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A lifetime ago, just after Eswild had been taken in as an apprentice of the Smith's Guild under the supervision of Gilan, she would have corrected the old bear. Only now, with her hair shorn til it was barely more than a few centimeters in length and with every curve and smooth patch of skin replaced with hard callous and sinew, Eswild no longer felt that anything other than "lad" was appropriate.
It was still dark outside as Eswild pivoted in her bed, planting her feet on the ground before jolting upwards and reflexively stretching, grabbing her leather smock from where it stood hanging by the doorway into her cramped hole in the wall she called a bedroom. It had once been Gilan's pantry before he had taken Eswild on as an apprentice, and Eswild - though short and stocky - struggled to stand without hunching down.
Eswild cleared the doorway and stepped out into the kitchen where Gilan's wife, Eryn, stood fussing over a pot of broth over the fireplace.
"Oh hello deary," Eryn remarked as Eswild exited her hole. "There's a loaf of bread here for you."
Eryn gestured to the loaf, round and almost blackened on the outside. It was likely stale, too, Eswild mused to herself as she nodded and grabbed the loaf along with a drinking horn hanging by the door leading to the outside. Overhead, Eswild could barely glimpse the fringes of the sky beginning to turn a pale and shimmering orange as the sun began its ascent over the tiny village already beginning to stir with life. Eswild threw on her boots by the doorway and followed the main road to Gilan's forges just a brisk walk away from his humble homestead, nodding to passersby as she went.
Already Gilan was starting to light the forges, the old bear handling the process with the steady, calloused, and practiced hands of one who had practiced a lifetime. Gilan made for quite the eyesore with his large, bushy beard knotted and singed at the ends, stern eyes that never could focus on one direction, and barrel chest that in recent years had begun to sag into a large gut. Unruly salt and pepper hair sat in a tangled mane around his square face, his jawline too beginning to sag into jowls. Through the neckline of his smith's apron shown a mass of equally unruly hair, his apron itself scorched and singed and slit in dozens of places.
Eswild bit into the loaf gingerly as she waited for Gilan to speak, the bread crunching not too unlike two colliding stones as she bit into its hard, stale exterior. She washed down the first bite with a bit of water, wiping her mouth with her sleeve as Gilan finally acknowledged her.
"Right," he grumbled, hoarse voice grating against Eswild's ears like the bread had her tongue. "Tomas needs those horseshoes by the end 'o the week. I'll let you handle those while I start on the blades for the lord's brat."
"Got it," Eswild replied as Gilan nodded and went about lighting the second of the forge's fires.
Eswild could feel the heat of the forge pulsing through her as she grabbed the iron ingots from the store room out behind the forge. Tomas' horse was a large beast, one he used to till the fields. With that in mind, Eswild grabbed the largest cast Gilan owned and went back to the forge where she began inserting ingots one at a time into the maw of the furnace, clamping its door shut and aligning the ramp to her pail; when the time came, she would open the furnace and allow the molten metal to pour down the ramp into the pail.
As she waited for the fires to intensify to melt the ingots, Eswild closed her eyes and felt for her Knack. Many had questioned why Gilan, by all means a talented blacksmith, had taken an apprentice so late in life and let alone a bastard girl to boot. That was until they had seen that Eswild could do with her Knack, not that she ever let them see it. She could feel the flames, and knew just how to move the bellows to yield the heat she needed in far less time than it took even journeymen to produce. With deft, practiced hands, Eswild fanned the bellows, stoking the fire and allowing the rush of the flames' heat wash over her. Already sweat formed on her brow as she felt the flames licking at the ingots.
Getting lost in the rhythm of the work, Eswild as if by clockwork removed the molten iron from the furnace and began to hammer it into shape, her hammer's dings and clangs acting as morning bells to the now fully awoken town...
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