tonight’s aroma bringing forth past menus of fish stew, roast chicken, and the first sausages of a fresh butchering.  But the food was good, the ale better, and the company best of all, which were perhaps the only things that a proper tavern truly needs.

To the blacksmith’s good fortune the tavern stocked exactly the company he needed that night.  The innkeeper’s eldest ran the kitchen and tap, her short pink hair bright against the browns and blacks of her surroundings.   At the bar sat the young lady of the manor in her hunting greens and greys, bow and arrow set beside her, while kneeling at one corner of the hearth were the innkeeper’s youngest and the bookseller’s son, drawing on a shared piece of paper with chalk and crayons.  Merchants both visiting and local filled the rest of the main room with the rumble of conversation, enjoying the day’s windfalls with well earned drink and board.

The innkeeper's eldest halloed loudly when she recognized the blacksmith walking towards her.  "Where have you been?  I've forgotten your usual, you’ve been away so long!”  Even so she drew a pint of his favorite dark stout, and had it sitting at his preferred stool near the fire by the time he reached the bar. 

The blacksmith thanked her with all his heart, realizing with guilt just how long it had been since he called on the tavern and his old friends.  Not that he had ever been a proper regular - he tended to prefer the comforts of tea with a good book to the noise and smell of a public house - but he had been so wrapped up with his enigmatic visitors, he'd lost all interest in the society of others.

The young lady of the manor brought her own stool up next to the smith, greeting him eagerly and likewise asked where on earth he had been keeping himself this summer.  The blacksmith attempted to deflect her interrogation by claiming he had been “busy”, but he and the young lady had known each other since he was a boy, and she was a baby, and her curious nature was not so easily deterred - and besides, when she had the brashness of the innkeeper’s eldest to back her up, she became a veritable bloodhound when catching the scent of mystery.

So haltingly, abashedly, the blacksmith began the tale of the summer.  At first the young lady and innkeeper’s eldest delighted in finding their friend had been courted - by a married couple, no less - and for the first time since that fateful night found himself smiling and laughing, even as they made him the butt of their ribaldry.  Indignation, however, quickly followed when he told of his final confrontation, and to a relief the blacksmith hadn’t realized he’d needed both women were offended on his behalf, that they would treat him so lightly and trust him so little.  Indeed, so harsh did their invectives become against the pair’s conduct that the blacksmith soon found himself defending the two people he’d once sought to forget.

If there was one silver lining to this loss, he reflected, it was that it brought into much sharper view the value of his old friends - their candor, their loyalty, their unaffected concern for him.  Perhaps they lacked the cleverness and erudition of his former partners, but he had grown up alongside these girls and seen them grow up alongside him; they knew well the workings of his mind and heart.  It was, perhaps, the first step towards healing the hurt inside him to know that for all his wallowing he was still not alone in the world.  

Soon however, discussion quickly turned to their identities, for there was nothing that the young lady of the manor loved more than a question in need of solving, save perhaps the smile and muscle of the innkeeper’s eldest.  “After all,” she said, her voice an excited whisper, “If they were truly traveling musicians, any of us would have heard of them by now - what news doesn’t reach the manor must certainly pass through the tavern.  Now the problem remains, just who are they?”

The two women pumped the smith for any information he could provide on the pairs’ appearance and manner, subjecting him to further jesting at how overwrought he became in some of his descriptions.  But after ascertaining that neither had seen anyone of their description around, even taking into account the blacksmith’s fanciful lyricism, reasons for such deception became the next topic of debate.

“P’raps” they’re spies?” The innkeeper’s youngest piped up from where she and the bookseller’s son now sat at the bar.  She and the bookseller’s son had come to the bar seeking fresh paper from her elder sister, only for both to engross themselves in the far more interesting and grown up business of the blacksmith’s mystery guests.  “If they were spies, perhaps that’s why they’re in disguise,”

“But what could they gain by spying on a backwoods bumpkin like him?” Snorted the innkeeper’s eldest.

With great anger the blacksmith opened his mouth to defend himself and his value as a target of espionage and with greater anger shut it when he realized he couldn't.

From spies the conversation moved on to criminals and other types of villains who would be inclined to masquerade as traveling musicians.  While the two children quickly embraced the notion of gallant bandits roaming the countryside, the innkeeper’s eldest remarked with the manner of a hardened criminal that no proper thieves would return so regularly and in the same disguise to the same person, for risk of being caught.  The innkeeper’s youngest retorted that her elder sister had no need to put on such airs, since the only thing she’d ever stolen was a tin soldier from the blacksmith’s market stall last spring, and the innkeeper had found it on her a half hour later and made her return it.  

