Chapter Text
The first few weeks of autumn bring a different rhythm to the forge. Summer has gone out in a blaze of long evenings and swollen fruit, leaving Mistria washed in copper and gold, the roads scattered with leaves that gather in the cracks in the pavement and cling damply to the soles of March's boots each morning. There is a bite to the air now when he opens the forge, faint at first and steadily sharpening as the days pass, though here by the forge the season might as well not exist. The heat rolls from the furnace in heavy waves, bright enough to sting his eyes when he leans too close, and the steady ring of his hammer fills the space until it seems to live in the beams overhead. Strike. Turn. Strike again. The length of iron beneath his tongs slowly flattens into shape, another set of nails for another repair somewhere in town, indistinguishable from the dozens he made yesterday and the dozens he will probably make tomorrow.
It should be easy work. Usually, it is.
Though he would sooner die than admit to such mediocrity, March has always liked the simplicity of tasks like this. There is comfort in repetition, in knowing exactly what a piece of metal requires and exactly what will happen when he gives it. Heat it properly, strike it cleanly, quench it at the right moment. Iron does not surprise him. Iron does not turn up at his forge smiling like it has personally decided to make his morning more difficult. It does not argue with him when he tells it that something is a bad idea, nor tilts its head to look up at him with that infuriating spark in its eyes as though his irritation is somehow entertaining.
His hammer falls a fraction harder than necessary.
March scowls at the nail beneath it, bent and warped by his frustration.
This has become a problem.
He has known that for several weeks now, although knowing something and admitting it are entirely different things, and March has never seen much value in admitting anything that cannot immediately be fixed. The farmer —Elowyn, she had said with a smile and an outstretched fucking hand the first time she had spoken to him— has been in Mistria for two seasons. Two seasons in which she has somehow managed to work herself into almost every corner of the town with the same determined persistence she applies to the weeds in her fields. She arrived in spring with a half-ruined farm abandoned for decades, a bow slung comfortably across her back and far too much enthusiasm for someone who had arrived to a shitshow as big as Mistria in the wake of the earthquake. March had expected that enthusiasm to fade. Most people were excited at the beginning of something. Then came the rain, the exhaustion, the broken fences, the stubborn soil and the thousand small inconveniences that turned grand ideas into ordinary labour.
March had given her half a season before she'd flee. He'd even bet Olric a sapphire on it.
Elowyn, irritatingly, seemed to like the ordinary labour too.
By summer she had fields properly planted, animals settling into clean pens and dirt permanently caught beneath her fingernails. She could usually be found with her hair tucked behind a bandana badly enough that half of it had escaped by midday, auburn curls sticking to her temples while she cheerfully hauled lumber, repaired fencing or came marching out of the mines covered in enough dust to suggest she had tried tunnelling through the mountain with her damned stubborn forehead. She complained, certainly. March has heard plenty about aching shoulders, uncooperative chickens and a particularly irritable cow she had the audacity to name fucking March. Somehow, those complaints always come with a smile, as though being tired and filthy and occasionally kicked by a cow were all part of some private joke she was delighted to be included in.
Worse, she's actually competent.
March brings the hammer down again and watches the iron spread exactly as he intends.
He had been prepared for her to be reckless. That impression had taken perhaps three conversations to establish and has yet to be disproven. He had been prepared for stubborn too, since apparently the farmer considers any sentence beginning with don't or you probably shouldn't as a personal challenge. What he had not anticipated was discovering how much she actually knew. She understood soil, irrigation, pruning and the timing of a harvest with the easy familiarity of someone who had learned those things long before arriving in Mistria. She handled animals patiently. She could repair a fence without asking for help, restring a bow in seconds, and once, when March had watched her loose an arrow at a target near the edge of town, the shaft had struck almost dead centre from a distance he would have called showing off if she had not immediately turned around and looked surprised that anyone had been watching.
There are other things too, smaller things that have accumulated in his mind despite his best efforts to stop keeping count.
She hums when she works.
March first noticed it in late spring, when she had come by to collect a repaired watering can and waited near the entrance while he finished up a small job for Ryis. The tune had been soft enough that he almost mistook it from someone outside, some drifting melody from Josephine in the town square, until he looked over and saw her studying a row of finished tools while humming under her breath. She stopped the instant she realised he was looking at her. Her whole face had changed, colour rising beneath her freckles as she cleared her throat and abruptly became fascinated by a hoe. He had considered mentioning it.
He had also, for reasons he still finds irritating, decided not to embarrass her.
Since then he has heard it often enough. Elowyn hums while carrying produce through town, while brushing dirt from her gloves, while waiting outside the forge and apparently believing the sound of his hammer is loud enough to hide her. Once, in the bathhouse with Olric, March heard her singing properly somewhere beyond the changing room. He had slowed getting dressed without meaning to. There had been no audience, only the faint sloshing of water he tried very hard not to think too much about and Elowyn's voice floating through the hazy steam. Clear. Warm. Unselfconscious.
But then Olric tried to whistle along, and the spell was broken. The memory still returns at inconvenient moments.
He flips the iron with his tongs and sets it back against the anvil, jaw tightening as though that might somehow force his mind back towards work. It fails immediately.
