1st Frost, 123
It was Frost again, but it had been Frost in all but name for so long. Torin was beginning to believe that this was simply the new way the of world, hunger, starvation and cold. In light of this, he wondered if it was reasonable, even wise, to celebrate the coming of a new year, as he had every year since he had had those in his life to make it worth celebrating. There were rumors of a new demigod of winter, perhaps this endless freeze that was laying waste to the world was a herald of their coming. The 'why' was not within the preview of a simple smith, even if he was no longer either, in truth. Simple, in some ways, but none that would be seen from the outside, and a smith, yes, but none would call him that anymore. His work in the mundane forge was still a labor of love, nearly as much so as his labors in aether, but no one would ever come to him to mend a plow or shoe their horses now.
Well... the people of his valley might, and that made him smile. Mistress Athalie had walked to his foundry hauling her largest cooking pot to see if he could mend where it was thinning, close to breaking. She had mistaken his silence in response as taking offense and had begun to apologize before he could explain that he viewed her request as a gift. The simple household object had been mended with as much tenderness and care as its owner put into the meals she made for her husband and sons. Her thanks had been nice, but the world, easy as breathing and just as fulfilling, had been better.
Even with all the new and unbelievable gifts that his life now contained, the cold wore on and wore on him, as it did everyone. What would the world grow to be if this truly was how things would be going forward? Little pockets of life like his valley, like Starfall and the lands of what lords had enough magic or money to continue to feed their people while the rest of the world froze over and died? Would there be generations of children who did not know green growing things or animals? Most wild creatures had already perished. His valley was growing over-full of every kind of beast that lived in or around the mountains and it was only through Sivan's careful curation and communion with the spirits that truly ruled his land that they were not overrunning.
It was with these grim thoughts in his head that he contemplated what gifts he could offer the ones he loved to prepare them for the possibility of such a future. The fields and orchards in Stardew already fed them and many more. He had stopped charging for food, paying his people for their labor and then distributing what they did not need for themselves among the neediest in the city. This was done anonymously lest well-wishers and thieves alike seek him out, but it was done. Aurin saw to it, in his own ways, and Torin did not ask. So long as people were being fed, he need not know the details.
No, it was to other types of provision and protection that Torin turned his runesmith's mind to. Searching through the libraries that Lady Kala had granted him access to, both those in the city and those in her home of Starfall, (via Aurin's Traversion when he needed it) he stumbled onto an old thing. A Featherlight bag was not an uncommon artifact, though it was not viewed as usefully as it once had been. What was the point of a magical item that could be torn on a passing branch or nail and spill its contents? Why had no one ever adjusted the old schema to compensate? The thing would cost more in time, magic and money if it was adjusted to be more hardy but wasn't it worth it? Copying out one of the best looking schemas he had taken it home early in Ash and began fiddling with it in his spare time.
During these same excursions into the archives, he had found a snatch of old text that referred to the 'raiment of gods'. It was a scroll that spoke of how the ancient runeforgers, using techniques lost to time, had once been called upon the birth, or rebirth, of new demigods to walk upon the earth. Their labor had been to create armor worthy of deific bearers. It was spoken of as having been as beautiful, as regal, as it was invisible, each set was specific to a god and the forger often ended up bound to the god for whom they crafted simply because, in growing to know them well enough to create raiment that fit the deity they had began to worship them.
The idea stuck in Torin like a burr, needling him at odd times till, unable to help it, he had begun to sketch out a schema. Not for a whole set of raiment, which would have felt like the soul of presumption bordering on sacrilege, but only a set of gloves. Something, if not worthy of a goddess, at least able to protect her. He was not sure that Kala needed protection in the same way that others did but if the lower forms of gods did not need protection, why had they summoned the most powerful runesmiths to make them armor?
By the middle of Ash, he had begun working on the gloves, making a double set, because it felt not right somehow to make them for Kala and not Kaus, even if Kaus had not ascended. He knew the twins well enough to know that neither would be offended by his including the mortal twin. Though he had known that many of the things he made would outlive him, this was the first time he was making something that felt like it was... greater, than himself, somehow. All his creation felt real to him, like a person felt real, or a tree, alive in some ineffable way, but once they were finished they settled. They were done, the magic content in what he had asked of it and able to rest in its new housing and purpose. Something about the crafting of this felt beyond the simple adjusting of aether. As if most of his work was like moving a sleeping child; they might stir, even open their eyes for the briefest of moments to recognize the one who lifted them, seeking to ensure that it was someone they could trust, before falling back into their slumber.