The blacksmith (who during this argument refrained from mentioning he had noticed her stealing the toy last spring, and tipped her father off about the theft rather than make a fuss) was attempting to redirect the conversation when the bookkeper’s son pointed to his forehead.

“What happened to your hair?”

Between the dimness of the tavern interior and the blacksmith’s slump the changed strands had gone unnoticed at first, but once pointed out it was impossible for the rest of the party to ignore his new silver blond locks.

“Those?”  The blacksmith shrugged.  “It’s been that way a while now…I’d assumed I was just going grey at my age”

But the young lady took him by the ear and pulled him down to inspect the strands.  “They’re blond not grey,” she proclaimed. “And besides - “ she examined a hair she’d plucked from the blacksmith’s head, ignoring his yell of pain, “It’s too strong to be due to old age.”  She held the hair up to the light for the rest of the party to examine.  All agreed it was blonde, not grey, and not an ordinary blond either but a starlight blond that shimmered in the dim lamplight that fell on it.  

Further questioning from the young lady of the manor revealed that it had changed color after the gentleman had touched his hair, and even further inquisition led the blacksmith to pull down the collar of his shirt so all could inspect the flame shaped scar from where the lady had touched him.

His friends goggled at these changes, and how he’d apparently missed them all.  Their chiding at his obliviousness only increased when, pressed about any other oddities in his surroundings, he’d admitted to the improvement of his steel and his garden.  At this the young lady of the manor could not but triumphantly declare that his guests were not of this world.

Over the blacksmith’s protests the rest of the group dissected this claim.  To the young lady, it was increasingly the only logical explanation for their strangeness - their odd comings and goings, their effects on his person, their secrecy.  For as everyone knew, beings from the worlds beyond this one are not apt to reveal themselves to the undeserving and the ordinary, and even to the worthy they take their time in exposing themselves.  So the question now remained, of what class of being these more than mortal wanderers belonged to?

The whole of the supernatural bestiary was discussed from asuras to zephyrs.  Fairies were ruled out at once, for what fairy would want anything to do with a shaper of iron?  Incubi and succubi were considered next, but after much grilling and grotesqueness at the expense of the poor smith, it was reasoned that demons of this nature would have been even more forward in their advances.  Vampires prompted considerable debate as to whether or not they could go outside in the sun, until smith’s stout refusal to be inspected for bite marks shut down this line of questioning.  

“You should have stole their clothes to make them stay!” the innkeeper's youngest declared at last.  With incredulous prompting from the blacksmith and her elder sister the innkeeper’s youngest explained her reasoning: “Like the selkie wife!  When the man sees the pretty selkie lady bathing, he steals her magic clothes that make her turn back into a seal, so she’s stuck as a lady.  Then he hides her clothes so that she’s supposed to remain a lady”

“Given how eager they are to throw themselves at you getting them out of their clothes seems an easy enough trick.”  Quipped the innkeeper’s eldest.

“They have sworn no longer to return to my house, so I doubt I shall have the opportunity,” retorted the blacksmith, “And besides practicality that is a vile, cruel thing to do, to hold them hostage!”

“So I suppose that leaves drugging them out?”  Offered the bookseller’s son.

“Where do you get these ideas?”

The bookseller’s son shrugged.  “There’s a fairy tale where the king throws his wife out the castle and tells her she can only take the thing she likes the best.  So she drugs him and takes him home with her because he’s the thing she likes best out of the castle.”

The blacksmith admitted the logic of this, though he still felt that a woman smart enough to think of such a solution was probably better off without such a husband anyway. 

Now, it is worth noting that amongst certain friend groups, intelligence and common sense among the involved parties decreases in direct inversion to the number of said parties and the amount of time spent together, and that alcohol has a way of exacerbating such tendencies.  Thus, while individually the blacksmith, the young lady of the manor, the bookseller’s son and the innkeeper’s children were all fairly reasonable and intelligent for their ages and stations in life, when brought together they experienced a sort of mass foolishness and recklessness which they not infrequently later regretted.  Certainly it is this tendency to collective stupidity which can be the only explanation for what happened next.

Between the increasingly empty inn and equally emptying bottles, the trio continued to lose their inhibitions against shouting and stupidity.  The group plied the two youngest for their fairy tale expertise and after a shameless extortion of alcohol (denied) and candy (granted) the bookseller’s son finally suggested a method.

“It’s not someone you ask”, he intoned solemnity through a mouthful of toffee “but something”

“Alright what’s the something I ask?” The blacksmith drained the last of his most recent tankard and slammed it on the bar for a refill.

