87: Sowing the Seeds of Peace

“That's what this was all about?” Elena asked, practically hissing with frustration.

Paisley and I exchanged a glance, then nodded as one.

Our exasperated friend sighed and sank to sit on the edge of her bed. “Okay… shit. Like, yeah, part of this is just romantic drama, obviously. But they’re also just way too invested for it to be that simple — nobody digs their heels in that hard unless it’s personal, you know?”

Paisley, who was beside me on the sofa in Elena's room, looked thoughtful. “I can see it. The whole Arca and Tysian situation could be, you know, similar to Ethan and Marlon. Shit, similar to all of us from Silver Ridge, really. Marlon isn’t on Arca’s level of nasty, but sometimes he was pretty awful to people and we all let it slide.”

“Sometimes?” Elena asked, giving both Paisley and me a look.

“I think it's been said before, but even assholes have to be nice to their friends sometimes, or they don’t keep those friends,” I shrugged.

“Right,” she said, still looking sceptical. “Anyway, confronting them both at the same time is pointless and could make things worse. But if we get them one-on-one and just… talk them through things — without hostility — then we might get somewhere. They can actually do the ‘making-up’ part on their own terms — we’d just make it awkward.”

Thinking about it, I knew she was right. After all, both had made valid points. Tysian was obviously Arca’s main victim, but… he was also kind of enabling her bullshit.

“Okay so… next time I get Ethan alone, I guess I'll try to talk to him about it,” said Paisley, dropping her face into her hands. “Gosh, this is stressful.”

Reaching out, I started to rub her back, but the moment I did she scooched sideways and nestled herself in against my side. My heart swelled with affection. Poor Paisley. She wasn't good at this kind of thing.

“If you do Ethan, then I'll do Noah,” I said after a moment.

Looking up, I caught Elena smiling softly at us, and when she saw me watching, she grinned a little. “And I'll hit them both up at some point.”

The next day, I set to work on creating my yari. I began with one of the Spiritforged iron ingots — placing it into the lit furnace. At room temperature, the metal was ever so slightly green, but as it began to take on heat, it turned to a dull, glowing red. I waited until it was almost white before I pulled it free.

My field anvil was hammered into a hefty log of wood, and the radiant yellow ingot came down on it with a clang. I was forced to use my crude field anvil for this, because without it this wouldn't count as Spirit Forging.

Sparks flew as I made my first hammer blow, and the ingot gained a satisfying new dent. I struck again. And again. It was a rhythm, and wow but it was satisfying to see each blow push the piece further towards the vision I had in my head.

The first step of that vision was to flatten the ingot out, then lengthen it, which took a long fucking time — most of it spent waiting for the metal to reheat in the furnace.

When I finally had a flattened rectangle as long as my forearm, I took a hot-chisel from the tool rack on the wall. Carefully, I lined the hardened cutting edge up with the centre line and hammered down on the flat top of the chisel. A heavy dent was stamped into the metal, but the ingot also jumped off the anvil, landing with a dull clunk on the stone floor.

Tongs in hand, I picked up the escapee and shoved it back into the furnace. Just like the initial shaping step, cutting the metal took a frustrating amount of time. In the end, though, it succumbed to my bullheaded determination and I had myself a very sad, abused, Y-shaped chunk of metal.

When I looked up after having placed my yari-to-be in the furnace again, I found Noah in pixie form, sitting on the edge of a nearby workbench.

“Oh, hey Noah,” I said apprehensively.

He gave me a tight smile. “Hey, Keiko.”

We stared at each other for long moments — neither of us keen to break the awkward silence.

“I'm… sorry,” he said after a full ten seconds had passed.

I continued to stare at him. “What for?”

“For having a whole dramatic fit about the Tysian thing, and for making things awkward with our friend group,” he said, sighing a tiny faerie sigh.

Pursing my lips, I broke the eye contact and stared into the furnace fire instead. “It was pretty stupid. Especially since… well, you know, that Ethan had just as much of a point as you did.”

“Did he really thou— nevermind, that's not— I didn't want to come here and talk about it all again, I just wanted to apologise for making things all tense,” he said, wincing as he cut himself off.

“Yeah, he really did have a point,” I said, feeling a surprising amount of conviction harden in my mind. “Tysian is definitely a victim of Arca's crap—”

Noah opened his mouth to protest, but I pointed the chisel at him. “No, Noah. Stop and listen. Tysian can be both, okay? He can be that guy who sits there backing up his girlfriend as she continues to be a shitty person, and he can also be her most prominent victim. The two aren't mutually exclusive, y’know?”