Elowyn has become very good at that, occupying space where she was never invited.
At first, March had assumed she would eventually learn to leave him alone. He had not exactly been subtle about his lack of enthusiasm when she arrived. Everyone else had been so eager to welcome her that March had felt almost obligated to provide some balance. Mistria had survived before some stranger with a deed to an abandoned farm came wandering in, and it would have survived without everyone immediately treating her like the answer to every problem the earthquake had caused.
Elowyn had listened to him complain, then she had smiled. She had fucking smiled. That smile had irritated him for weeks.
It still does, although the reason has become increasingly difficult to isolate.
She smiles when he criticises her. She smiles when she disagrees with him. Sometimes she even smiles when she is angry, though there is a particular sharpness to it then that March has learned to recognise as a warning despite the heat which it stokes low in his stomach. Being several inches shorter than him has never once discouraged her from staring him down. She simply lifts her chin, plants her feet and looks directly into his eyes as though sheer stubbornness can compensate for the difference it height. The first time it happened, he had almost laughed. Then she started arguing back, and any amusement had disappeared beneath the sudden, bewildering realisation that he was enjoying himself.
That had been another problem. Most people either ignored March’s temper or tried to smooth it over. Elowyn had very little interest in either approach. If she thought he was being unfair, she told him. If he dismissed something she cared about, she pushed until he listened. She had once stood in the forge for nearly ten minutes arguing with him because he had made an unkind remark about someone’s workmanship, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright while she informed him that being correct did not require being cruel.
March had been furious. He had also thought about the argument for three days.
He strikes the iron again and feels something in his shoulder protest. His grip has tightened too much. With an irritated breath, he sets the hammer down for a moment and flexes his fingers, staring at the line of half-finished nails beside the anvil.
Two seasons.
That is all it has taken.
Two seasons for Elowyn to become familiar enough that he notices when she has not passed the forge by midday. Two seasons for him to recognise the particular rhythm of her footsteps outside, light and quick until she is carrying something too heavy and refuses to admit it. Two seasons for him to know that she favours her right side when lifting, that she taps two fingers against her thigh when thinking, that she pushes loose curls behind one ear when she is concentrating only for them to fall forward again moments later. He knows the scrape along the leather of her quiver where it catches against doorframes. He knows she laughs louder around Balor and Juniper, and that she becomes strangely quiet when anyone asks her to sing.
He knows too much. He has no idea when that happened. Perhaps it came gradually enough that there was never a single moment to notice. A hundred conversations. A hundred arguments. Elowyn appearing at the forge with ore tucked beneath one arm and some ridiculous story about the mines already spilling out of her mouth. Elowyn leaning across the counter to inspect a blade with a low, appreciative hum, curls falling forwards while March tried very hard to look at the blade too. Elowyn returning after he sharpened her axe and immediately commenting that it felt better, which had pleased him enough that he spent the next five minutes being especially unpleasant in compensation. Whatever the cause, she is there now, lodged firmly somewhere in the back of his thoughts.
March picks up the hammer again, bringing it down once more as sparks leap from the metal.
"Stupid," he mutters.
"Talking to yourself again?"
March's hammer stops in midair and he closes his eyes for one brief, deeply irritated second before turning.
Elowyn stand framed by the pale autumn morning, several copper-coloured leaves caught in the curls around her shoulders and a cheerful expression on her face that immediately tells him she will annoy him today. There is dirt smudged across one cheek, her bow is absent, and she is holding something long across both her arms.
Something wooden, and metal and that, even from several paces away, looks profoundly wrong. March's gaze drops to the object as his stomach sinks.
Elowyn lifts the broken pickaxe slightly and offers him an apologetic smile.
"So," she says, "how busy are you?"
March lowers the hammer very slowly, letting the weight of it settle back into the bench as though any sudden movement might disturb the quiet that has gathered in the forge. The air still holds the warmth of his work, heat breathing in soft, uneven waves against the stone walls, while the last of the sparks have died in the ash. Only the furnace remains active, its orange glow steady and patient, accompanied by the faint hiss of cooling metal and the occasional creak of timber adjusting to the temperature.
"How," he says, after a silence long enough that Elowyn's smile starts to strain at the edges, "did you do that?"
She glances down at the pickaxe in her arms as though she has only just remembered it is there. One side of the iron head has split clean through where it meets the haft, and the wood beneath is fractured so deeply that pale splinters show through the darker grain like exposed bone. The entire thing has a tired, crooked look about it, as if even the tool itself has reached the end of its patience with her.
Elowyn shifts her grip slightly, and the haft creaks in protest. "Mining."
March’s eyes lift from the tool to her face, his expression tightening in a way that suggests the answer has not helped at all.
"Yes, March. I know. Shocking use for a pickaxe."
"I mean," he replies, voice tightening, "how did you manage to destroy it while mining?"
She waves a dismissive hand, nearly dropping the mangled pickaxe in the process. "Destroy is a very dramatic word."
"It's broken in two fucking places."
"That still feels repairable."
