Smithy - Chap 1

 

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    Clang!

    Clang!

    Clang!

    Tristan’s hammer came down on the hot metal with a flash of sparks. Each hit gave it a bit more shape, a bit more life. With each strike, it started to resemble the sword he had imagined versus the chunk of near-molten metal he had drawn from the mold.

    Clang!

    Clang!

    Less sparks. Less give. The metal was cooling too fast. He needed to finish before it got any worse. He’d already reheated and refolded the metal so many times. If he didn’t work it just right...

    Kt-cl-Bang!

    No sparks. Just metal on metal. The hammer ricocheted off the cooling steel. With a sigh, he tossed the unfinished sword into the barrel of water next to him and left it there. He couldn’t work on the damned thing anymore tonight.

    The shop around him was empty. It was well past midnight and everyone in town had probably retired hours earlier. Even old Hagon, who always found some reason to stick around when Tristan was working, had finally gone to bed after hours of waiting. Tristan himself should have given up long before, but he just couldn’t let himself go. Not until the blade was just right.

    But it wasn’t right.

    He had been toiling away for hours. Heating and reheating, hammering away and grinding away bits here and there. It just wasn’t right.

    Why couldn’t he get it right?

    Tristan gripped his hammer tighter. He desperately just wanted to throw it. Somewhere. Anywhere! He wanted to scream and break things. To just throw up his arms and curse the gods that invented the very concept of blacksmithing and whatever piece of shit lord that requested the damndable piece of metal that was giving him so much trouble.

    But he didn’t.

    He wouldn’t let himself.

    It wasn’t his shop to throw things. Not his tool to break.

    He set down the hammer and stepped outside. The air was cool and brisk. It felt good. He was soaked in sweat and his shirt was dripping wet and covered in grease and metal shavings. It clung to him in the chill night.

    “Boy…” said a familiar, gravelly voice from the darkness of the house nearby.

    “Hagon. I thought you were asleep.”

    Hagon didn’t bother to respond. He stepped from the shadows of the house and into the weak light streaming from the open door of the shop. The mountain of a man was covered in scars and burns that were hard to make out in the dim light, but his shock of short white hair stood out like a beacon. His one good eye glowered at Tristan in the darkness.

    “Why are you still working, boy?”

    Tristan turned back to look at the open door to the shop. Why was he still awake? Why was he so focused on finishing that damned sword?

    He felt like his mind was racing yet little of it was a coherent thought. It was all just noise. A loudness in his mind that wouldn’t ebb. That made no sense and only worsened as he focused on it. His hands were trembling and his palms felt cold and clammy, like they’d been dipped in ice water.

    “I can’t get it right, Hagon.” He said, his voice cracking.

    Hagon stared at him quietly. Waiting. He was always waiting for something more.

    Tristan felt the anger and frustration boiling up inside him. Felt fresh sweat accumulating on his brow. He felt his heart start to hammer like he was running. Running for his life. Why was it pounding so hard? Pins and needles began to run down his fingertips and up his legs.

    “Every time I try, I mess it up.” Tristan said weakly, his eyes locked on the shop. “I keep messing it up.” He didn’t dare to look at Hagon. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t!

    “Why?”

    Tristan felt like a hand was tightening around his throat. Like the weight of the question and his own incompetence were strangling him. He could feel his heart beating even harder and he found himself struggling to breathe through the pounding.

    “I DON’T KNOW!” Tristan snapped, trying to catch his breath.

    All at once, he felt as if his heart was trying to rip itself from his chest. He was gasping for air and he felt like the world was spinning around him. Tristan closed his eyes. It was all he could do to keep the world upright.

    All the while, Hagon watched him quietly.

    Finally, without saying a word, Hagon stepped into the workshop. He doused the flames and extinguished the candles. A few moments later, he stepped back out and pulled the doors shut, locking them as he did.

    “Enough.” He said gruffly. “Off to bed with you.”

