87: Sowing the Seeds of Peace
“That's what this was all about?” Elena asked, practically hissing with frustration.
Paisley and I exchanged a glance, then nodded as one.
Our exasperated friend sighed and sank to sit on the edge of her bed. “Okay. Shit. I think… so this is one part romantic drama, there's no denying that. Second part — this reads like each has a personal stake in their argunts. Nobody plants their flag on a taphorical hill like that without it being so part of who they are, you know?”
Paisley, who was beside on the sofa in Elena's room, looked thoughtful. “I can see that. The whole Tysian situation with Arca could, you know, be similar to Ethan and Marlon. Shit, similar to all of us from Silver Ridge, really. Marlon wasn't as bad as Arca is, but he was still a dick to people sotis and we turned a blind eye to it.”
“Sotis?” Elena asked, giving both Paisley and a look.
“I think it's been said before, but even assholes are usually pretty nice to their friends,” I shrugged.
“Right,” she said, still looking sceptical. “Anyway, confronting them both at the sa ti is pointless and could make things worse. However if the three of us, when we next get one of them alone, voice the opinion that they're both making a little sense, we might get sowhere. We gotta get them to llow out and then go find each other on their own terms.”
Thinking about it, I knew she was right. After all, both had made valid points. Tysian was both the pri victim of Arca's bullshit, and complicit in allowing that bullshit to hurt others. The longer he stood by her — weak protests or no — the more weight he gave to her manipulative behaviour.
“Okay so… next ti I get Ethan alone, I guess I'll try to talk to him about it,” said Paisley, dropping her face into her hands. “Gosh, this is stressful.”
Reaching out, I started to rub her back, but the mont I did she scooched sideways and nestled herself in against my side. My heart swelled with affection. Poor Paisley. She wasn't good at this kind of thing.
“If you do Ethan, then I'll do Noah,” I said after a mont.
Looking up, I caught Elena smiling softly at us, and when she saw watching, she grinned a little. “And I'll hit them both up at so point.”
The next day, I set to work on creating my yari. I began with one of the Spiritforged iron ingots — placing it into the lit furnace. At room temperature, the tal was ever so slightly green, but as it began to take on heat, it turned to a dull, glowing red. I waited until it was almost white before I pulled it free.
My field anvil was hamred into a hefty log of wood, and the radiant yellow ingot ca down on it with a clang. I was forced to use my crude field anvil for this, because without it this wouldn't count as Spirit Forging.
Sparks flew as I made my first hamr blow, and the ingot gained a satisfying new dent. I struck it a second ti, then a third, and with each strike, the tal of the ingot yielded ever so slightly to the vision I held in my mind. I began to flatten the ingot and lengthen it, which took a long fucking ti — most of it spent waiting for the tal to reheat in the furnace.
When I finally had a flattened rectangle as long as my forearm, I took a hot-chisel from the tool rack on the wall. Carefully, I lined the hardened cutting edge up with the centre line and hamred down on the flat top of the chisel. A heavy dent was stamped into the tal, but the ingot also jumped off the anvil, landing with a dull clunk on the stone floor.
Tongs in hand, I picked up the escapee and shoved it back into the furnace. Just as with the initial shaping step, cutting the tal took a frustrating amount of ti. In the end, though, it succumbed to my bullheaded determination and I had myself a very sad, abused, Y-shaped chunk of tal.
When I looked up after having placed my yari-to-be in the furnace again, I found Noah in pixie form, sitting on the edge of a nearby workbench.
“Oh, hey Noah,” I said apprehensively.
He gave a tight smile. “Hey, Keiko.”
We stared at each other for long monts — neither of us keen to break the awkward silence.
“I'm… sorry,” he said after a full ten seconds had passed.
I continued to stare at him. “What for?”
“For having a whole dramatic fit about the Tysian thing, and for making things awkward with our friend group,” he said, sighing a tiny faerie sigh.
Pursing my lips, I broke the eye contact and stared into the furnace fire instead. “It was pretty stupid. Especially since… well, you know, that Ethan had just as much of a point as you did.”
“Did he really thou— nevermind, that's not— I didn't want to co here and talk about it all again, I just wanted to apologise for making things all tense,” he said, wincing as he cut himself off.
