Day 001 - Ethereal / Calculate - Feat. Laeynna
Day 002 - Layer / Wither - Feat. Belidrae
Day 003 - Twitterpated / Primal - Feat. Soryk
Day 004 - Languish / Direction - Feat. Marint & Soryk
Day 005 - Rustic / Attack - Feat. Zarynei
Day 006 - Celebrate / Reactionary - Feat. Ankalei
Day 007 - Serene / Weapon - Feat. Laeynna
Another set of DWC challenges down.
I've often thought to myself that having multiple characters makes it rather easy to simply pick a character and assign them to a prompt that is most befitting of them. However, I think on the next one, I might wish to select one or two characters and focus solely on them.
In the past and even this most recent one, I frequently use DWC as a means of trying to find direction, reclaim characters lost to unfortunate experiences, or something akin to. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. In the past, it has also inspired me to take a character I thought only a side and wanting to make them something more. (And on this one, I even wrote something a little special just for them, realising that I was rather fond of their concept.)
On this DWC, I found myself contemplating the life of a character I thought I could salvage and I think, in the end, I won't be able to. I feel that was the discovery that I made at the end of the prompt pertaining to them. In spite of that, DWC has paved me a pathway to see an end to them. Perhaps, after all, it helped me more than I thought it might.
I found DWC considerably more challenging this time around than I usually do. Perhaps that is the result of over-thinking. Of excessive worry. Dropping into the unfortunate mentality of wondering if my writing is compelling. If my characters are compelling. And the ever-consistent reminder that perhaps it is more important to focus on what I think of my writing. Yet as artists, I suspect we all want to write things that others support us in. We all want to make something that we feel is worthwhile, especially when it comes to incorporating so much of what we do in a collaborative hobby.
Thank you, @daily-writing-challenge, for another opportunity to better how I convey my ideas. For another opportunity to think so very deeply about my characters and analysing them, understanding their motives, and finding ways to better express that.
Thank you, fellow writers. It was a pleasure to read everyone's works. To learn about other characters. To watch ideas come into play and fork off in every which way. To follow adventures (and misadventures) from one point to another. To enjoy how thoughts and feelings can be portrayed in so many different fashions.
Like music to sylvan ears, really. Zarynei found an immense, deep satisfaction in the striking of hammer to iron. To steel. To silver. To gold. It didn’t matter what the materials were. As of recent, she had the most intriguing project of melting down glass and porcelain, only to fashion it into some bizarre corset-like garment. She wasn’t going to be the one wearing it, but even when she finished it, let it cool, provided all of the golden details, it was…
Well. When she found considered that its owner was a Darkfallen—or something like it, she couldn’t really tell for sure—suddenly that made a hell of a lot more sense. Worldly comforts didn’t matter to folks like them, right? Not that she really wanted to find out. Either way, it was a project done and over with. She’d shipped it out days before feeling incredibly confident over its impeccable craftsmanship.
Maybe she’d start making a name for herself by creating obscure works of art.
Zarynei barked out a laugh that was on par with the collision between hammer and rapidly cooling metal. It was, in fact, so loud, that her faithful assistant, working not far from her on his own current piece, was caught off guard. Upon hearing his yelp, she put a pause on the matter at hand. Setting her hammer down, she lifted a hand, swept back her hair, and in the process smudged no shortage of dark oil across her features.
“Weash, show me what you’ve got.”
Stepping away from her work, she moved over to him. He’d already designed his piece, shaped it, created the edges. It was yet another practise piece, built off the template of one she’d crafted years before. The only way for him to improve was to keep crafting and little by little, he was improving. But even as she peered around his tall, muscular frame, she needed only her eyes to take notice of immediate flaws she saw.
Not yet quenched, she thought to herself. Good.
“Uh, it’s not ready, Ty’linde,” he protested.