    The words made no sense. Tristan found himself just staring at Hagon. Could he not see what was happening to him? Did he not care? Help me! He screamed inside. Make it stop! Why won’t you make it stop?! I’M DYING OLD MAN!

    Despite all this, no words came out.

    “Boy?” he asked, with just the slightest hint of concern.

    All at once, the world went black and Tristan felt his knees begin to buckle under him. The last thing he heard sounded like Hagon screaming his name.

---

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The Smithy - 06.03.16

    With a heavy sigh, Hagon wiped the sweat from his brow. He set down his smithy's hammer and leaned back against the hard stone wall behind him.
    "I've been thinking about what you said the other day. You're wrong." Hagon said bluntly.
    Tristan was taken aback. It was so rare that Hagon ever spoke that he was surprised to even hear the man's voice. On top of that, he could not think of a single time that the smithy had ever voiced outright disagreement on anything short of a mistake in his metal working.
    "How do you figure?" Tristan asked after a moment of stunned silence.
    "You spoke of how a man cannot change. That from the moment they are born, they are born to do a single thing. To perform a single purpose or sets of purposes throughout their life." Hagon closed his eyes as he spoke. "You're wrong."
    It was only then, looking at the smithy, that Tristan suddenly realized just how old the man looked. Covered in sweat, dirt, and metal grime, Hagon was a wall of meat and hard muscle from his years in the forge. But, in this instant, Tristan could see the many decades of wear and tear plainly upon his mentor's face.
    "No man, or woman for that matter, is born to die in some damned cave because some fucking priest wrote it down a thousand years ago." He continued.
    Tristan set down his own hammer, his gaze fixated on Hagon.
    "I have to g-"
    "Boy." Hagon said with a familiar sternness. Tristan shut up.
    "You might choose to go. You might choose to throw your life away in the dark and the damp. But do it because you choose to, because that's where life has brought you, not because someone told you that you're supposed to."
    The smithy's gaze fell to the mass of molten metal before him.
    "You know what I've found out about life, boy? About humanity?"
    Tristan didn't answer.
    "Humans are much like this metal here. At birth, they are molten. It doesn't matter what type of metal they are made from or what they will become because they burn with passion. As time rolls on though, they start to cool. They start to take shape. Everything around them acts as a hammer or a mold, forming them into what they will become. You start to realize that perhaps one is made from iron or another is gold. You recognize that one might be a sword while another is a hammer. But as they age, they take shape. They became who they are meant to be."
    "But as time goes on, that metal begins to cool. The strikes that once shaped them now begin to warp them unless they can rekindle that fire. Some are lucky. Some have another who comes along who relights that fire inside them. Makes them hot. Makes them soft again. Allows them to be shaped into something better...or worse."
    Tristan swallowed hard, his thoughts drifting to Elowyn.
    "But just as before, most will begin to cool again. Life continues to try to shape them, but they've become hard and cold now. They aren't willing to bend or change.Their fire has gone out. Each hammerfall weakens that which was once strong. Blades are blunted. Hilts are broken. Steel is cracked and bent. As you get older, unless you have something to keep you warm at night, life will freeze your insides and destroy you one hit at a time until you're nothing but a shattered pile of what you once were."
    For a moment, they both sat in silence, watching the molten melt in front of Hagon slowly cool. One moment turned into two. Than two to three. Finally, the reddish tinge of the molten melt had begun to turn leaden gray before Hagon spoke again.
    "Remember, boy: you are what life has made ya. If that means you need to go down into that cave, so be it. But don't let someone use you as a spear if life has mean you into something else."
    "And what would that be?" Tristan asked quietly.
    "I don't know, boy. I'm just a tired, old hammer." Hagon said as he went to reheat the cooling metal before him.

Library in the Dark idea

    So, I’ve been thinking about a little project. I would argue it’s a weird cross between the mystery the idea of LootCrate, Gamefly, and “Blind Date with a Book”. The name behind it (at the moment) is “Library in the Dark”.

