[This post is from Matt’s point of view.]
The hammer fell into an easy rhythm; it was as if he’d never left, never been away. Matt hummed a quiet tune as he worked. His shoulders would ache later, but feeling this close to normal was worth that ache. Maybe that was why she’d sent him up here—to think, to clear his head, but also to get comfortable in his own skin again. A lot had happened in the past few weeks. Needing to reorient himself was almost a given. Coming up to the forge let him do that, even more than it had that first morning when his sister had come to find him up there, taking stock of the situation.
He thrust the blade he’d been working back into the forge, reaching for the bellows and swiping an arm across his forehead.
“That’s the best way to get soot all over your face,” Thordin said, momentarily eclipsing the light that streamed into the space from outside. Matt turned, his brow arching.
“How do you know that’s not the look I’m going for?”
Thordin grinned and Phelan laughed. Matt smiled and shook his head, scrubbing at his cheek and knowing that he’d left some kind of soot behind.
“Something going on that I should know about?”
“Mm,” Thordin said, stepping past him to take over the bellows. “Just wanted to check in with you, see what you’d picked back up again.”
Matt snorted. “Everything.”
Thordin snorted, starting to pump the bellows. Phelan picked up one of the racked swords that was waiting for sharpening and sat down at the whetstone, starting the tedious work that Matt had been avoiding all afternoon.
“How’s Hecate adjusting?” Phelan asked.
“Well, she hasn’t come out of our room yet,” Matt said. “But she and Marin have been talking and I think that’s helped.” He exhaled, turning the blade as it heated. “It’s helped me, anyway.”
“Worried?” Thordin asked.
“You have no idea,” Matt muttered, then sighed. “I love her, man. If she can’t…if she can’t stay here, then wherever she goes, I go with her. I’m not going to abandon her.”
I’m not going to abandon her again.
He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled.
Christ, Matt. You’re thinking like Cíar again.
The frightening part was, he wasn’t certain it was necessarily a bad thing anymore.