She knew that. Zarynei scoffed and she reached past him to take it into hand. A short sword, it seemed. Longer than the original piece she’d made. It was just as good for him to merely use her own pieces as guidelines. Part of becoming a good smith was having the creativity to create one’s own pieces. Although she wouldn’t have said it aloud, whether she wanted to admit it or not, there was a certain artistry when it came to crafting armour, weapons, or anything else for that matter. When using one’s own hands, it became a significantly more intimate experience.
Resting the blade just above the crossguard atop the back of her hand, she eyed it as it swayed back and forth, as if it couldn’t quite decide which way it wanted to go, but the moment it began to tip towards the hilt, she snatched it right back up and started studying the details a little more closely. Sighing, though it wasn’t really because she was disappointed, she offered the blade back to her assistant, pommel first.
“Shape’s wrong,” she began factually, with all of the confidence of a smith who had been studying the craft for years. And she had. “Your tapering’s off. You need to make it even. Weight’s too heavy in the hilt. Should have checked with me before you started sanding, because now you have to normalise it again. Start over and pay closer attention.”
Weash, looking sheepish, reclaimed his shortsword and he too, sighed.
She watched him from where she stood, ochre and iron hair a mess, even with the way she had it pulled back. Dropping her glasses back down to her face, she took a pull from the wooden pipe at the corner of her mouth. Clove filled her mouth, touched her tongue, and after a few moments, she exhaled through her nose, a soft little burning that felt just as comforting and familiar as the constant smell of melted metal emanating from her forge.
“Don’t get discouraged,” she advised him, eyeing the way his shoulders dropped. “Everyone has to make a lot of shit before they make anything good.”
She had been no different. At least a century before, she’d not planned to make smithing and engineering her life’s passions. At a point, she’d thought she would fight until she fell on the field of battle. That drafting schematics and forging steel would only be hobbies. Now, she spent her entire day doing both. Shipping her works via courier programmes, travelling from place to place to place to ensure Ty’linde establishments across the continents were well-maintained and adequately run. It really had become her whole life.
Zarynei very nearly smiled. It didn’t quite reach fully, but it was close enough considering she wasn’t a woman who did much in the way of emotive expression. She could still remember the first weapon she’d made. A simple dirk. It had been terrible. It had been so terrible that she’d spent a couple of sleepless days repeatedly reforging it. And at the end of all of that, it still hadn’t been perfect. Or even up to her bare minimum standards.
She had been pissed. Livid. Enraged. Acidic. Volatile. Venomous.
As she studied Weash, she knew already that she didn’t want him going down the same path. There was only room for one tired, cranky smithy. And that was her.
“Keep going,” Zarynei instructed him, watching him as he restarted a process that he had already poured so much of himself into. “I’ll be here the entire time. Let’s see it from start to finish.”
And if he did a good job? She’d treat him to drinks. She almost never did that.
It was her favourite sound, hammer against molten metal.
Clang.
It was her favourite sight, watching the sparks fly off at the impact.
Clang.
It was her favourite way to bury herself as the rest of the world passed around her.
The heat of the forge was strong today. She'd have to pass on a word of thanks or two to Weash for all of the preparation. She could have done it herself. Normally did. Every so often, however, Weash would pitch in. She doubted it was his real name, but if she was honest, she didn't care. What kind of parents named their kids 'Weash' anyway. There was no way. And if there was, it was going to be one of the rare moments that she was inclined to laugh.
There weren't too many of those, frankly. Didn't think there were too many more remaining either.
Zarynei hadn't ever been known for having a sense of humour. There wasn't a lot to laugh about. Arrogant soldiers being stupid drunkards, unable to get their breeches on without tripping over themselves in the aftermaths of hangovers? Nothing funny about that. Hadn't been anything funny about the Second War or any of the others that fell after it either. If she was ever asked, and Weash had once or twice, there wasn't really anything funny about life in general.
Even in the place where she was most comfortable, a hot as blazes forge that left her in a fine coat of sheen and sweat, she wasn't inclined much towards humour. Or anything else that wasn't outright focus and intense concentration.
