The forge sang its song in fire and iron. Each strike of my hammer sent sparks leaping like wayward stars, bright against the shadowed stone walls. Heat pressed against my skin until sweat slicked my neck and arms, but I welcomed it. The rhythm anchored me—strike, turn, strike again—until I lost myself in the glow of metal.
Father's voice cut through the roar of the bellows.
"Hold your elbow steady, girl. You're hammering like you want to fight the iron instead of guide it."
I scowled at him, though my arm adjusted instinctively to his correction. "If the iron listened the first time, I wouldn't need to fight it."
His laugh rumbled deep, warm even through the rasp of years and smoke. "Iron listens, Eria. But it only speaks to those patient enough to hear it."
I drove the hammer down again, letting the clash echo in place of an answer. Patient. I could be patient with metal, but not with people who came whispering about fae armies or new levies. Not when the air of the village square thickened every day with rumors. Not when the horizon itself seemed to wait for something terrible.
Father stepped to my side, his great hands calloused and blackened from decades at the forge. He smelled of smoke and sweat and steel, the truest scent of home I had ever known. He nodded once, watching the glow fade from the edge I was shaping. "Good. Now quench it before it softens."
I obeyed, plunging the blade into the trough. Steam roared up in a hiss that kissed my face with scalding damp. Droplets clung to my lashes, and for a moment the world blurred into smoke and firelight.
When I straightened, Father was studying me, not the steel. His gaze, steady and unflinching, made me shift my weight.
"What?" I demanded.
"You look too much like your mother when you defy me with your eyes," he said softly. Then he turned back to the anvil, as if his words meant nothing. But they did. They always did.
I set the blade aside and wiped my brow, more rattled than I'd admit. Mother's face had always been a sketch half-faded in my memory, a laugh more than a presence. She had died before I could truly know her, leaving Father and I with only stories. And yet, sometimes when I caught my reflection in the forge's warped glass, I wondered if I carried the same sharpness, the same fire.
"Don't look like that," Father added without glancing back. "It's not a curse."
I smirked faintly. "Didn't sound like a blessing."
His shoulders shook with a silent laugh. "Maybe it's both."
The hammer rang again, filling the silence that might have lingered too long.
I pressed my palm against the cool steel of the quenching trough, grounding myself. My arms ached pleasantly from the morning's work, the kind of pain that promised strength. The kind that whispered I could endure anything.