March exhales through his nose, sets the hammer down with deliberate care, and crosses the forge toward her. The closer he gets, the more the damage reveals itself in detail that is harder to ignore. Dents pock the iron head in uneven clusters, one edge is chipped as though struck against something far harder than it should have been, and the grip is worn smooth in places where it should not be worn at all, as if it has been held too tightly for too long and too often without rest.
He takes it from her before she can argue, and the imbalance becomes immediately obvious in his hands, the head shifting slightly off-centre
"When did this crack start?"
Elowyn goes still, and her gaze drifts very deliberately towards the shelves behind him rather than hold his.
“Elowyn.”
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
A pause stretches between them, filled only by the furnace and the faint settling of metal cooling somewhere behind him.
“I might.”
His jaw tightens. “When?”
“A little while ago.”
“How long is a little while?”
She makes the same vague gesture with her hand. “Time is subjective.”
March stares at her and takes another long, steady breath through his nose. “How long?” he repeats.
“Maybe a week.”
“A week?”
“Possibly two.”
“Two weeks?”
“It wasn’t that bad then.”
He lets out a short, disbelieving breath and raises the pickaxe slightly between them. The head wobbles faintly on the cracked join as if to demonstrate his point.
“And your solution was to keep using it until it nearly came apart in your hands?”
“It did the job.”
“It stopped doing the job. That is why you’re here.”
A faint, satisfied smile returns to her face.
"Yes," she says lightly, "and now you're going to pretty please fix it, which means everything has worked out beautifully."
March feels something pulse behind his eye as Elowyn smiles that damned smile at him, and for a moment he considers whether the furnace is suddenly too hot or if it is simply his patience thinning.
He looks down at the pickaxe again rather than at her expression.
"You can't just keep using damaged tools until they fail, you idiot."
"I can when I need to finish something."
"No, you can't."
"Clearly I can. I did."
"And now it's fucking broken."
"And now I'm here."
"Do you hear yourself?"
"Frequently."
March closes his eyes for a moment, and takes another deep breath. When he opens them again, Elowyn is still watching him, her mouth curved with obvious satisfaction, and March hates that she looks pleased whenever she manages to make him do that. He also hates the small flicker of amusement trying to work its way through his irritation.
He forces his attention back to the pickaxe instead.
"What were you doing when it finally gave out?"
"Working."
"Where?"
"The mines."
"How deep?"
There is a hesitation this time, small but noticeable, and March catches it immediately.
"Pretty deep."
His expression must shift, because her smile fades a fraction, replaced by something more measured and less playful.
"How deep?" he asks again.
She exhales, shifting her weight slightly as though the question itself is heavier than she expected. "Low enough for silver."
"And you thought taking a cracked pickaxe down there was sensible?"
"I thought getting the ore we needed was sensible."
"We?"
"The town."
March scoffs, throwing his arms in the air in defeat or anger or satisfaction, he's not entirely sure anymore. "Of course."
Her chin lifts slightly, a defensive edge returning to her posture. "What is that supposed to mean?"
March hears the edge in his own voice before he fully intends it, but by then it is already too late to soften.
"It means you're always doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Pushing something until it breaks."
The words land more sharply than he expects, and the forge seems to respond by tightening around them, the sound of the furnace suddenly more present, the hiss of cooling metal more insistent in the silence that follows.
Elowyn's expression changes. The easy humour drains away, leaving something steadier underneath, less playful and more grounded, as though she has decided the conversation has shifted into something that requires more care than he is willing to accept.
"My pickaxe broke, March," she says quietly, but it feels deafening between them anyway. "I didn't"
"That isn't the fucking point."
"It feels very much like the point."
"You've been running yourself into the ground since you got here."
"I've been working."
"You work until dark, then go into the mines the next morning, then spend half the day hauling lumber, then somehow still find the time to take on everyone else's problems as if you don't already have enough of your own."
Elowyn folds her arms. "Have you been keeping a bloody schedule, March?"
March realises, a fraction too late, how specific that sounds, and the awareness does nothing to improve his mood.
His grip tightens around the haft. "It's obvious."
"To you, apparently."
"To anyone with eyes."
One eyebrow lifts, and he pushes on before she can turn it into something else entirely.
“You’re exhausted half the time.”
“I’m fine.”
“You say that whenever you’re obviously not.”
“You’ve known me for six months.”
“And somehow that has been enough time to learn that much.”
For a brief moment, neither of them speaks, and the forge fills the space between them with its steady, indifferent rhythm.
Then Elowyn exhales, and something in her expression settles back into place.
“So,” she says, unfolding her arms again, “you admit you’ve been paying attention.”
March glares at her, and her smile returns immediately, as if it had never left.
"You're the worst."
She laughs at that, dimples deepening in her cheeks and March's breath stills for a moment, "I know. Will you fix it for me anyway?"
He looks down at it again, partly to avoid her expression and partly to gauge if it's even possible.
"I'll look at it." he finally grumbles.
"That sounds promising."
"It sounds exactly like what I said."
"When should I come back?"
“Later.”
“Today?”
“Later.”
“That could mean anything.”
“It means leave.”
Elowyn laughs under her breath, warm and unbothered, entirely too pleased with herself. She reaches for the pickaxe, then pauses when he does not immediately return it.