     The basic idea would be some sort of a subscription fee (let’s just say monthly $15 books or something) and you choose the genre. In turn, you would receive an unknown book of that respective genre monthly until you either stop or decide you want a different genre. (I’ve thought about doing a multiple genre kind of subscription, but I’m not sure how the prices would really work yet…maybe 1 for $15, 2 for $25, etc. kinda business.)
  
     Last but not least, and here’s where my brain is really buzzing, I’m not sure if it should be Lootcrate or Gamefly, in that you should be able to keep the book forever and just keep getting more stuff OR to be able to keep the book if you want it for an additional fee and return it in exchange for something else if you don’t want to keep it.

     What do you guys think? I feel like some people would really like this idea, but I’m not sure where to take it. Input would be greatly appreciated.

Untitled / Sci-Fi - Chapter 2 - 05.08.16

 

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    Aryana woke several hours later. With the exception of the occasional beep and a few flashing lights from the control panels around the bridge, it was completely quiet. Just outside the viewfinder, the frozen darkness of space continued to drift by. Indifferent. Endless.

    She reached down and grabbed the datapad to check the calculations and, to her surprise, found that it was dead. She tapped it a few times but it was completely non-responsive.

    Battery’s probably dead. she thought.

    Getting up from under the warmth of her blanket, she crossed the cold floor to the datapad’s docking station and plugged it in. It gave a reassuring beep and the screen flashed to confirm it was charging. It would be at least a few minutes before it let her activate it again.

    Leaning down at the closest console, she flipped on the screen to check the course layouts.

    While she waited for the readouts to come up, she couldn’t help but chuckle at the toys strewn across the top of the console. It was covered with a number of small action figures wearing spandex. Brown, her navigator, was a huge fan of the 20^th and 21^st centuries and apparently these toys were “wrestlers” from some entertainment program back then. She had always been a fan of “The Rock”, as Brown called him.

    The computer blinked and started scrolling numbers across the screen. Thousands of lines of calculations, hundreds of variables and numbers were accounted for, all flashed by in an instant. She could have manually checked them, but right now she was more interested in the overall.

    Course stable. Flashed in green at the bottom of the screen.

    “Good enough for me.”

    She flipped off the screen and made her way back to the rec room to make herself some dinner. While she waited for it to cook, she came to the conclusion that she’d have to wake her crew. It would be jarring to be woken from hypersleep for such a short period, but it would be a lot harder to explain when she woke them up just to make them refuel the ship.

    The next while was spent choking down the poor excuse for a meal that she had tossed together. It was bland, tasteless, and made from what she could scrape together without rehydrating any food stores, but it filled her belly and that was good enough for the time being. She could have a real meal later.

    Afterwards, back in the cryo-chamber, she went about thawing her crew. She started with Duncan. Duncan Kilborne had been her second mate for four separate ore-runs into the Capulet sector and a good guy. Next was her navigator, Hammond Brown, who always preferred his last name to his first. This was followed by Rebecca Lee, the Quartermaster, Richard Sanchez, Pilot, Danisha Folami, the ship’s Mechanic, Yoko Xi, Danisha’s Assistant, Howard Moore, the ship’s Doctor, and Franklin Toss, the Cargo Master.

    The tubes opened one by one. Cryogenic gas poured out across the floors and the cool mist filled the room. Arayana couldn’t help but shiver, immediately regretting having left her blanket on the bridge. It was already cold. Adding the contents of eight freezers to the room didn’t make it any better.

    For a few minutes, nothing moved except the pluming white and blue gases. Then, groans. The sound of sporadic movement. Finally, Dick was the first to speak up.

    “Are we there yet?” he muttered incoherently.

    No one answered.

    Slowly, painfully, the crew went about climbing out of their tubes and making a beeline for the nearby showers. Men and women alike stripped off their cryosuits with no regard to the others around them and basked under the hot water. The water on the ship was rarely used and had been recycled more times than they could count but none of them cared. The hot water helped to blast away the delirium and slimy feeling that cryo sleep left them with.