“The four elements.”

This mysterious pronouncement did not have quite the effect the bookseller’s son was perhaps hoping for, as the rest of the group merely blinked in confusion at him.  He sighed at their lack of comprehension and continued.

“There was a girl who was looking for their lover, because her parents lied to her and told her he was dead but she knew he wasn’t.  So she asked the earth if he was buried in him, the water if he’d been drowned in him, the fire if he’d been burned in him and the air if he’d been blown to bits in him.  And when they all said no she knew he was still alive.”

“But I already know they’re alive.”

“Dummy, you don’t ask the elements if you know they’re alive, you ask the elements to help you find them!”

This announcement was likewise received not with rapturous acclaim but with mild puzzlement.  The bookseller’s son, long used to the idiocy of so-called grown ups, hopped down from his stool.

“You do it like this.”

The bookseller’s son trooped to the courtyard, followed by the increasingly inebriated party.  Arms akimbo he stood in the middle of the courtyard, until a slight breeze began to stir.  Facing into the wind he bellowed out:

“Element of air!  My friend is looking for the identities of two strangers, can you help him?”

The wind came to a stop, but did not otherwise respond.

From the rear, the innkeeper’s eldest snorted.

“What on earth did you think was going to happen?”

The bookseller’s son looked forlorn a moment, only to brighten.

“Well of course it didn’t work he has to do the asking!”  He tugged the blacksmith’s sleeve, who by now had imbibed so much that even this slight tug threatened to topple him.  “Go ask the earth next.”

The blacksmith suspected the results would be equally disappointing, but was loath to disappoint so earnest an expression as the bookseller’s son now gave him.  He consoled himself that if nothing else perhaps shouting at something inanimate would help him give vent to his feelings.

So he wandered around the courtyard, until he found what he thought was a particularly sympathetic looking patch of bare dirt, and leaned down to it.

“Element of earth,” he said, recalling the bookseller’s son’s earlier words, “I am seeking the identity of the two strangers who have called on me all summer.  Would you happen to know who they are?”  Belatedly, he added “ -please”  

But alas, soil proved as taciturn as breezes, and the dust gave no answer to his plea.

Sheer politeness kept him from scuffing the patch in frustration, and he stood up.  “Well so much for that notion - “

But the two youngest of the party were not so easily deterred, and the innkeeper’s youngest now piped up:

“Maybe you have to give something?  Like money?”

“And how am I supposed to give the elements money?”

The innkeeper’s youngest pointed to the courtyard well.  “You could throw a penny in there to ask the water.  Like a wishing well.”

The innkeeper's eldest and the young lady of the manor loudly praised this notion, and started pushing the smith to the well.  The blacksmith, by now resigned to looking like a fool, decided more foolishness wouldn’t hurt.

So everyone gathered around the little well at the center of the courtyard, and the blacksmith pulled a penny from his wallet.  Committing as well as he could, he intoned to the distant circle at the bottom reflecting back his face:

“Element of water, I humbly beg your assistance in helping me ascertain the identities of the two strangers who have so charmed and bewitched me, that I may better understand their aims.”

And with a toss of his hand he threw the coin into the well.

The well accepted the coin with a splash, but otherwise remained silent.

This time he did not refrain from giving the well an angry kick, but succeeded in nothing more than giving himself a nasty toe ache.  The innkeeper’s eldest and the young lady of the manor were in danger of collapse from laughing so hard, while the two younger children were crestfallen as they finally had to admit defeat.  Back into the tavern stumbled the quintet, cursing mysteries and foolishness and the strangers in specific and love in general.

With a belated look at the clock the innkeeper's eldest realized it was long past the two children’s bedtime, and near past the time for closing the tavern.  With the young lady of the manor’s assistance the innkeeper’s eldest bundled the children upstairs, bidding the departing blacksmith farewell.  The blacksmith, lost in his thoughts, gave her a mere half-hearted wave.

As he passed by the hearth on his way to the stable, it occurred to the blacksmith that there was one element that he had yet to ask, and that sacrifice of something greater than money might be needed.  Desperation drove him to reach back into his pocket, and pull out his lucky charm.

It was a small thing, a little poppet made of once glittering velvet.  It was all that remained of a great wizard costume that his mother had made for him long ago, whittling the fabric down into smaller and smaller objects for him to keep until it now took its present form.  The blacksmith had other things of his mother, of course, but he kept the charm on him all the same, a reminder of his mother’s thriftiness and craft.

With a sigh he flung the little charm into the fire.