“He's way more of an accomplice than a victim,” Noah insisted, unperturbed by my tool waggling.

“No offence, Noah—” I said, placing my hammer down so I could stretch my fingers out. They were aching from the hours of gripping the handle. “—but when it comes to Tysian, I'm not sure you have the best perspective of the situation. You've barely met him.”

Noah opened his mouth to argue further, but pulled himself short and chose silence instead. It stretched while his gaze drifted off while he thought on what I'd said, even as his obstinate frown deepened.

“Give it some thought,” I shrugged, and picked up the tongs, making it clear I was done with the conversation.

His reply was lost as I began to beat the piss out of my little metallic punching bag.

After stopping to have a lunch break, I dove right back into shaping the blade of the speartip. All my practice with normal smithing finally started paying off as I hammered the blade into a straight, dagger-like spike. It really did look like a dagger too, with an abrupt triangular point, then straight cutting edges that ended an inch from where the split of the Y started.

Night was falling by the time I got to flattening out the two prongs — god damn, smithing something with actual precise dimensions was hard. At least I didn't have to put an edge on the prongs. In fact, after I began on them, it turned out to be a million times easier.

Using a metal rod that was the perfect diameter for my hand to grip, I began to shape the prongs around it. Getting the initial shape to fit was fiddly, but as soon as the rod was gripped tight in its metal embrace, the whole affair was smooth sailing.

Until Paisley came through the workshop door, that is. Her expression was drawn tight with anxiety. Seeing her like that rattled me, and I accidentally threw the spear tip into the fire without removing the rod.

“Shit,” I muttered, pulling it back out again. I not-so-carefully yanked the rod free, then tossed the spear tip back in.

“Sorry,” Paisley murmured, arriving nearby.

My friend and crush looked… upset, but I had no idea how to just ask her what was wrong. Thankfully, I didn't need to.

“I spoke to Ethan,” she said.

With a wince, I motioned for her to follow me out to the balcony. One of the Carnival Historica members was over in the corner doing some jewellery work with the fae tools we looted.

Outside, the air was cold, and a gust of icy mountain wind howled past to reinforce the temperature. Thankfully, the furnace inside provided a little warmth at our backs.

“This balcony is becoming the serious conversation balcony,” Paisley joked halfheartedly as we settled down on the floor with our backs to the wall.

I snorted. “It really is.”

Figuring she’d continue, I waited, but she didn’t speak. Instead, I felt her hand find mine, and my reality narrowed down in an instant. The feeling of her soft hands as she threaded our fingers together almost nuked my psyche back to the stone age as my insides began to flutter and dance. I couldn’t help but turn a bug-eyed stare on her.

“I—” she started, but she saw my wide eyes and faltered. Her expression quickly morphed from anxious and serious, to shy and bashful, and she grinned down at our hands, “I didn’t mean to do that… I was just…”

Scared she’d stop holding my hand, I clenched tighter. “It’s fine. I really like it.”

“Same,” she blushed, looking down at her feet. She scuffed her boot across the stone floor and after a few seconds, said, “I spoke to Ethan — taking the position that Tysian does have a certain responsibility for not stepping up to stop Arca’s emotional twisting of other people. He was… I mean, you know how he is. He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t let any of his frustration out, but he gets so intense and disapproving. It’s so…”

“It almost feels like he’s disappointed in you — like you’ve let down his view of you by not agreeing with his big point,” I finished for her.

She nodded and I felt her fingers try to nestle themselves closer into mine. “Yeah.”

“I actually made some progress with Noah when he visited me this morning,” I told her.

Looking up, her gorgeous brown eyes held a flicker of hope. “Really?”

“Yeah, argued… well, you know,” I said, shrugging. “He wasn’t too receptive, but I could see that I made him think a little.”

“That’s good,” she sighed, relaxing slightly. Gosh, how tense must she have felt that I could feel it through our hands and shoulders?

Looking out into the waning afternoon light, I allowed the slight gentle rocking of Willow’s gait to relax me too. “Hopefully Elena can make a bit more headway with Ethan. She’s good at this philosophical shit — she might actually be able to get Ethan to realise his ideas aren’t quite as smart and nuanced as he thought they were.”