    Aryana waited calmly for each of her crew. None of them took too long, but she wouldn’t rush them even if they did. Waking from cryo was a horrible feeling and she had just done the same not too long ago. She couldn’t fault them for the toll the process took on their bodies.

    It was only when the showers had stopped and the crew was pulling on fresh clothes that anyone spoke again.

    “They ain’t paying us enough for this shit.” Frank grumbled as he pulled on his pants.

    “Not enough to wake up to your face, Frank.” Dani shot back without even looking over.

    “Good morning to you too, shitface.”

    The two chuckled and soon the eight of them were making subdued small talk amongst themselves. Lots of insults and more than a bit of colorful language, but none of it angry. The only one who didn’t join in was Aryana, and Howard was the first to notice.

    “I can’t help but think we didn’t get to enjoy the sight of our Captain’s fine ass in the shower today.” He said as he finished pulling his shirt over his head. “What do you think Becca?”

    “You’re right,” the spunky little Quartermaster agreed. “I was wondering why I felt so tired. I just realized I didn’t have my coffee this morning.”

    As if to empathize her point, Becca looked over at Aryana and playfully licked her lips.

    “Now, do you suppose it’s because she just doesn’t like us anymore?” Howard asked, pouting his bottom lip.

    “I think it’s because I had to wake up early this morning while you assholes slept in.” Aryana snapped back with a grin.

    “Such are the privileges of that fat little bonus on her paycheck.” Dani said with a laugh as she tried to dry chocolate mop of hair.

    “Wait a second, you guys get paid?!” Brown said with playful panic.

    “Like I said, not paid enough for this shit.” Frank muttered again.

    Dani reached over and smacked him in the back of the head with a laugh.

    “Alright, alright.” Duncan said calmly. “Clearly something’s up. What’s going on, cap’n?”

    The crew fell silent and, for a minute, Aryana hated Duncan. He always had the crew’s attention in an instant and now all of them were silently staring at her. She’d much rather just listen to everyone bullshit amongst themselves than give them the bad news.

    She let out a long sigh.

    “As you know, sometimes we receive orders that dictate when we need to make alterations to our course. And, despite being your captain, I have no say in those alterations…” she said. She couldn’t help but to feel defensive. “Well, it would seem that we had to make a change.”

    “What kind of change?” Yoko asked, her brow furrowing.

    “As it turns out, the course that we were previously heading on would have taken us through active pirate space. The company felt it in our best interest to redirect us around that quadrant.”

    They all remained quiet, staring. They knew more was coming.

    “They...” she scratched the back of her head and sighed again. “They’re sending us up towards Waystation Kappa-34.”

    “Kappa-34?!” Frank said. The huge man stood up to his full height in anger, dwarfing those around him.

    “That’s going to add months onto the trip!” Becca said, gritting her teeth.

    “Yea.” Aryana agreed. “Six months out, we get to stop and refuel. Followed by another six making our way around.”

    “A whole year?” Duncan asked quietly.

    Her heart felt heavy as she looked at Duncan’s calm, but darkened expression. She couldn’t say anything to him. She just nodded.

    The crew stared at each other silently for a few minutes. None of them wanted to say what they were all thinking. The year of their family’s life that they were going to miss out on. The extra year in the freezers to play havoc on their bodies. The extra year where anything and everything could go wrong in the reaches of space.

    “I know this sucks, guys.” Aryana said finally. “But it’s either that or get buttfucked by pirates in your sleep.”

    “I, for one, was hoping to meet a nice upstanding gentleman.” Brown said snidely. “However will I meet him if not through barreling blindly through pirate territory?”

    Dani proceeded to smack Brown this time. Frank chuckled. Dani smacked him too.

    “I figured you guys would rather know this way than when we got to the Waystation to refuel. So, if you want to go back to the freeze right away, you’re more than welcome to. If you want a few hours to stretch your legs, I get that too. One way or another, I want everyone back on ice within a day.”

    “Let’s get this shit done sooner rather than later.” She said sternly.

    They all nodded in agreement.

Six Word Story - 05.05.16

"Her garden kept growing without her."