“Element of fire, I give you this precious trinket of mine, and in exchange I wish to know the truth of the two strangers who have woo’d me this summer, and how I may win back my heart from them after they’ve taken it.”

The fire flared up and turned the doll to ash, but as with its three fellows it offered no reply.  Heart sinking, he continued to the stables.

With much cursing and fumbling the blacksmith managed to get Hammer hitched up to his wagon and out on the proper road home.  Hammer set off at an easy amble, and soon the gentle rock of the cart, the warm night air and the evening’s drink all threatened to lure the blacksmith to sleep in his seat.

“May we accompany you home?”  Said a voice at his elbow, startling him awake.  The blacksmith turned to find a handsome stranger astride a fine black horse next to him.

“The hour is late good sir, and three travelers are safer than two or one.”  The blacksmith turned to his other side and saw another handsome stranger sitting sidesaddle on her white mount.

The blacksmith shrugged.  “Do what you will, though I must confess I am not fit at the moment for conversation.”

“I have been told I talk enough for ten people and more, so that will suffice,” said the first stranger cheerfully, and the trio continued out of the town, the strangers on either side of the cart.

Were the blacksmith less drunk and distracted, he might have become abashed at the finery of his companions.  The first stranger wore a splendid charcoal grey doublet and hose, studded with rubies and topped by a magnificent cavalier hat trimmed with red feathers, which he wore at a rakish angle.  The second wore a dove grey riding habit, studded with sapphires about the bodice and neckline, her hair wrapped in a net of fine pearls.  They’d attired their horses in matching livery, and were Hammer a more jealous fellow he might have envied the glossy hides and well-groomed manes of their mounts.  There was something familiar about the first stranger’s kind eyes and warm voice, and the second one’s delicate features and gentle manner, but the blacksmith’s sluggish mind could not place it, too consumed with his own troubles to notice anything else.

“We could not help” continued the first stranger, “Overhearing your dilemma and offer our sympathies, friend and brother.”

“My dilemma?” The blacksmith thought, and blushed at the spectacle he and his friends had made of themselves.  “Oh.  Well thank you, though I must admit I didn’t expect anything of all that, really.  Just a vent of unhappy feelings.”

“Still,” said the second stranger, “To be crossed in love is no pleasant state.”

“Very unpleasant, but I shall get over it eventually,” The blacksmith lied. “I daresay the mystery of it all will bother me more than the heartbreak.”

“I suppose so,” said the first stranger, “I have always had a weakness for mysteries myself, and more than once my burning curiosity has landed me in hot water.  

“Indeed it has,” added the second stranger dryly. 

“But the conversation of the young boy on the matter of fairy tales,” said the first stranger, “Did bring to mind a few additional ideas for discerning the identity of your lovers.  If I recall the hero of the Twelve Dancing Princesses faced a similar dilemma of trying to follow mysterious beauties without being caught.”

The blacksmith frowned. “But the man in that tale had an invisibility cloak given to him by a friendly little old lady on his journey.”  He gave a sweep of one hand to the empty fields on either side of them.  “Sadly there is a dearth of little old ladies besides roads in need of assistance.”

“In that case, friend and brother” said the second stranger, pulling her horse to a stop “Let us be an acceptable substitute, and offer you help of our own.”

The blacksmith blinked, realizing they were now outside his house.  He could not recall ever arriving at home so quickly from the inn, nor ever telling the strangers where he lived.  But instead of asking these questions what came out was:

“Why do you want to help me so badly?”

“Because you asked us so nicely,” replied the first stranger, “And because, friend and brother, we have more than the usual stake in your happiness.  Here,”

From somewhere within the folds of her gown the second stranger withdrew something and held it out to the blacksmith.  Without thinking he took it, and studied the strange object.

It was a curiously wrought sphere of silver the size of a walnut, bisected with gold along its equators. On one side where the bands intersected was set a beautiful blue gem, round and shiny that peered out like a curious yet friendly eye.  Beneath his fingertips he felt the shape of runes etched into the surface, and even in his drunken state he sensed the ball was not solid, but rather contained some mechanical elements.

The blacksmith examined it for sometime, unable to keep from admiring the workmanship, then held it back out to the second stranger.  “Well, this is certainly a pretty bauble, but apart from collecting dust on a shelf I must confess I can see no purpose to this trinket.”

“Its purpose,” replied the second stranger, “is to bring you closer to the lady and gentleman of whom you speak so highly.  You need only speak your request to guide you to where you wish to be, and it will lead you there and protect you from harm in the meantime.”

The gentleman started at this, then anger flared.  “What - do you aim to mock me now too?”

