The Forge [Open]

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

Wearing || Setting: Abandoned Factory, Newborough
_________________________________________________________

If Laura wasn't in the catacombs killing Ancients and collecting old sword parts to work with, she was at the forge. Practice makes perfect, they said, right? That was all that Laura did. For lack of anything better to do. And anyway, she liked the brightness of it. The heat of the flames as they melted the metal; the red sparks and the molten orange of the hot steel. Even her peculiar curse couldn't leech the colour from such a vibrant rebirth.

The clothes that she wore were old. Something she had collected from her apartment the last time that she had been there; it had been a hasty departure, after she and Kinney had realised their fate was sealed into some kind of nightmare, and Laura's studio apartment was way too open to the sunlight for them to be able to stay there. The dress, boots, and red leather jacket were getting worn down. The sleeves of the jacket were blackened from the forge; the gloves that Laura used didn't reach high enough. Self-taught, there was no doubt plenty that Laura was doing wrong, safety-wise. She always ended up with sparks in her eyes and half blinded by the time she was done, and scorch marks in all kinds of places.

But she healed. And the pain didn't bother her all too much. That, too, was a reprieve from the sensation that she was being followed around by death; that there was some huge gaping hole in the atmosphere that disappeared every single time she turned around to try to face it.

She stood at that forge, bleakly determined. Sunglasses covered her eyes and her dark blonde hair was pulled back into a messy bun. Her jaw was tense as she hammered at the blade, the clink-clinking the only sound that she could hear. She was oblivious to all else. Of course, she knew she was in a public place. She knew that this forge wasn't hers. Soon enough she would buy her own forge and install it in her new sewer apartment. Or, maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd make that apartment as warm and cosy and comfortable as she could make it, given she had no other place to go to be warm and cosy and comfortable.

These were the things she thought about while she worked. Anything, anything to keep her from thinking about her mother, who'd be alone this Mother's Day; to keep from thinking about the scones that she would not be baking and the flowers that she would not be buying for her mother. A black hand squeezed her heart every time she thought about the woman who had given birth to her, but she would not cry. She would not think about it. She would just continue to work.

[Carlo Fachiano]

The man rarely allowed time to waste away. There was much to do-always. It was now five full days since his arrival to Harper Rock, Ontario Canada. He would admit the weather was surprising. He had pictured it would be colder. For some reason, when he thought about ‘Canada’ he always pictured it cold, with a militant border patrol, and white frosted electrical poles. He was biased having visited Niagara Falls in the winter months as a youngin. Niagara Falls. Majestic Niagara Falls. In the winter. He didn’t remember the reason why the time of year, however it tainted his view of the overly large country ever since. Maybe, this second time around…

He did recall the two hour wait he incurred to clear customs. Talk about a border patrol with OCD. Every stinkin passenger underwent scrutiny at length. Visa’s, Passport proof. Pat down’s metal detectors for those who looked suspicious. Carlo, looked suspicious to them. While in line to prove his papers, he overheard a radio chime in the exact outfit he had on his person. Lucky, they were scanning a smart ***. Weapons which required special travel had already made their way into Canada. His contact shipped them via secure transport who had a pristine driving record and papers to enter the country. Carlo received text message indicating the drop point.

He spent three days to scout the locals, picked up his package, and started a list of items to obtain. A decent blunt piece of steel for protection-which led him to The Forge. Back home there were not many places like this left. Carlo wondered if this sorta town retained some of the charm for the same reasons its populace. He wouldn’t dwell though. There was no time for dwelling with work to do. This work would take some time anyway.

The sound of steel hitting iron as he walked into a section of the shop that separated each blacksmith, swordsmith, or gunsmith from the other. Coal forge ablaze. Another-a female worked away on her piece. Carlo watched her while he plucked pair of clear safety glasses from the shelf and tied a leather lap apron across hips of his worn jeans. She had persistent heavy strokes against steel. Hot begin to cool with each hit. She had strength behind her hammer, unlike a human her age; unless they were blacksmith-bred. He'd half admit to himself, his stares were related to the fact she looked good in her condition.

Purposefully, Carlo stepped into a workspace directly across the floor from hers. It had a London Pattern anvil, the type he was used to. He had come from a street-led neighborhood with criminal intent written all over it. His smarts-picked up a thing or two over the years. This very thing which allowed him to wield items of all shapes and sizes. He turned on the blower to the forge, prepped paper in a doughnut shape over the grate, and lit the coals. He than began to tap his finger through the collection of hammers and iron before him.

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

The heat bathed Laura’s skin like a welcome kiss of the sun. The last time she had witnessed the sun, it had seared her porcelain dermis and caused blisters to leap up all over it. She had witnessed that last ray of sun at Mackinnley’s side, and now she had no idea where Mackinnley was. She had no idea how to find him, or whether he even wanted to be found. Maybe he had grown tired of the constant aura of depression that had surrounded his fellow orphan, though they were no longer orphans. Did he know that? Could he know that, with no one to tell him? All she could hope was that he would come back, and he would find her.

Every once in a while she returned to the Quarantine Zone, where last she had seen him and where they had spent the majority of their time before she had gotten herself lost and trapped in the catacombs. Every time she went it was with a false sense of hope which soon diminished and withered away, sucked into that black hole that forever hung over her head.

At least her thoughts had shifted away from her mother. But she began to wonder whether she would ever have a good thought in her head ever again. It seemed an impossibility.

Her eyes—defiantly bright though hidden behind the tint of her sunglasses—lifted when she heard a rhythm that was not her own; she paused in her crafting though only momentarily. A slight shift in her steady beating that indicated how aware she was of her company. She shifted on her feet. It wasn’t often that she was joined at the forge but, it did happen every now and again. And who cared? It was just another stranger, another occupant of this vast city who did not have a forge of their own and who, maybe, wanted a distraction.

Why was it that Laura forged, anyway? A natural taking to the metals, maybe. She liked the way a sword felt in her grasp and it was the one weapon she mastered quite quickly. It was like dancing, when she slaughtered those zombies with the gleaming blade.

She soon forgot about the other, older man. She continued to work until the shape of the blade was where she needed it to be. Before she could file it, the metal needed to cool; she left it in the fire as she stepped back, pushing the sunglasses up onto her head and shoving the stray strands of hair aside as she checked her phone. She did not sweat. She was as cool and pearlescent as she was when she had begun.

No messages, of course. She huffed, before shoving her phone back in her pocket, turning her attention to the parts that she had left—to sort them by their quality.