“You’re keeping it?”
“Yes.”
“So you are fixing it.”
“I said I would look at it.”
“You’re very committed to technicalities.”
“And you’re very committed to making simple things difficult.”
She gives him an exaggerated look of offence. “I came here with a perfectly reasonable request.”
"Elowyn." he says, hoping the growl in his voice would be enough warning. It never is with her, but he hopes anyway.
"March." she responds, mimicking the low cadence of his voice and wearing a frown he assumes mirrors his own.
They hold each other's gaze for several seconds, the silence stretching just long enough to become uncomfortable before Elowyn breaks first, another laugh slipping out despite herself as she retreats back towards the street.
"I'll come by tomorrow."
“I didn’t say tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Elowyn.”
“Thanks, March. I owe you one!”
The sincerity in it cuts through the rest of the exchange more cleanly than anything else, and for a moment he does not have anything ready to replace it with as he watches her turn, the autumn light turning the loose strands around her face copper-red as she walks away.
March stands still for a moment longer than necessary, the forge continuing its steady hum of heat around him as though nothing has changed. Then he looks down at the pickaxe.
"Stupid," he mutters.
He is not entirely sure which of them he means.
He carries the damage tool inside to the workbench and lays it across the wood. Up close, the fracture is worse than it first appeared, moisture having worked into the grain and softened it in places, the split running farther than it should reasonably be allowed to. He presses a thumb into it, and the fibres shift.
“Two fucking weeks,” he sighs.
Of course she kept using it.
He removes the iron head carefully and turns it in his hands. The metal is salvageable, though the eye is stressed and slightly warped, the kind of damage that can be repaired but will always remember it has been repaired.
His gaze drifts to the haft.
He pauses.
The handle is too long. Not dramatically so, not in a way most people would notice without being told, but enough that the balance sits wrong in a way that becomes obvious once you are looking for it.
March sets the iron down, the frown at his brow pinching and deepening as he studies the wood properly.
Elowyn is shorter than most, and the balance point sits too far forward for her reach. He can see it now with uncomfortable clarity, the way she must compensate without thinking about it.
He imagines her using it, curls tucked back and already escaping, feet planted wider than necessary to stabilise a tool that does not quite fit her. The way her upper hand sits lower than it should, forcing her shoulder to take more strain than the design accounts for.
He runs a thumb over the worn grip. Too low.
Without thinking, he adjusts his own hand into the same position and the weight feels wrong immediately.
"Hm."
The sound escapes before he can stop it, a quiet, involuntary acknowledgement of something he has not yet fully named. Repairing this would be pointless; she would only continue compensating for the flaw until something else failed under the strain, and he has seen enough broken tools—and people—to recognise the pattern when it is already in motion.
He straightens, rolling his shoulders once as if that might loosen the thought from where it has lodged. A new one is the sensible option, and he tells himself that with the same firm logic he uses for every other decision in the forge as he begins gathering materials, moving through the familiar inventory of ash for the haft and steel already prepared for the head, each choice efficient, practical, and free of wasted effort.
He's no carpenter, but he knows enough to work on the handle first. He measures the wood once, then again, because precision is easier to trust than instinct, and marks it before hesitating just long enough to shorten it slightly. He pauses after that adjustment, studying the length as though it might object, and then considers her reach more carefully than he intended to, noting that it is longer than expected for her height in a way that does not quite fit the standard assumptions he usually works from.
He adjusts the mark.
The forge resumes its rhythm around him as he works—heat, strike, turn, shape—each motion familiar enough to settle his thoughts into something quieter and more controlled, the kind of focus that leaves little room for anything except the material in front of him and the way it responds under his hands.
He forges the head first, lighter than the original, redistributing weight toward the centre because Elowyn hits hard, too hard, always harder than she needs to, as though the world will only respond if she insists on it with enough force to leave a mark. Not that she will admit it, and not that she will notice the adjustment immediately, though the thought lingers longer than it should as he works.
He narrows the head, refines the angle, strengthens the eye, each correction precise and deliberate, and increasingly difficult to justify as anything other than unnecessary attention to detail that he could easily ignore if he chose to. By the time he begins shaping the haft, his focus has narrowed entirely to the work itself, the rest of the forge fading into background heat and sound.
He rounds the grip, tests the balance, sands a section back, and then stops when the fit still feels wrong in a way that is subtle but undeniable. Too wide. Elowyn’s hands are smaller, of course they are, and he exhales through his nose as if that explains anything before continuing to shape the wood with more care than the task strictly requires.
A voice cuts through the steady rhythm of the forge, slipping in just as March is settling into the quiet focus of his work.
"Nice!"
March nearly drops the rasp. His hands jerk slightly against the wood before he catches himself, and he turns sharply towards the sound with a glare already forming, as though irritation alone might dissuade further intrusions.
Olric is standing several paces away with a bundle of kindling tucked under one arm, watching him with the kind of mild, unbothered interest he usually wears when March is working.
March feels his ears heat anyway at the unnerving feeling of being caught doing something he somehow shouldn't be.
"It's a pickaxe."