“Not at all, friend and brother, not at all!” Said the first stranger, soothing. “I do not blame your doubt, however, so let us offer these as proof of our good intentions.”

Into the blacksmith’s still open hand the first stranger dropped the poppet that the blacksmith had burned in the fire, while second dropped the penny he’d thrown in the well.  And before he could even begin to think what to possibly ask or say, he felt a blast and heard a splash, and they were gone.  

Chapter Text

When the blacksmith woke the next morning, he first thought that the two strangers were mere figments of an addled, lovestruck imagination.  But there on his bedside table sat the strange silver gold-ball, its blue gem winking up at him.  Then he wondered if he’d imagined throwing the coin in the well, and the charm in the fire, and that the strangers had merely picked them up from wherever he’d dropped them.  But again, he knew for a fact he’d done both - he’d thrown the coin in the well in front of witnesses, and watched the charm shrivel to ash, yet both now sat on the bedside table alongside the ball.

He remained in bed, regarding the trinkets.  His mind had gone curiously blank, too small to contain all the mysteries the objects represented.  All that remained was awareness of the choice before him.  To use the ball, and risk whatever danger that came of this magic - for magic, beyond question, was woven within these mysteries - in search of answers?  Or to discard it, let the enigma remain unsolved and the danger unrisked?

A choice, he wondered, not unlike the one he had made days ago; to remain suspended in uncertainty, or force matters to a conclusion for better or worse.

He held the sphere up to his eye, gripped between thumb and forefinger.  Unbidden he imagined how the lady would have rolled it along her fingers, admiring the workmanship; how the gentleman would have examined the etched runes to puzzle out their meaning.

He held the ball in his hand, squeezed it tightly, then set it back down on the table.

He dressed himself for a long journey, kissed Mercury and Hammer goodbye, then took the ball out to his front door. Looking down at the sphere where it rested in his palm, he swallowed then spoke.

“Little orb, I ask you take me to the lady whom I’ve come to love, that I may know the truth of her - please”

At once the ball clicked open, and a butterfly unfurled itself from inside.  And such a butterfly!  Even in the bright daylight it glowed with a brilliance that nearly forced the blacksmith to avert his gaze from it.  Its wings, each the size of the blacksmith’s palm, bore on the underside an whirled pattern of aureate eyespots like shimmering paint dripped across a canvas, while the inside revealed a blazing white center that faded to yellow as it reached the edge.  With the grace of a leaf caught in a curling breeze, the butterfly alighted on the hand of the smith and then, assured of his attention, fluttered away leaving a trail of glittering dust.  A dozen questions flew through his mind as to its mechanisms of life and movement, but he saw that it was now flitting on the other side of the road as if waiting for him.

With one last prayer to whatever spirit would listen, the smith followed after the butterfly.

At an unhurried pace the butterfly flew and the blacksmith walked across the field and stream, up the grassy hill and into the surrounding woods.  The butterfly never got very ahead of the smith, settling on a branch or trunk each time he struggled to fit his bulk between the close-growing trees.  Yet as it took him deeper and deeper into the woods, the blacksmith realized his surroundings were changing and shifting.  Twisted old trunks of oak and thorn became taller, straighter, more evenly spaced, while below him the springy crunch of dead leaves and twigs gave way to a surface more solid and stony.  The only thing which did not change was the butterfly, still glowing and set on its course.

Gradually yet all at once, he realized he was no longer in a forest, but a great hall of some castle. The trees were now grey stone columns polished to shining smoothness, stretched so high that the smith could barely make out the ceiling arches that had once been their branches.   As far as he could tell there were neither windows nor lamps, nor any other method of illumination to be seen anywhere.  Yet light there was, the light which comes after the dawn and before the dusk, gently easing the world to or from sleep with its rich glow and warm haze. Filling the spaces between these stone columns, from floor to ceiling were rows and rows of wooden shelves, finely carved with sunburst patterns and varnished to a deep gold color.  Along the shelves were lidded clay pots, some smaller than his fist, others larger than his head, each bearing a paper label affixed to their sides with a red powdered smear like chalk upon it.  Curious, he took one off its shelf and opened it, finding it full of red powder the same shade as the label.

The butterfly, alighting on a shelf, allowed him a moment to inspect the jars, but now started to drift further down the aisle.  The smith continued to follow, though his eyes never left the shelves.  As he’d begun to suspect, the shades of red were slowly growing lighter as they went along, from deep rubies and carmines to lighter poppies and scarlets. Marveling that so many colors should exist in the world, let alone so many versions of red, he took up calculating the pots per shelf, the shelves per section, the sections per aisle and on and on.  Lost in his numbers, it took the loud echo of pattering feet to jolt him out of his reverie.

