And then there was Fire [DragonSong]

[Goldie]

He waived his hand at her as he pumped the bellows into the coals, stoking the smoldering embers with red and orange sparks. The heat blossomed and he tossed in another shovel of coal before tapping the door closed with his elbow.

"Perfectly fine. Herald won't be back tonight because he's....ah....stoking some other flames." At least that was the norm for the Master Smith most nights. Most days, too. The man had a serious problem and Idris was the only reason the shop stayed afloat. Except for the iron commissions. Those he tried his hardest not to entertain. Even with precautions the process made him feel ill for weeks.

"You can grab a bottle of wine, too, if you'd like. You're here for a commission after all." He winked at her and started arranging a series of ingots on the work bench and stepping back to think.

[DragonSong]

"Other flames, huh?" Adrianna smirked as she set about searching for the aforementioned food and wine.

Gods, she hadn't had a chance for so much free sustenance in...well. Ever.

She managed to scrounge up bread, cheese, and a bottle of wine before returning to where Idris was working.

Popping up onto a free corner of the work table, she arranged the food out of the way and leaned back on one hand while she looked at what he'd laid out in front of him.

"So. How do you do this?" she asked curiously, holding out a small wedge of cheese to him in offering. "I mean, you don't have to give me a crash course on smithing," she added with a laugh, "but this part. The...the "looking at hunks of metal and somehow seeing a flower" part."

[Goldie]

Idris continued to work as Adri made her way through the shop with the food he'd offered. By the time she'd returned, he was busy pulling out large poles of steel and copper and was cutting them into 8" lengths while arranging them together.

When she held out the cheese, he leaned forward and grabbed it with his teeth from her fingers while continuing to clamp and cut more metal rods.

"Well," he said, keeping his mouth as closed as he could since the cheese was still between his teeth, "Each metal does something different. Even a slightly different alloy has a different shine, a different look after it's hammered. So right now, I'm arranging two different alloys of steal with copper. When I heat it together and let them fuse together, I'll be able to hammer it into sheets and then punch out little petals - I'll make a punch while it's heating. The different metals will kinda....swirl together. Just using the steel creates some really pretty designs, but adding the copper will add color. Right now I'm trying to decide how much I want visible....probably just a few thin veins which is all well and good because copper isn't cheap."

He leaned down and pulled up a mold of some sort that had clearly been fired so much that it was completely black.

"This'll be used to hold all of the metal I want to make into an ingot." He started layering the different pieces together as tightly as he could. Then, once it was filled, he pulled out what looks like a fine gravel, "This'll fill in the air pockets. Too much air will make it brittle and keep it from fusing."

He blinked up at her, as if suddenly aware of himself, "um...er...if that makes sense? I know it's not super interesting or anything...."

He pressed the mold together tightly and transfered it to the coals.

[DragonSong]

Adri blinked when he plucked the cheese from her fingers with his teeth, but decided not to comment. She tucked into her own portion of the food, listening intently and humming every once in a while to assure Idris that she was paying attention as he explained what he was doing.

"It makes sense," she assured him with a quiet laugh when he paused. "I mean--I assume it does. I'll be honest, some of that went over my head, but it sounded like it made sense."

She grinned crookedly and took a sip of wine directly from the bottle--hey, she'd never claimed to have proper manners. Honestly, he was lucky she wasn't shoving the food in her face and running, the way she would have as a kid.

"Honestly, I'm more impressed by your ability to...I dunno. See something beautiful out of that." She gestured widely toward the ingots still on the table. "I just don't get that--like how a sculptor can look at a hunk of marble and see a statue inside it. It's...pretty amazing."

[Goldie]

Idris made a face when she mentioned rocks, as if she had just said the most disgusting thing he'd ever heard. He was already moving onto molding the little pedal stamps and was chewing on his cheek in concentration.

"This is totally different than rocks." he said absently, "Metal is so much more versatile. Can be art, can be useful. Hey, would you say this is about the actual size of one of those pedals?" He held up a piece of thin sheet metal that he's looped around to match the shape as best he could.

[DragonSong]

She chuckled a bit. "I wasn't really talking about rocks versus metal. I just meant--your ability to see something else from a hunk of something that looks to me like just...well, junk." She shrugged. "It's impressive."

she leaned closer when he held up the piece of shaped metal for her inspection. "Yeah--wow, that's pretty exact." She shook her head with another little laugh. "See, that's what I mean! How did you see that in a piece of metal?"