Olric nods as if this confirms something important, then shifts his weight slightly, still smiling in the open, easy way of his. There is a brief pause where he clearly does not feel any need to fill the silence, which somehow makes it worse for March, who resumes sanding the handle a little too firmly, the rasp catching more aggressively than necessary.
Olric finally sets the kindling down near the furnace with the same gentle care he gives everything, as though even firewood deserves respect. He leans in a fraction to look at the work more closely, not intruding, just… observing with steady, uncomplicated curiosity.
“You’re making a new one?”
“The old one isn’t worth repairing.”
“Ah,” Olric says, as if that settles the matter completely, and then he just stands there looking pleased about it, like this is a perfectly normal and pleasant development in the day.
March waits for something else. Some follow-up. Some question. Something that would justify the way Olric is still smiling at him like this is all very interesting and good.
Nothing comes.
Olric simply hums a little under his breath and turns back to the kindling, starting to stack it with careful, slightly too-precise enthusiasm, as though he has decided this is now also his task and he intends to do it well.
March exhales through his nose and keeps working, though his grip tightens.
“What?” he asks after a moment, sharper than he means it to be.
Olric looks up immediately, bright and attentive. “What?”
“You’re doing that thing.”
Olric pauses mid-reach for another stick of wood, then straightens slightly, still smiling. “What thing?”
“That thing where you clearly have something to say and don’t say it.”
Olric blinks slowly, as if genuinely considering the accusation, then tilts his head in a way that makes him look more like a confused, friendly dog than anything else.
“I said it was nice.”
“Yes, and you said it like it meant something else.”
“I meant it was nice, bro,” Olric replies, very earnestly, as if this should clear everything up immediately.
March stares at him for a long moment, then looks back down at the handle, dragging the rasp over it with slightly more force than before.
“It is properly balanced.”
“I can see that,” Olric says, nodding as if March has just explained something very obvious and very good.
“The old one was too long.”
“Okay,” Olric agrees, still cheerful.
“And the grip was wrong.”
“Yeah,” he says again, like he is following along perfectly, even if there is nothing to follow.
March hesitates, then adds, almost against his will, “For the farmer.”
Olric brightens at that, like he has finally been given the missing piece of a puzzle he was not aware he was solving. “Oh! Yeah, that makes sense.”
March narrows his eyes slightly. “What does that mean.”
“It means,” Olric says, very thoughtfully, “you’re making it for Elowyn.”
“That is not—” March starts, then stops, because technically it is, and that feels like a trap.
Olric nods again, satisfied with this conclusion, and goes back to stacking kindling with renewed enthusiasm, humming a little louder now.
March watches him for a second longer, then mutters, “You’re smiling.”
“I smile a lot,” Olric replies immediately, as if this is a well-known fact about the universe.
“Yeah,” March says, though it does nothing to help him feel better about any of this.
Olric steps closer again, still not intruding, just looking at the half-shaped handle with open admiration, like it is something genuinely impressive rather than a very specific object that is currently ruining March’s peace.
“You made the handle smaller.”
“Because her hands are smaller.”
“Oh,” Olric says again, like this is all clicking into place in real time. “That’s really smart, bro!”
“It’s basic measurement.”
“It’s still smart,” Olric insists, nodding firmly, as if he is awarding this decision a prize.
March exhales slowly through his nose.
“And she puts too much weight through her right shoulder, so the head needed changing.”
“Yeah, that makes sense too,” Olric says, completely unbothered, like this is all just very normal information about a friend’s well-being and not something that should be examined too closely.
“She’s going to injure herself if she keeps using the old one.”
“Probably,” Olric agrees, far too cheerfully for the content of the statement.
Silence settles again, but it is not quite empty anymore. It feels occupied, like Olric has filled it with his presence and his very simple acceptance of everything March is trying very hard not to think about.
March waits anyway, because surely there is more.
Olric just smiles at him.
March’s eye twitches slightly.
“You could say whatever it is you’re thinking,” he says finally, because the alternative is continuing to exist in this state of cheerful incomprehension.
Olric looks at the pickaxe again, then back at March, and his expression brightens even further, like he has just been given permission to say something very important.
“I think you’re making Elowyn a really good pickaxe,” he says, with the full sincerity of someone complimenting a well-built chair or a particularly nice loaf of bread.
March goes very still.
“That’s my job,” he says flatly.
Olric beams at him, entirely unbothered, and gives a small, approving nod like this is exactly the right answer.
“Yeah,” he agrees warmly, and then, as if the matter is fully resolved in his mind, he turns back to his kindling with renewed, cheerful focus, humming again like nothing in the world could possibly be complicated.
March stares at him for a moment longer, then looks down at the half-finished handle in his hands.
After a long pause, he picks up the rasp and continues shaping it—precisely, carefully, and with significantly more force than necessary.
It is still the sensible, professional thing to do.
Obviously.
The next morning arrives clear and cold. A thin silver mist hangs low over the town when March heats up the forge, and his breath fogs faintly in front of him until the furnace catches properly and begins driving the chill from his hands. By the time the sun clears the rooftops, warming the yellowing leaves and setting the eastern windows of Mistria glowing, he has already found three separate reasons to rearrange the tools along the workbench and another two to inspect the pickaxe waiting against the wall.
