There’s a lot of things Tai doesn’t really get about relationship rituals. One of the few things he does know is that a proposal is, generally speaking, supposed to be a surprise.
This poses a mild problem - how do you surprise an observant raccoon who takes an active interest in what you get up to and can catch you out in your usual lies?
"Hoy, li’l bit. Y’remember when we made yer knife? Never taught you how to work with softer stuff, did I?"
The answer is a distraction.
Galena ore isn’t terribly hard to find. Not the best source of silver - but it’s not ‘supposed’ to produce silver, if he’s going to maintain his cover.
Bullet-casting for fun and profit’s the starter topic. Beginning with a home-made forge, smelting the ore down - showing her how the lead and silver splits off when you get the heat just right. Then tricks in making the bullets the way you want - hollowpoints, hard-core, solid rounds, simple but important stuff. Primer, too - hard to get the mix exactly right, but good enough with regular gun maintenance.
"An’ if y’ain’t takin’ care’a yer gun when you’re relyin’ on it in rough conditions like this, y’frankly deserve it blowin’ up in yer face."
Then a break - she to test out her new rounds, and feel how they differ from ‘clean’ rounds; he to scrounge up some food. Not that he told her that - first hint she got of the presence of edible things was the scent of sizzling fish on the air, cooked over the forge after a clean-up.
(Not in the forge. He tried that once - fish-flavoured charcoal was interesting, but probably not going to get very far in the common market)
And then, over a good meal -
"Hmm. Hey, li’l bit? Ever wanted to know how silverworkin’ goes?"
That led to some carving - making a simple C-block, showing her the sizes and explaining what it was for, and making a couple of simple mallets.
Getting her ring size - this was probably his masterstroke, far as he was concerned. The hard bit of the ‘problem’ of surprising her solves itself - genius. Silver’s marked, cut, hammered out. She’s got her hands on the work most of the time - he takes it far enough for her to get the idea, and lets her take it over.
She’s a quick study - it’s one of the things he loves about her.
Ends are welded together - he had to fetch tools for this, mostly with the justification that “Y’aren’t gonna be bothered ‘bout workin’ silver in the wild anyhow, so.” Flux, wire, tongs.
Then more hammering, getting the ring into an actually round shape. Filing the edges smooth. Sanding.
He’s humming to himself, while she works on polishing the ring up properly. He’s working on tidying the forge up, tail wagging back and forth.
"S’actually a relatively simple job, when y’break it down, huh? ‘Course, proper whitesmith’ll do all kindsa fancy things, set gems an’ decorate an’ make all kindsa different stuff, but, simple’s got its strong points."
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