[Goldie]

He blinked her her, not quite comprehending how the little thing he did was really that exciting.

"Erm. Well. I mean. It's just a loop. Like a..er..visual to help with the metal?" He leaned forward and grabbed another piece of cheese from the collection she'd grabbed for no other reason than just to find something to do to alleviate the awkwardness he felt.

"I'm kinda just...experimenting right now...making a mold for the petals will probably work better - be faster - but I'd have to ask Herald for materials and...yeah...er...how's the food?"

[DragonSong]

"It's good," she chuckled, deciding to let the topic drop for now. Clearly he either didn't see--or wasn't comfortable talking about--just how impressive his own abilities were. "I mean, it's free, so that's good enough for me," she half-joked with another little laugh as she leaned her hip into the work table again and scuffed one foot back and forth across the floor.

"Can't remember the last time I had this much food in one sitting," she mused aloud, not seeming to realize that a third a loaf of bread and a couple handfuls of cheese probably didn't qualify to most as "much". "Should probably slow down."

[Goldie]

She was completely correct in her assumption he didn't know how to handle praise of his work, especially praise for something so seemingly simple you'd learn how to do it within the first month of an apprenticeship. The more difficult skills came from the recipes that were held close to the master's chest or locked up in the guilds.

He waived his hand at her, "Eat as much as you want. There's plenty and I never go through what's the kept in the larder and a lot goes to waste" he made a face and glanced up at her, "er...I guess I'm sorry I never thought about offering it to someone else until now....I get kinda....lost in my work."

Once the anvil was clear, he prepared to check on the metals to make sure they were heating properly and wouldn't scortch. Coals weren't an exact art and it was easy to overheat and cause the metals to become brittle.

Before he turned, he paused, "I'm really sorry I've never really...uh...stopped and talked to you. You always seem so...sad I guess and I didn't think you'd want...I mean.... I'm sorry. It was wrong of me."

[DragonSong]

Adrianna stared at him for a moment, a large bite of cheese stuffed into her cheek. She swallowed forcefully, coughed, and waved a hand at him as she tried to think of how to respond to that.

"No, that—I mean, don't apologize. You don't know me, why would you have stopped to talk to me?" she laughed, a little nervously. "I just sell flowers on the corner, I'm nobody."

She shifted her weight between her feet awkwardly and tugged the hem of one sleeve down a little further over her wrist. "But, I mean...I'm glad you talked to me today, I guess..." She cleared her throat, feeling spectacularly off balance.

[Goldie]

He blinked up at her at a loss for words, "Well..er...isn't that what normal people do? Talk? I'm stuck here a lot or working with animals and I just don't really do the whole conversation talky...thing. But you're really awesome and you know how to do stuff. Like right proper stuff. I just bang on some hot metal and hope for the best."

Speaking about metal brought him back to the task at hand and he jumped to his feet before shoving a hand in a thick leather glove and opening the forge to retrieve the mold. He brought it out and laid it on the anvil so he could open it up and hopefully see something good happening inside. Once he was able to create the design on the metal, he'd be able to chip away at small pieces to begin working on the petals.

"This is gonna get kinda loud." He warned.

[DragonSong]

Adri snorted. "Do I seem like I'm the sort of person who's overly concerned with what normal people do?" she asked wryly around a half-grin. Shrugging, she added, "Besides, I spend my whole day talking to people--you aren't missing much."

She moved back a bit when he started messing with the forge itself and moving things around. She didn't know a lot about metal work, but she knew two things: loud and hot.

Once she'd backed up to what seemed like a reasonable distance, she called lightly, "Go for it," before clapping her hands over her ears.

[Goldie]

With her permission, he proceeded to begin the next steps of the process. Much to his delight, the mixed metals in the mold had fused together exactly how he had wanted it, and he was able to position it with a pair of long tongs before picking up a heavy hammer with a large flathead and began to smash it into the bar. Sparks began to fly and a large leather apron protected his core. He had tossed on a pair of protective eyewear for his eyes and he continued.

The metal began to flatten and elongate on the anvil. It was a slow process, and he was forced to move the piece back into the forge often to ensure it didn't cool too much. If all went according to plan, he would be able to fold the piece in on itself to disperse the different steels and single vein of copper to create intricate swirls into the piece. It would give dimmension to the flower. People paid a lot of money for this kind of work, mostly for heirloom or ceremonial type blades, but he wanted to take that kind of beauty and transform it into art.