It is finished.
It had been finished late yesterday afternoon, in fact, though March had spent considerably longer than necessary checking the join, smoothing the grip, testing the weight and convincing himself that the slightest roughness beneath his thumb required another pass with sandpaper. He had eventually left it where it now rests beside the bench, angled carefully away from the heat, and had gone to bed with the deeply irritating anticipation that Elowyn would be coming back for it in the morning.
He had thought about that anticipation more than he would like.
Now, with the forge open and the town beginning to stir beyond it, he does his best to behave as though this is an ordinary morning. There are hinges waiting to be finished, a set of nails for Hayden, two damaged tools for Eiland that actually require repairs rather than complete replacements and enough routine work to occupy his attention until well past midday. He settles into it willingly, letting the heat and repetition narrow the world into manageable things, and for a while it works. the hammer rises and falls in his hand, steady and familiar, shaping a strip of iron while the furnace breathes against his skin and the scent of coal settles comfortably around him.
Then footsteps approach from the direction of the town, and March knows who it is before she reaches the doorway.
He hates that he knows.
There is a particular quickness to Elowyn's stride when she comes in the morning, brisk enough to suggest that she has already been awake for hours and still somehow has somewhere else to be. He has heard that rhythm often enough over the past two seasons that his attention catches on it automatically now, his hammer slowing before he has consciously decided to listen. A moment later, her shadow stretches across the anvil, long and softened by the low autumn sun, and March looks up despite every sensible part of him insisting that there is absolutely no reason to do so. March's hammer stops above the anvil.
The thought that follows is immediate and unwelcome.
She looks beautiful.
Elowyn stands in the doorway wrapped in the clear gold light of early fall, the sun catching every copper and russet shade in her hair until the curls spilling over her shoulders seem almost lit from within. She has left most of it loose today, though the front has been pulled back carelessly enough that several strands have already escaped to frame her face, shifting when the breeze slips past her. The cold has pinkened the apples of her cheeks and the tip of her nose, sharpening the green-blue of her eyes in a way that makes them seem impossibly brighter when they find his. There is something freshly scrubbed about her this morning, despite the familiar scuff of farm boots and the faint smear of soil at one cuff of that ugly bee jumper she adores, and March has the absurd impression that she belongs perfectly to the season outside: warm colours against the cold air, alive and vivid beneath a sky that is only beginning to pale towards winter.
He's been looking at her far too long. He realises this because Elowyn's smile slowly grows.
March lowers the hammer and turns his attention back to the iron, though there is very little left to do with it and they both know it.
"You're staring," she says, amusement already curling through her voice as she approaches him, carrying something carefully between both hands.
"I was wondering why you're here this early."
"You told me to come back."
“I did not.”
“You strongly implied it.”
“I told you I would look at the pickaxe.”
“And I said I’d come back today. You had every opportunity to stop me.”
“I tried.”
Elowyn's smile widens as she steps around the anvil, and March catches the scent of chocolate before he properly registers the mug in her hands. Steam curls lazily from the top, disappearing almost immediately into the warmth of the forge, and there is something about the sight of it that takes him more thoroughly off-kilter than her arrival did.
She places it beside him with exaggerated care, well clear of the metal and tools scattered around them
"For you."
March looks at the mug and then at her. "Why?"
Elowyn blinks. "Because it's hot chocolate."
"I know what hot chocolate is."
"Good. It would be quite worrying if you didn't know what you've been inhaling every Saturday from Darcy's stall."
His mouth threatens to move before he catches it, and he turns the almost-smile into a frown instead. "I meant why are you giving it to me."
Her expression softens with a simplicity he finds increasingly difficult to defend himself against. "Because you're fixing my pickaxe, and because I was a little annoying yesterday."
"A little?"
"Don't push your luck. I can still drink it myself."
March reaches for the mug with a snort before she can make good on the threat, wrapping his fingers around the warmth and immediately regretting the speed of the movement when her eyes brighten. The chocolate is still hot enough that the ceramic heats his palms through his gloves, and he can smell sugar and milk beneath the richer bitterness of cocoa. He takes a cautious sip, mostly so that he has something to do besides look at her, and discovers that she has somehow made it exactly the way he likes it: rich without being sickeningly sweet, a little creamier than most people in town seem to prefer.
That is probably coincidence. It has to be coincidence.
"Well?" Elowyn prompts, leaning one hip against the edge of the anvil.
"It's fine."
"Fine?"
March takes another audible sip as he leads her inside to the warmth of the workshop.
She watches him with open suspicion. “You’ve already had two mouthfuls.”
“I was thirsty.”
“You are impossible to please.”
“And yet you keep trying.”
The words leave him before he has time to examine them, and something quiet shifts across her face.
It lasts only a second, barely enough for him to recognise it before she looks away toward his carefully displayed wares with a little hum that might be amusement and might be something else entirely. March sets the mug down, suddenly aware of how warm the room has become despite the chill still lingering near the open doorway.
Elowyn’s gaze moves across the workbench, searching.
“So,” she begins, “how bad was the diagnosis? Is my poor pickaxe going to live?”
March glances toward the wall.
Her eyes follow his.
