Minoc’s mine forge was still humming when I dragged myself back up from the tunnels, pickaxe slung over my shoulder like a dead man’s rifle. The air up top was sharp with woodsmoke and the tang of cooling steel—home, in a way. I’d been down nearly five hours, chipping at that stubborn iron seam near the west wall. It wasn’t rich ore, nothing like the silver veins I’d heard of up north, but steady work. My arms ached in that honest way, the kind that means you earned your supper. I counted nearly fifty ingots in my pack by the time I surfaced, heavy as a guilty conscience. Dust clung to my brow, and my beard itched something fierce, but I could feel the rhythm of it still in my wrists—the thunk of iron on stone, the spark when the pick bit just right.
I dropped my pack near the anvil and fed the forge another split log. The flame roared back to life, orange and greedy, and I pulled out a bar to test its heat. That’s when the tongs snapped. Just like that. The right jaw gave way with a tired crack, and the glowing iron clattered onto the stone, hissing like a scolded cat. I just stared at it. Five hours down the hole, and now my own tools betray me. I kicked the broken tongs into the corner—old things, yes, but I’d filed and welded them myself last winter. There’s a shame in that, when your own handiwork fails you. I used the backup pair, thicker but clumsy, and realigned the bar, but the moment was ruined. The forge doesn’t care about pride. It only wants heat and motion.
Later, I sold what I could to Bran at the smithy door—same man who buys every week, never haggles much. He handed me thirty gold for the lot, didn’t even count it. “You’re due a break, Grimm,” he said. Maybe so. I sat on the step and watched the sun bleed red behind the hills, the weight gone from my shoulders but a hollowness in its place. I keep thinking about that broken jaw of the tongs. Tomorrow, I’ll forge a new pair. Not just repair—make them better. Wider grip, tempered slow. There’s something in shaping your tools that shapes you back. And if the ore’s thin, well… the fire’s always hungry.<|im_end|>
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