Days of war were behind her, as was her service. No point in lifting a weapon any longer. Not when she could craft the damn things and put them into the hands of equally foolish soldiers who could follow in the same footsteps she'd been travelling years before them. Had she been foolishly optimistic when she was younger? Maybe. She wasn't sure she could even remember. Felt like every year that passed now was only filled with the grim reality of things. Pleasant memories, maybe, had gone elsewhere.
"Ty'linde."
She heard it. Somewhere it leaked between her thoughts, which seemed to be all and nothing whenever she got into her smithing work. Whatever it was, however, wasn't as important as the focus she put into her craft. She'd made a name for herself with her line of weapons and armour. So much of a name, in fact, that she kept a number of establishments across the world under the careful watch of specially designated people she believed she could trust. Or at least people who would be inclined to peddle her wares for coin in a somewhat responsible manner.
And if they couldn't... Well. She could just replace them. After teaching a hard lesson about double-crossing her. Zarynei was simply too old a hen to be taken advantage of.
"Dame Ty'linde—"
She turned sharply, lifting her heated hammer. "Fuck off," she began, "I'm busy."
There stood Weash, a relatively... Well. He probably would have called himself impressive. Objectively, sure. Muscular. Knew his way around a forge. Proved himself a productive member of her workforce. But that was about the extent at which she thought of him. Pulling the protective glasses up into the askew collective of hair like iron and ochre, she scowled.
"How many times have I told you to not interrupt me when I'm working? I don't bother you when you're busy. You don't bother me. Whatever it is, it can wait."
In the way he had every other time he'd stopped her in the middle of a project, the look he offered was apologetic. As her shoulders dropped in a transparent resignation and she beckoned for him to continue, impatient and to the point, he seemed to find his voice—wherever he'd dropped it.
"Yeah, I know," he began. "That Lord Rosebrooke is here again. He wants to know when you'll have his breastplate finished."
Zarynei scowled, teeth gritting about the mouthpiece of the wooden pipe tucked in the corner of her frown. Of course he was. The same pompous idiot had been at her smithy earlier in the week. She didn't think there was anyone else more impatient than her, but he sure liked challenging her, it seemed.
Turning her back to Weash, she placed her attention back onto the leggings she was shaping beneath heat. "Tell him to fuck off, too," she began. "I told him already that there's queue for a reason. He could shower this whole damn place in gold and it wouldn't matter. He'll get his breastplate when I get to it and not a moment sooner."
Fancy lords and their fancy satchels. As if that was going to get them results. Sure, it had for their people once upon a time. But times, they were changing. Noble lineage and titles didn't mean diddly, except in circles that clung to old ways and had no idea how to move forward in a world forced to evolve. Every time a lord or a lady came her way, making their cute, little demands, Zarynei wanted to spit all over them. Her work spoke for itself. They could either wait or they could go somewhere else. And if they did the latter, well, the quality just wasn't going to be the same. She was confident of that.
"I—" Weash replied, a noticeable apprehension in his voice. Clearing his throat, he continued, the edge in his tone betraying a nervousness he often exhibited when it came to overstaying his welcome. Zarynei was as likely to throw him into the fire as she was coals for the flame. "I don't think he's going to like that."
Zarynei pulled her glasses back down, slamming her hammer into the cut of steel. Sparks flew from the collision and she swore she heard Weash fall back a pace or two. "Don't care what he likes and neither should you. He's not the one paying your salary." She casting a look over her shoulder, blowing up a lock of that hair that fell into one cool blue eye. "Tell him if he bothers me again, he can take his business elsewhere."
Don't need the coin of a self-interested dick to support myself.
When she heard Weash's footfalls recede and eventually fade, following the natural slam of the doors into her forge, Zarynei assumed she'd gotten her point across. Taking a deep pull on her pipe between the consecutive intimate meetings between steel and hammer, somehow she felt tired all over again. If it wasn't one thing, it was another.
But it could have been worse. At least she enjoyed what she did. And she'd have one more numbered piece to add to her collection of work. If these ones turned out to her satisfaction, she'd simply make more and start sending them to the other smithies she'd established. As she stared down at the project in progress, she nodded. It was going to be another masterpiece.