The moment she sees it, she goes still.
He watches recognition move across her face slowly, beginning with confusion as she takes in the clean new haft and the dark, freshly worked steel of the head, then settling into certainty as she straightens away from the bench.
“That isn’t mine.”
“The old one was beyond sensible repair.”
Elowyn walks toward it, her attention fixed completely on the tool now. “March.”
“The haft was split halfway through, the head was warped, and even if I reset it you would have been back here in another month complaining that something else had broken.”
She shoots him a look over her shoulder, though there is less humour in it now, her attention quickly returning to the pickaxe. Up close, she seems almost hesitant to touch it, and March feels a sudden, ridiculous urge to explain every decision he made while building it, to point out the reinforced eye and the redistributed weight, to tell her that the ash should withstand years of abuse if she bothers to treat it with even a fraction of the care she gives everything living on that farm.
Instead, he folds his arms.
“Well?” he asks.
Elowyn glances at him. “Well what?”
“Pick it up.”
She does.
March has tested the balance himself more times than he will ever admit, but watching the tool settle into her hands is entirely different. Her fingers close around the grip exactly where he expected them to, the narrowed wood fitting comfortably beneath her palm without forcing her upper hand lower. She adjusts automatically, shifting the pickaxe once, then again, and her brows draw together.
March’s attention catches on every small movement.
She turns it sideways, examining the head, then lets the weight rest naturally in both hands. Her right shoulder remains relaxed. Good. She steps away from the workbench where there is more room, plants her feet and gives the pickaxe a careful practice swing through empty air.
The motion is cleaner than the one he has been watching for months.
Satisfaction rises in him so suddenly that he almost smiles.
Elowyn stops at the end of the movement.
She looks down at the tool.
Then she tries it again.
This time there is no experimentation in the swing. Her hands settle instinctively into place, the head carrying through the arc without dragging her shoulder forward, and when she straightens there is something different in her expression.
The teasing is gone.
March’s chest tightens.
“You changed the balance,” she says quietly.
“It was wrong.”
“And the length.”
“It was too long for you.”
Her thumb moves across the grip, tracing the smooth curve where he had sanded it down until it felt right beneath a hand smaller than his own. She turns it fractionally, examining the way her fingers sit against the wood, then looks at him again with a steadiness that makes him abruptly wish she would start making fun of him.
“You changed the grip too.”
March shrugs. “The old one was too wide.”
Elowyn says nothing.
He dislikes the silence almost immediately.
She knows tools. He had known that already, though he had not considered what it would mean when she examined his work. She grew up on a farm, after all, and whatever else there is in her past that she has only mentioned in fragments, she handles equipment with the familiarity of someone who understands the difference between something that merely functions and something made well. There is no way for her to hold this pickaxe and miss what he has done. She will feel the shortened reach, the lighter head, the shift in balance that accounts for the way she favours her right side. She will know these things were not guesses.
Her gaze rises to his face again, softer now.
“How did you know?”
March’s stomach turns over.
“Know what?”
“How I hold it.”
He reaches for his hot chocolate, though the mug is no longer quite as warm. “You hold every pickaxe the same way.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It isn’t complicated.”
“March.”
He takes a drink and discovers that hot chocolate offers very little protection from direct questions.
Elowyn looks down at the pickaxe again. Her fingers shift once around the grip, and when she speaks her voice has lost almost all of its usual playful edge. “You noticed my hand sits lower on the old one. You noticed I was compensating for the weight.”
“You were using it badly.”
“I was using a tool that didn’t fit me.”
“Exactly.”
“And you noticed.”
March feels irritation stir, though it has very little to do with her now. She is saying it too plainly, stripping away every useful layer of practicality he has spent the last day constructing around the decision. Of course he noticed. He notices workmanship. He notices technique. He notices when people are doing things inefficiently because inefficiency bothers him. The fact that he can picture exactly how Elowyn’s fingers fit around a wooden haft, or the line of her shoulders when she swings, or the way she braces one boot slightly ahead of the other when she is tired has nothing to do with anything beyond that.
He does not particularly want to examine why he can also picture her standing in his doorway with autumn light in her hair.
“It’s my job to notice these things,” he says, perhaps a little too quickly.
Elowyn looks at him for a long moment.
Then a smile begins to form.
It is small at first, warm rather than mischievous, and somehow that is much worse.
“You made me a pickaxe.”
“I replaced a broken tool.”
“You made me one.”
“Because you destroyed the other one.”
Her smile deepens, and she glances down at the tool held carefully across her palms. “You made me a pickaxe that fits my height, my hands and apparently the exact way I swing it.”
“Yes, because otherwise you would continue using one badly suited to you and probably destroy your shoulder next.”
“So it’s a gift.”
March nearly chokes on his chocolate.
“It is not a gift.”
Elowyn’s eyes gleam. “You made it for me.”
“I make things for people every day.”
“Do you measure everyone’s hands from memory?”
“Stop being weird. I did not measure your hands from memory.”
“You didn’t measure them at all.”
That stops him.
Elowyn’s smile becomes unbearably pleased.
March sets the mug down before he can do something undignified with it. “Your hands are obviously smaller than mine.”