What he did as he struggled and reached for things he had never attempted before felt more like gently shaking something that had slept long and deep, wanting to wake but, unable to do it on its own, needing someone to draw it carefully to wakefulness.
It frightened him, a little, this work. Artificing frightened him because he did not know if the constructs he built wanted to be awakened. The raiment, even so small a piece, frightened him because he knew that it did want to awaken. It wanted to Be. The sureness with which he felt this grew every day he worked on it, even before he'd brought the exceptionally delicately woven platinum mail (so fine it was like lace in his hands) into the runeforge to begin weaving magic into it, he had felt something. A stirring, as though what he was making had always existed and he was only calling it into physical being.
What to make of all that he felt, he did not know, and he spoke of it to no one. Kala might understand it, when she was given the gift. There were things, about the world, and beyond the world, that she now understood in a way that he also did. Her understanding, Torin believed, came from her ascension, his own he could not account for. Why was his ability to see magic, and beyond magic, different from Aurin's, or Sivan's? He might not ever have the answers to these questions but he knew that he was no god.
Thus he had the raiment for the twins, or would, by the time the year turned, and the improved Featherlight bags would go to Sivan for his gathering and Timon for his merchant endeavors. Aurin's gift he had known as soon as he had offered his master the knife he had crafted as a warm-up on the day they had spent discussing and working out the schema for his Aura mimic (This was not fully finished and ready for creation even now, it was complex in yet another new way.). The redhead was so natural with a knife in his hand, as though any blade he held was an extension of his body, an extension of his mind. In that moment Torin had felt that there should always be one available to his fox, regardless of all other considerations of reality or mischance.
The knife he had created he took back into the forge fire, re-crafting it into something worthy, and making for it a twin. Two blades that would, when he was finished with them, never been farther than a thought away from Aurin's hands. Other things had been made to protect the lord of his heart, his body and his secrets, it made sense now that, in times such as they were living, he be girded with tools that were weapons and which no one could ever deny him.
It was Frost again, but it had been Frost in all but name for so long. Torin was beginning to believe that this was simply the new way the of world, hunger, starvation and cold. In light of this, he wondered if it was reasonable, even wise, to celebrate the coming of a new year, as he had every year since he had had those in his life to make it worth celebrating. There were rumors of a new demigod of winter, perhaps this endless freeze that was laying waste to the world was a herald of their coming. The 'why' was not within the preview of a simple smith, even if he was no longer either, in truth. Simple, in some ways, but none that would be seen from the outside, and a smith, yes, but none would call him that anymore. His work in the mundane forge was still a labor of love, nearly as much so as his labors in aether, but no one would ever come to him to mend a plow or shoe their horses now.
Well... the people of his valley might, and that made him smile. Mistress Athalie had walked to his foundry hauling her largest cooking pot to see if he could mend where it was thinning, close to breaking. She had mistaken his silence in response as taking offense and had begun to apologize before he could explain that he viewed her request as a gift. The simple household object had been mended with as much tenderness and care as its owner put into the meals she made for her husband and sons. Her thanks had been nice, but the world, easy as breathing and just as fulfilling, had been better.
Even with all the new and unbelievable gifts that his life now contained, the cold wore on and wore on him, as it did everyone. What would the world grow to be if this truly was how things would be going forward? Little pockets of life like his valley, like Starfall and the lands of what lords had enough magic or money to continue to feed their people while the rest of the world froze over and died? Would there be generations of children who did not know green growing things or animals? Most wild creatures had already perished. His valley was growing over-full of every kind of beast that lived in or around the mountains and it was only through Sivan's careful curation and communion with the spirits that truly ruled his land that they were not overrunning.
It was with these grim thoughts in his head that he contemplated what gifts he could offer the ones he loved to prepare them for the possibility of such a future. The fields and orchards in Stardew already fed them and many more. He had stopped charging for food, paying his people for their labor and then distributing what they did not need for themselves among the neediest in the city. This was done anonymously lest well-wishers and thieves alike seek him out, but it was done. Aurin saw to it, in his own ways, and Torin did not ask. So long as people were being fed, he need not know the details.