A woman appeared among the aisle, her hands and fingers running over the shelves.   With her brown dress and dark hair tied in a neat bun, she gave an impression of efficiency, her gestures quick and sure. As she drew closer, the blacksmith panicked, thinking that she would see him as an intruder of some sort.  But the woman’s eyes simply looked through him as if he were no more than air, instead picking out a jar and hurrying back out the way she came.  The butterfly took off behind her, with the blacksmith in rapid pursuit.

Brunette, butterfly and blacksmith proceeded down the shelves and the aisles - miles and miles of aisles it seemed, though curiously the blacksmith did not find himself the least bit tired as they walked.  All the while the light grew stronger and stronger, until at last the smith could discern at the end of the hall a definite brightness indicating its source.  And as the light grew it brought with it sound - a riot of sound, all chatter, clatter, stomping, clomping, shouting and scrambling and singing.

Then finally they arrived at the end of the hall and the blacksmith stopped, too awed with the sight that greeted him to keep up with his unknowing guide.

He was in a workshop, a workshop that dwarfed even the massive hallway he’d just emerged from.  Filling it from its red and yellow-tiled floor to its umber ceiling were the means of creation at all shapes and scales - quenching vats which could have housed oceans, potters wheels fit for fleas, furnaces, easels, presses, anvils, looms, molds and more.  Hanging from every column and scattered across every surface were the necessary instruments for creation as well, from the familiar tools of his smithing to devices of such strangeness he could not fathom what use they could be - but all of them, in fact were in use, for no sooner did one craftsman put their implement down than another would rush by to pick it up.  Yet to call the laborers “craftsmen” would be half wrong, for in form and feature there were but a few who could be considered human in shape.  Some seem more vegetable than animal, others more dead than living.  Some looked like nothing more that a shimmer in heat or a crack in the air when viewed from one angle, yet change the degree at which you approached and suddenly they were a whirling mosaic, a living expanse of lacework, a confection of light.  And how they talked!  Jabbers, squeaks, moans, whispers, shouts, snarls, calls and cries packed tight in the air, yet harmony not cacophony was the result, an orchestra of infinite size yet flawless performance.  And overarching all this sound was singing, the whole workshop joined in spontaneous choir, music spilling from their lips as an overflow of sheer happiness. 

The butterfly, seeming aware of the blacksmith’s instinctive curiosity, moved slower, giving him more time to examine the laborers at their work.  At first he experienced pure bafflement, for the materials with which these artisans worked seemed wholly incompatible to any craft.  A pair of spiderish grandmothers pulled whole handfuls of water from their baskets as if it were no more than wool and spun it at their wheels into fine glistening thread.  What must have been a thousand or more nixies gathered along one long table, stretching out and rolling between them great columns of fog.  And at the anvil of a fierce minotaur pulled out shards of white-hot sparks and hammered them into links of chain with great ringing clangs.  But as the blacksmith looked and listened he found if he paid careful attention he could understand the languages of these strange beasts, and keenly attended to their words.

“Make haste make haste!  The East Wind is waiting on her storm for the Conqueror’s Sea!”

“Another five quintals of cumulus clouds to sweep over the Argent Mountains!”

“Just a moment, then this aurorae blends shall be ready for Her!”

The blacksmith stared about him, his wonder now afresh.  Was this, then, where the weather of the world was made?  It must be, for already he saw weavers shuttling away on their looms with the just spun water threads, turning out thick cloths of clouds that others quickly gathered up.  The rolled-up fog was chopped at the ends to become snowflakes, great batches of them, their exquisite patterns now shrunk to a delicate size.  And the great chain that the beastly blacksmith was coiling up, still a blinding white, was nothing less than the lighting itself, ready to be lashed from the skies.  

Yet for all its impossible scope, its creations of unmatched grandeur, the blacksmith felt a commonality with this phantasmagoria - the joy of creation and movement which resounded everywhere.  The blacksmith recognized it at once, for it was the same joy he felt in the midst of designing some novel invention, throwing his arm and back into forging a new piece, seeing that the shoes he nailed and the tools he repaired still holding on months afterwards.  The bone-deep joy of effort which stretches and strengthens the mind and hand, which prides in the worth of its work and the satisfaction it will give when completed, this was the spirit and soul of this place and its people, and the blacksmith marveled to feel this kinship between him and such beings.