“That’s your defence?”
"It's not a defence because there's nothing to defend."
"Right."
“It is equipment.”
“A very thoughtful piece of equipment.”
“It is correctly made equipment.”
“For me.”
“Yes, Elowyn, because you are the one who needs a fucking pickaxe.”
She laughs then, though gently, without the triumphant edge he expects. The sound rolls softly through the forge and settles somewhere uncomfortable beneath his ribs, especially when she looks at the tool again and the laughter fades into something quieter.
For once, she does not chase the joke.
March watches her run her thumb along the ash, careful despite all his accusations about how she treats her tools, and something about the tenderness of the gesture makes him suddenly aware of how much of himself is contained in the thing she is holding. Hours of work, certainly, though that is easy enough to dismiss. More difficult are the choices themselves, each one built around observations he had collected without ever meaning to: her height against his, the size of her hands, the strength in her shoulders, the way tiredness changes her stance after too long in the mines. He had taken those details and turned them into something solid, something she can carry with her, and now she is looking at his work as if she understands exactly what that means.
March is beginning to suspect this was a terrible idea.
Elowyn lifts her eyes.
“Thank you, March.”
There is no teasing in it at all.
The words are simple, spoken softly enough that the furnace nearly swallows them, yet they land with more force than any of the arguments she has ever dragged him into. Her expression is open in a way he rarely sees when she is looking directly at him, all the restless humour and stubborn challenge eased aside for a moment. She looks pleased, certainly, but there is something deeper beneath it that March cannot quite name without wandering into territory he has spent months carefully avoiding.
His chest feels strangely tight.
He looks away first.
“You needed a new one.”
“I know.”
“And repairing that wreck would have been a waste of time.”
“I know.”
“So there was no reason to keep it.”
“I know, March.”
The softness in her voice makes him glance back despite himself.
Elowyn smiles.
He wishes she would argue with him again. He understands arguments. He understands the spark in her eyes when she plants herself in front of him and refuses to budge, understands the easy exchange of irritation and amusement that lets him pretend there is nothing beneath it. This quiet gratitude is infinitely more dangerous. There is no sharp edge for him to push against, nothing to turn into a competition or complaint, only the unsettling knowledge that he has made her happy and that seeing her happy because of something he did feels far better than it has any right to.
She adjusts the pickaxe across her shoulder.
It sits there as naturally as though it has always belonged to her.
March hates how satisfying that is.
“I really do love it,” she says, and his gaze flicks back to her face before he can stop it. “I’ll take very good care of it.”
"Promise?" he says gruffly. "Because I'm not making a habit of this."
Her smile finally returns to its familiar mischievous shape, and March feels an absurd little loosening in his chest at the sight of it. She reaches for the mug she brought him, apparently checking how much he has drunk, and looks pleased when she finds it nearly empty.
“So,” she says, stepping toward the door, “thank you for the hot-chocolate-worthy repair.”
“Replacement.”
“And for my gift.”
“It was not a gift.”
Elowyn reaches the threshold and turns, the autumn light gathering around her again. The cold outside catches immediately at the colour in her cheeks, and a breeze lifts several curls across her face as she hooks the new pickaxe more securely over her shoulder. She looks absurdly pleased with herself, and even more pleased with him, which is somehow worse.
“My very thoughtful, specially made gift,” she continues.
March points toward the road. “Get the fuck out.”
“I’m already leaving.”
“And don’t ruin this one.”
She steps backward into the sunlight, grinning up at him. “I’ll treasure it forever.”
“Elowyn.”
“Thanks again, March.”
This time the teasing remains in her smile, but the sincerity beneath it is still there, unmistakable now that he knows to look for it.
Then she turns and heads toward the centre of town, the pickaxe resting easily against her shoulder as though March had shaped it there instead of at his workbench.
He remains in the doorway.
There is no reason to watch her go. He has work waiting, iron cooling and a forge that will not run itself, yet his attention follows her anyway as she crosses the road and disappears through a scatter of windblown leaves, auburn hair bright against the golden afternoon. She lifts one hand in greeting when Holt calls to her farther down the street, and March hears her laugh faintly before the distance carries the sound away.
Only then does he step back to his work. The forge feels strangely quiet without her beside it.
March looks at the empty place beside the bench where the pickaxe had rested since yesterday afternoon. There is a small scattering of wood shavings still caught near one leg of the table, remnants of the hours he spent shaping something precisely for her hands, and the sight brings back the moment she first swung it, the clean movement of her shoulder and the surprise that had softened her face when she realised what he had done.
A slow satisfaction settles through him.
It is professional pride, he decides as he reaches for his hammer.
Any blacksmith would feel the same after seeing a well-made tool sitting correctly in the hands it was designed for. The fact that those hands belong to Elowyn has nothing whatsoever to do with the warmth lingering somewhere behind his ribs, nor with the ridiculous pleasure he feels knowing she is carrying something he made back to the farm.
March picks up the next piece of iron and sets it against the anvil, forcing his attention toward the day’s work.
The pickaxe fits her properly now.
That is all.
And if the thought makes him smile faintly before the first strike falls, there is nobody in the forge to notice.