So he worked. Head down. Obvious of time and space as the metal slowly continued to flatten and the copper swirls became more and more whisp-like within the sheet.

[DragonSong]

Adrianna found herself watching wordlessly as Idris worked, fascinated by the process. Despite the noise and the heat, she drifted closer, as close as she dared, peering over his shoulder curiously.

As time passed and he continued to work, she abruptly remembered what he'd said about sometimes forgetting to eat when he got like this. She glanced outside, checking the angle of the sunlight, then nodded to herself before slipping away.

She was gone nearly an hour, but when she returned she held an armful of gently steaming hand pies from her favorite vendor a few streets further into the bustle of the city. She waited for what seemed like a break in the smith's process, then cleared her throat.

"Thought you might need sommat to eat," she noted, lifting her armload slightly.

[Goldie]

By the time Adri had returned, Idris had managed to cut away about two dozen tiny circles if flat metal from the sheet he had veen flattening and were sitting on the work table. They were cool already, and the design he had rolled into the metal was beginning to show on the very rough templates. A few were smoother than others and the dark grey and copper veining looked like whisps of smoke meandering through the metal. It would become more noticeable when he continued to work them smooth and then used the jewelry grinders and polishers to create a mirror-like finish. For now, they were small disks almost lile coins.

He had also put some more metal into a crucible and onto the coals where they would spend hours melting down to a liquid. That would really be the most dangerous part. He would use the molten metals to connect each petal to the flower's underlying structure.

When Adri put the pies down, the smell immediately infiltrated his senses. His stomach growled loudly and his mouth watered.

"Oh!" He was surprised by her generosity and thoughtfulness. How had he overlooked her for so long? Who else had he just dismissed in his life who was actually a delightful person?

He put down his hammer and wiped his hands on his apron, "Thank you. That's....that's  super thoughtful."

[DragonSong]

Adri's cheeks colored, pink slightly hidden by a fall of lavender hair as she shook her head. "I—it's no big deal," she replied quickly. "Courtesy of Milady herself, anyway." She shrugged, then gestured widely to the pies. "Just—y'know. Eat. If you want, I guess."

She took a step back, rubbing awkwardly at the back of her neck. She wasn't used to praise in general, and Idris seemed inclined to just...dole it out for what seemed—to her—like very little reason.

Were people like this? Since she'd gotten old enough to fend for herself, not relying on her gang, she'd really been...on her own. She interacted with people all the time, but actually hanging around anyone specifically never happened.

She certainly hadn't been expecting her day to go this way.

[Goldie]

He grinned at her and eagerly accepted the pie. It was still quite warm and he regretted the big bite he ended up taking as he was forced to open his mouth in an awkward attempt to release some of the heat that was scalding his mouth. It was delicious. Probably one of the more delicious meals he'd had in awhile. The gravy was flavorful and the pastry buttery and flakey.

"Wow." He muttered through a mouthful. Thankfully he had enough manners to cover his mouth with his hands before speaking, but it was abundantly clear he wasn't exactly the most well-versed in etiquette.  "This is delicious."

He took another bite and caught some runaway filling before it fell to the floor. "I usually just stick to cured meats and cheese and...where did you get this?"

[DragonSong]

"Hamond." She nodded over her shoulder toward the door and the street beyond. "His stall isn't far. We...grew up together, I suppose you could say, though he's a few years older than me so he aged out before me—"

She cleared her throat and shook her head quickly. "Ah, never mind. Pie's good though, yeah?" She smiled, trying to move on quickly.

Damn. He was too easy to talk to—maybe it had something to do with the kinship she'd started to feel with him from how much emotion he'd shared with her.

[Goldie]

For possibly the first time in awhile, and at least with the only other person besides Marigold, Idris was actively listening to Adri. So much so that he noticed the quick change in subject and, though he was curious to know what she meant by "aging out," he wasn't going to make her uncomfortable by asking. At least not now.

"Real good." He admitted, licking his fingers where remnants of the pastry remained. "I'll have to treat myself more often if this is what I've been missing. You know some interesting people, Adri." All he knew were his customers, the farmers mostly, and his craft.

[DragonSong]

"Oh I know everybody," Adri replied with a laugh and a roll of her eyes. "Everybody worth knowing, anyhow."

It was true enough: urchins had a network like that. The ones that lived king enough to make one, anyway.

She gave her head another little shake and leaned around him to look at how much his project had progressed while she was off getting food.

At the sight of the carefully cut metal petals, she whistled low, impressed. "You were busy, huh?"