“But what” thought the blacksmith, at last, “Does all this have to do with my lady?  She said she was a painter, perhaps she is one of those who works here?”  Frantically he searched whatever faces were in his eyesight, but soon realized it would be a fool’s errand to search for her this way; the workshop was too crowded and fast moving besides.  Resigning himself, he went back to following the butterfly, who had resumed its usual speed.

Yet he knew the lady must have some relation with this place, for there were signs of her everywhere.  The decorations on the shelves in the halls of color - had he not seen those same designs on the lady’s mandolin?  The patterns of the tiled floor - were they not identical to those which decorated the lady’s arms and neck?  She had to be here - but where?

As he and his guide continued to the other end of the shop, the smith saw that he was part of a whole group of workers moving forward to the other end of the workshop, all of them carrying jars of color of the sort he’d seen back in the hall of shelves.  Their chatter had faded away, but still came the singing, stronger than ever.  Now though a woman’s voice made itself distinct to the smith, and even as his mind told him that voice could not be who he thought it was, his heart told him it could be no one else.

The movement of the crowd had slowed, but still went forward steadily, and the light ahead was now of such brilliance the smith felt he would catch fire from merely looking at it.  He had lost all sense of his surroundings, his mind so full of the light and the voice that it was all he could do to keep track of the butterfly, somehow still visible.  He was - not afraid for he could never be afraid of that Voice! - but something closer than a brother to it, that made his heart thrum and body tremble.  A overwhelming sense of wonder penetrated him, an awe that one perhaps feels on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, or on a rope bridge slung between two mountain peaks - the sense of an engulfing abyss, the surrounding void crushing one with the weight of its vastness.  He was in the presence of divinity, mighty enough to crush him beyond atoms, yet gentle and familiar enough to take his soul by the hand and bid him come further.  And so he did, until around him the crowd stopped and thinned away, and he could finally grasp what he was looking at.

There was his lady, but impossibly, incredibly, more beautiful than he imagined she could be.  Higher than the heavens and wider than the world she floated above them all in the center of the sky, while below her spread the Earth itself.  The brown of her skin had become rich swirls of red and orange, while the gold inlaid within it, along with her eyes and hair, now were great channels from which light blazoned.  She laughed, and as she laughed she sang and as she sang she danced, and as she danced light and heat and life poured from her in a never-ending river.  At her feet the blacksmith saw workers place the new-created weather, and with the steps of her dance she brushed and whirled the clouds, the rains, the snows across the continents and oceans - a few quick spins to clear the monsoons from Ixtal, a leap to kick up the thunderheads over Bilgewater, a sweep of the leg to trace the Aurora Borealis across the utmost edges of the Ice Sea.  Most wondrous though were the colors.  When the blacksmith finally tore his eyes away from the sight of her, he saw that the untold crowds he’d come with were opening and lifting their jars of color up towards her as if in homage.  From their jars the grains of pigment contained within floated up in gossamer threads, whirling around her in a shimmering mist until one of her rays passed through - then down, down went the ray to earth, the colored mist wrapped around it.  Yes, it would be Her role (thought the smith in a daze) to send down the colors of the whole world as well as the light, for color is but the child of light, and the first of all light for the earth was the Sun.

The Sun!  The smith hugged himself at the thought, fighting the urge to laugh and weep and dance and run all at once.  Had he ever before felt so much life within himself?  Had his mind ever been this full to bursting, his arms and hands impatient to pour out the torrent of ideas into his beloved metals?  Here, before her who set the world to motion, nothing felt impossible, could be impossible; so long as the breath and the blood still flowed through him his mind and body could be put to the work of creation and passion.

Then amidst all these splendors he saw a speck of light traveling upwards from the surface of the earth.  Watching it fly he at first thought it a fiery comet blazing away across the sky.  But as it drew nearer he could see within the heart of its flame the figure of a person, until finally it was near half the size of the Lady (he could not bring himself to call her anything else) and revealed itself to be an elegantly dressed man.

By now used to wonders, the smith was only slightly surprised to see it was the first stranger, who’d returned his charm the other night.  Like soot and spark together he was all deep blacks and hot reds surrounded by a flickering aura of flame, his eyes an incandescent scarlet with blazing yellow pupils.  But for all their ominous color the eyes had a merry twinkle to them, and indeed he had an air of good cheer and comfort which invited one to gather near him for warmth and wit.  The lady beamed up to him, briefly ceasing her work.

“Big brother, welcome!  What brings you here?”  

“Can a fellow not call on his little sister for the pleasure of it?”

“Let me finish my work, and we may talk more.”  She made one more slow turn of her body, and the last of the colored mist - the violets, carmines and roses of the sunset - trailed away across the sky with a few fading rays, the inner light of her body fading to the glow of the evening.  Around him the crowds of color bearers began to dissipate, and for one wild moment the blacksmith feared this was the end of the vision.  But the butterfly flew before him once more, and when the smith stepped forward to follow it he found himself at once in a new place.

