Of Leeks and Snakes
Day of the Dead 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
Though you would swear the torches are no brighter, nor the words about the table any louder, the colors feel more alive all about the chamber, the liveries of green fresh caught fish glittering on platters like the prize catch of a hunter's eve as withered apples even seem to have regained their red color, and red also the conjured wine, for which your host knows at once to give thanks to Zaia, asking him by what conjuring he had made it so. To that the scholar is all too glad to speak, for he is not oft asked the details of his craft. He speaks of fire not in the blood, but which blood dost feed and for the manner in which dead matter stokes living flesh, of ideals without form and yet which yearn for them, and of all the living clockwork that seems to animate all which lives.
"No matter how closely I bend the eye and lense upon it I wonder if there is more to be discovered, and if in the symmetries of the small might be read patterns that the stars could not contemplate..."
"Ah, you are wiser than you know for knowing not to boast in vain," Fechin laughs, leaving behind uneasy silence as all those about the table try to judge if that had been insult or flattery. "The Lady has forbidden all but those who are by her most trusted to meddle in the mechanisms of life, for all that has thus the Breath of Life sings thus the song of its being and you never know if it will be a jig or a dirge by the first note."
You never know if any living thing you make shall be playful or deadly, you translate mentally. It makes your head itch to think it, in some ways a harder task than passing words from one mortal tongue to another, though it is probably best to worry about that than about what sort of life the fey might have brought forth that was so perilous that their 'lady' was unwilling to let them meddle further.
"And so they work in ebony and brass, in strings of silver and and films of gold to grant now a guise of life and majesty of art, and some there are that fly and some there are that swim and some that stalk like beasts under the boughs and underneath arches of stone. This I share freely, for you have been most courteous. Ask not of a smith of the Court to make the same thing many times over as men are wont to do, for in such wearing craft the maker is made ill, as surely as man dost perish if they breathe dead air." She pauses and looks around to meet many bewildered looks, your own not least among them, but it is Antonio who puts the question all of you would have asked.
"Does that mean that among those who follow the Great Wheel a smith may not make more than one sword, one bow, one shield or one helm?"
"No, for indeed for there is variance aplenty and room to grow and to invent in every form," she laughs and takes a bite out of the leek, pauper's food it would have been at home, but she devours it with such gusto you are almost tempted to try. "All strive for art and novelty and only some for utility..."
"So brass silver, gold and ebony are commonly used among your craftsmen?" Antonio presses. "All these are dear to be sure, but..."
"Ah, don't take verse for numbered page now," the envoy cuts him off. "That's to give you some idea as to what common materials are. If you would bring aught to trade your best bet is to set your sights on uncommon materials, found in far off lands... like say if you have any bone and scale of that dragon you slew, or upon things which might inspire a tinker's fancy; books, specimens and secrets."
"What about steel?" you ask as a thought comes to you suddenly.
Another world is far indeed... "What would this be worth?" So saying you bring out your old sword, hilt first of course.
A childlike hand reaches out and grasps the hilt more steadily than you would imagine and draws it about a palm's length out of the sheath. "Forged in blood and in tears, it would be worth a lot to the Three-Eyed Sage or others whose passion is war and its implements." Fechin reaches out for her own weapon which she had set by the foot of her chair as a sign of peace. "He's the one who made this for me, ain't it pretty?"
Some of the formality had fallen from her tone, as one might speak proudly of a favored pet. It seems to you a crossbow, at least in broad shape, though you cannot see any mechanisms besides the spring and the stock of the weapon curves like the spine of a snake, and upon the head of a brass snake does the bolt lie.
As she sets it on the table the head comes alive and so animated looks around the chamber before hissing something to its mistress and then settling back down.
"Always ready to sink your teeth into the meat of the matter, never smell the flowers," she sighs at it, though by the glimmer in her eye it must be some kind of jest between them. Then almost as an after thought she looks back at you and says: "Daemons are abroad and loose in the world and one of them is on your scent like a barghest on blood. Oh, not an actual barghest, at least I don't think it wants to eat your soul, but there is something
hungry prowling around you and dragonslayer, or I think it is looking for more than a new garb of rotting flesh. Maybe one of you is fated to do something to get in the way of its plots. That is the usual way with the Hollow Ones, spin their own noose from flax and hang it neat as you please on the gallows. You be careful now, you seem a merry lot. What's a Saint Nicholas by the by? It feels kind of tingly on the tongue to say it."
Zaia gives you a questioning look. So far you had recounted all your travels since that fateful night a year past, but you had specifically not said that you come from another world and by the sound of it the Tinker Court at least does not know that you are without fate. Should you reveal that and perhaps earn more in favor and eventually in trade, or keep it back for now?
[] Reveal it, such a secret might prompt Fechin to reveal more of her own
[] Keep in back a secret cannot be unsaid
[] Write in
OOC: All weapons in this world have souls, but some are more active with them than others, the older and the more powerful like that crossbow. Owl's going to be next update. 