No, it was to other types of provision and protection that Torin turned his runesmith's mind to. Searching through the libraries that Lady Kala had granted him access to, both those in the city and those in her home of Starfall, (via Aurin's Traversion when he needed it) he stumbled onto an old thing. A Featherlight bag was not an uncommon artifact, though it was not viewed as usefully as it once had been. What was the point of a magical item that could be torn on a passing branch or nail and spill its contents? Why had no one ever adjusted the old schema to compensate? The thing would cost more in time, magic and money if it was adjusted to be more hardy but wasn't it worth it? Copying out one of the best looking schemas he had taken it home early in Ash and began fiddling with it in his spare time.
During these same excursions into the archives, he had found a snatch of old text that referred to the 'raiment of gods'. It was a scroll that spoke of how the ancient runeforgers, using techniques lost to time, had once been called upon the birth, or rebirth, of new demigods to walk upon the earth. Their labor had been to create armor worthy of deific bearers. It was spoken of as having been as beautiful, as regal, as it was invisible, each set was specific to a god and the forger often ended up bound to the god for whom they crafted simply because, in growing to know them well enough to create raiment that fit the deity they had began to worship them.
The idea stuck in Torin like a burr, needling him at odd times till, unable to help it, he had begun to sketch out a schema. Not for a whole set of raiment, which would have felt like the soul of presumption bordering on sacrilege, but only a set of gloves. Something, if not worthy of a goddess, at least able to protect her. He was not sure that Kala needed protection in the same way that others did but if the lower forms of gods did not need protection, why had they summoned the most powerful runesmiths to make them armor?
By the middle of Ash, he had begun working on the gloves, making a double set, because it felt not right somehow to make them for Kala and not Kaus, even if Kaus had not ascended. He knew the twins well enough to know that neither would be offended by his including the mortal twin. Though he had known that many of the things he made would outlive him, this was the first time he was making something that felt like it was... greater, than himself, somehow. All his creation felt real to him, like a person felt real, or a tree, alive in some ineffable way, but once they were finished they settled. They were done, the magic content in what he had asked of it and able to rest in its new housing and purpose. Something about the crafting of this felt beyond the simple adjusting of aether. As if most of his work was like moving a sleeping child; they might stir, even open their eyes for the briefest of moments to recognize the one who lifted them, seeking to ensure that it was someone they could trust, before falling back into their slumber.
What he did as he struggled and reached for things he had never attempted before felt more like gently shaking something that had slept long and deep, wanting to wake but, unable to do it on its own, needing someone to draw it carefully to wakefulness.
It frightened him, a little, this work. Artificing frightened him because he did not know if the constructs he built wanted to be awakened. The raiment, even so small a piece, frightened him because he knew that it did want to awaken. It wanted to Be. The sureness with which he felt this grew every day he worked on it, even before he'd brought the exceptionally delicately woven platinum mail (so fine it was like lace in his hands) into the runeforge to begin weaving magic into it, he had felt something. A stirring, as though what he was making had always existed and he was only calling it into physical being.
What to make of all that he felt, he did not know, and he spoke of it to no one. Kala might understand it, when she was given the gift. There were things, about the world, and beyond the world, that she now understood in a way that he also did. Her understanding, Torin believed, came from her ascension, his own he could not account for. Why was his ability to see magic, and beyond magic, different from Aurin's, or Sivan's? He might not ever have the answers to these questions but he knew that he was no god.
Thus he had the raiment for the twins, or would, by the time the year turned, and the improved Featherlight bags would go to Sivan for his gathering and Timon for his merchant endeavors. Aurin's gift he had known as soon as he had offered his master the knife he had crafted as a warm-up on the day they had spent discussing and working out the schema for his Aura mimic (This was not fully finished and ready for creation even now, it was complex in yet another new way.). The redhead was so natural with a knife in his hand, as though any blade he held was an extension of his body, an extension of his mind. In that moment Torin had felt that there should always be one available to his fox, regardless of all other considerations of reality or mischance.
The knife he had created he took back into the forge fire, re-crafting it into something worthy, and making for it a twin. Two blades that would, when he was finished with them, never been farther than a thought away from Aurin's hands. Other things had been made to protect the lord of his heart, his body and his secrets, it made sense now that, in times such as they were living, he be girded with tools that were weapons and which no one could ever deny him.