He stood now in a beautifully appointed studio, one corner dominated by an enormous canvas.  Here painted the Lady, looking more like the woman he knew yet still covered head to toe in intricate gold line work.  On a couch at the opposite side of the room lounged the first stranger - who was no doubt Fire itself, for what other element is closest to the Sun for heat and light? - likewise looking more like the man he’d seen save his eyes remaining red and yellow.  Crunching into an apple he’d plucked from a bowl on a nearby table, Fire chewed and swallowed loudly then addressed the lady in a drawl. 

“This latest work may be one of your finest yet.  I hope you shall prepare to display it soon.”

“It must wait for the end of fall.”  The lady stepped back and regarded her work with a thoughtful expression.  “And besides I feel something is amiss about it.”

The blacksmith, upon seeing the painting, could not for the life of him understand what she meant.  It was a winter landscape at sunset, the harsh blacks and whites of the snow covered mountains muted to a gradient of dreamy blues and blushing pinks by the twilight.  The smith found it to be an exquisite balance of severity and softness, but before he could consider further Fire resumed talking.

“You are ever too hard on your talents.  It has a poignant touch of melancholy about it.”

The lady stiffened.  “Melancholy, brother?”

“Most melancholy.” Fire took another bite of his apple then spoke through his full mouth.  “So melancholy that I cannot but think there a reason beyond mere artistry that it so suffuses your canvas.”

The lady applied a brushstroke with great firmness, but remained silent.

Fire sat up, his expression now earnest.  “Come little sister, I know you too well.  Something has hurt your heart to the quick, and I must know the bastard in need of a burning who did it.”

At this last he looked where the blacksmith stood, and panic jolted the smith when their eyes met.  But the other man's eyes only flashed a cheery red, then looked back to his sister.

The lady studied her painting for several long moments, then bowed her head.

“There is a blacksmith.”

“A blacksmith!  And he was foolish enough to make light of your affections?”

“No - not at all!” She spun to face her brother, eyes flashing white.  “It was I who made light of him, to my shame.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.  He had caught the eye of myself and my lord, and we made a game of wooing him in mortal guise.  But in picking the rose we were pricked by the thorn, for as he fell in love with us we fell in love with him.”  She rolled her brush between her fingers.  “His eyes are two fields of wheat at the turn of the summer when the green becomes grain, his arms are bronzed and burnished as the copper he forges and he sweeps the floor of his shed before letting me enter for fear I may cut my foot on some errant metal.”  And she blushed and looked away.

“Well sister” said Fire, leaning forward, “If he is as dear to you as that, and he feels the same way, then what stops you from telling the truth?”

The lady stamped her foot.  “Brother I am the Sun and he is a smith.  He deserves a love to be at his side to the ends of the earth, to bear his children, to tend to his cottage and his life and to be there to greet him at the end of a hard day’s labor.  How can I give him what he deserves, when I have a world to attend too?”

“Has he told you these desires?”

“He does not need to tell me a word of it. I read it in the way he talks of the village children, of his yearning to travel and see the world, and his love for his craft. Can I ask him to sacrifice such things for the sake of a hour or two each day?” She wrung the brush in her hand.

Fire stood and crossed the room to her.  Gently he kissed her forehead, then held her in his arms.

“My sister, my fond foolish sister.  Perhaps you think the snare now binding you far worse than it is in reality.  Return to your smith, tell him the truth, and let him choose for himself what he wants.”

She shook her head against his chest.  “I promised not to speak to him ever again.  I cannot bear that I might hurt him even more, to tell him he was sport for immortals.”

Fire sighed, then kissed her on the forehead again.  “As you will.  I fear I must take my leave little sister, for my own duties call.  But take my word, that this may come to a happy ending yet.”

With a promise to visit her again soon, Fire departed through a door that had most certainly not been there the last time the blacksmith looked.  He remained stock still, watching the Lady return to her canvas.

She kept still before it a long while further, then pulled a fine gold chain from around her neck.  There, hanging on it was the nut she'd taken the first day they'd met.  Tenderly she held it between two fingers, then placed it to her lips.  And as she did a tear trailed from her eye and a sob welled in her throat.

The blacksmith stepped forward to do he knew not what, only for the butterfly to land on his face. It opened its wings wider and wider, until all he could see was swirls of gold and brown. Then the wings snapped shut and he was back in front of his cottage with the now closed orb.