Minoc’s been in my bones all day. Not the town itself—though I know every cobbled turn between the provisioner and the smithy—but the mine deep under it, that damp, echoing dark where the stone sings when your pick finds the right seam. I’d swung that pick near a hundred times before, but today, down in the lower tunnels past the fork where the torches sputter from old drafts, I felt it: a clean crack, not the usual gritty scrape. Like the mountain had exhaled. My arms stung, but I didn’t care. That sound—sharp, ringing, almost musical—meant iron. Good iron. I worked the vein slow, chipping away the stone like I was uncover moving a child’s sleeping face from under a blanket. Nearly fifty ingots in my pack before I even thought to wipe the sweat from my brow.
Up top, the forge behind the Minoc Arms was cold when I arrived. Alethea wasn’t in—probably off haggling with lumberers again—and I didn’t have the patience to wait. But I fired it up anyway, stoked it with kindling and a prayer, and set to hammering the best of the lot into tongs. My blacksmithy’s not where my pick is, truth be told—still fumbling past sixty-five—but there’s pride in the struggle. The iron glowed orange, then white at the edges, and when I quenched it too soon, the metal shrieked and split. Threw the broken tongs into the scrap bin hard enough to rattle the anvil. Felt like the mountain laughing at me.
But then I shaped another pair. Slower. Listened to the metal, not just my arms. And this time they held. I used them to pull out a bar I’d save for a sword soon—maybe for a guard, maybe for a fool with more gold than sense. Then I hauled the rest down to the provisioner’s south, only to find the door barred. Again. Third time this week. So I sat on the step, pack heavy, watching the sun bleed into the hills, the weight on my back a kind of comfort. I’ll try Alethea tomorrow. Or the forge. Or maybe just swing the pick again, and let the stone sing me home.
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