“Yeah, he really did have a point,” I said, feeling a surprising amount of conviction harden in my mind. “Tysian is definitely a victim of Arca's crap—”
Noah opened his mouth to protest, but I pointed the chisel at him. “No, Noah. Stop and listen. Tysian can be both, okay? He can be that guy who sits there backing up his girlfriend as she continues to be a shitty person, and he can also be her most prominent victim. The two aren't mutually exclusive.”
“He's way more of an accomplice than a victim,” Noah insisted, unperturbed by my tool waggling.
“No offence, Noah—” I said, placing my hamr down so I could stretch my fingers out. They were aching from the hours of gripping the handle. “—but when it cos to Tysian, I'm not sure you have the best perspective of the situation. You've barely t him.”
Noah began to argue further, but pulled himself short and kept silent. His gaze drifted off as he thought on what I'd said, even as his obstinate frown deepened.
“Think about it,” I shrugged, and picked up the tongs.
“I will,” he agreed, and then the ringing of hamr and iron drowned out any further hope for conversation.
After lunch, I got properly stuck into shaping the blade of the speartip. All my practice with normal smithing ca into play as I hamred the blade into a straight, dagger-like spike. It really did look like a dagger too, with an abrupt triangular point, then straight cutting edges that ended an inch from where the split of the Y started.
Night was falling by the ti I got to flattening out the two prongs — god damn, smithing sothing with actual precise dinsions was hard. At least I didn't have to put an edge on the prongs. In fact, after I began on them, it turned out to be a million tis easier.
Using a tal rod that was the perfect diater for my hand to grip, I began to shape the prongs around it. Getting the initial shape to fit was fiddly, but as soon as the rod was gripped tight in its tal embrace, the whole affair was smooth sailing.
Until Paisley ca through the workshop door, that is. Her expression was drawn tight with anxiety. Seeing her looking like that rattled , and I accidentally threw the spear tip into the fire without removing the rod.
“Shit,” I muttered, pulling it back out again. I not-so-carefully yanked the rod free, then tossed the spear tip back in.
“Sorry,” Paisley murmured, arriving nearby.
My friend and crush looked… upset, but I had no idea how to just ask her what was wrong. Thankfully, I didn't need to.
“I spoke to Ethan,” she said.
With a wince, I motioned for her to follow out to the balcony. One of the Carnival Historica mbers was over in the corner doing so jewellery work with the fae tools we looted.
Outside, the air was cold, and a gust of icy mountain wind howled past to reinforce the temperature. Thankfully, the furnace inside provided a little warmth at our backs.
“This balcony is becoming the serious conversation balcony,” Paisley joked halfheartedly as we settled down on the floor with our backs to the wall.
I snorted. “It really is.”
Figuring she’d continue, I waited, but she didn’t speak. Instead, I felt her hand find mine, and my perception of reality narrowed down in an instant. The feeling of her soft hands as she threaded our fingers together almost nuked my psyche back to the stone age as my insides began to flutter and dance. I couldn’t help but turn a bug-eyed stare on her.
“I—” she started, but she saw my wide eyes and faltered. Her expression quickly morphed from anxious and serious, to shy and bashful, and she grinned down at our hands, “I didn’t an to do that… I was just…”
Scared she’d stop holding my hand, I clenched tighter. “It’s fine. I really like it.”
“Sa,” she blushed, looking down at her feet. She scuffed her boot across the stone floor and after a few seconds, said, “I spoke to Ethan — taking the position that Tysian does have a certain responsibility for not stepping up to stop Arca’s emotional twisting of other people. He was— I an, you know how he is. He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t let any of his frustration out, but he gets so intense and disapproving. It’s so…”
“It almost feels like he’s disappointed in you — like you’ve let down his view of you by not agreeing with his big point,” I finished for her.
She nodded and I felt her fingers try to nestle themselves closer into mine. “Yeah.”
“I actually made so progress with Noah when he visited this morning,” I told her.
Looking up, her gorgeous brown eyes held a flicker of hope. “Really?”
“Yeah, argued… well, you know,” I said, shrugging. “He wasn’t too receptive, but I could see that I made him think a little.”
“That’s good,” she sighed, relaxing slightly. Gosh, how tense must she have felt that I could feel it through our hands and shoulders?
Looking out into the waning afternoon light, I allowed the slight gentle rocking of Willow’s gait to relax too. “Hopefully Elena can make a bit more headway with Ethan. She’s good at this philosophical shit — she might actually be able to get Ethan to realise his ideas aren’t quite as smart and nuanced as he thought they were.”
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