Fandom Island and Town

Well. This was it, Amaya supposed. A few weeks ago, Graham had stopped into the shop on some official business from King Edward himself, and, even though someone didn't get around to actually writing out that that business was, it had been an offer that Amaya couldn't refuse.

Well, she could refuse it, actually, but she didn't necessarily want to. Apparently, Edward was so desperate to have her back behind the forge in Daventry that he not only wanted to offer he an official title as Royal Blacksmith, but that he was willing to pay an awful lot of shiny gold coins to for the privilege. An awful lot. And she would have thought the old codger was full of it if it weren't for the fact that he finally paid her back (and then some!) for her work during the last Tournament of Knights.

And there were few things Amaya loved as much as she loved the call of shiny gold coins.

But there was someone she was pretty sure she loved more than the call of shiny gold coins, and she wasn't well too happy about being put in the position of having to actually acknowledge that fact.

Which lead her to do something truly wild and absurd and ridiculous.

She actually talked to Irene about it. And wouldn't you know it? Painful as it was to actually get some of it out, it had actually been....a good thing? Because if they hadn't...taaalked about it, then Amaya might have never known that, apparently, Irene was actually two steps toward packing up all that fancy luggage of hers to go with her when Amaya admitted that she was tempted to take the offer.

Fast forward, then, past all that stuff, to today, as Amaya stood at one of her worktables, surrounded by boxes slowly being filled up with things, and taking a look at this forge that she'd built with her own two hands, with its two anvils and the greenhouse upstairs, and the...what was it? Six? Seven years? of memories tempered into every nook and cranny.

Now, Amaya wasn't really a nostalgic pers--

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa--!"

**CRASH!**

Amaya closed her eyes for a moment, pressing a hand to the bridge of her nose, as the groans from Graham emerged from beneath the giant shuriken he'd just tried to pry off the wall in his effort to help her with her packing.

"S-sorry!" he said, and a thumbs-up emerged from underneath the massive throwing star. "I'm okay! But zounds, this thing is way heavier than it looks!"

There were a few more struggling grunts, and Amaya reluctantly went over to lift the weapon off of the poor nearly-crushed knight and held out a hand to help him back up to his feet.

"How about you let me handle the rest of the weapons wall, eh, Sir Knight?" she offered. "And you go upstairs and babysit the lobsters for a bit, make sure they stay out of trouble, got it?"

"Right away!" Graham stood up straight as can be, darting a bladed hand to his forehead and releasing it in a salute, before grinning dopily at Amaya as he added, conspiratorially, complete with waggling eyebrows, "O Royal Blacksmith."

She gave him a withering look. "Can it, kid," she said, hitching her thumb toward the stairs, "and get your skinny butt up there before I send it back to King Edward in a box just like the rest of this stuff!"

She didn't need to tell him twice, and he hurried up the stairs to the apartment, leaving Amaya alone again, leaning the shuriken against the wall and half-wondering if she should leave that behind as well, just like the anvils.

The Forge is...no longer open.

[[ but the post sure is! More than likely my last post for Amaya on the island now that I finally have the time and energy to send her off properly, but she'll still be around and supporting Graham in all his questing endeavors, just from Daventry now! ]]

Apparently, Amaya was going into a little bit of a fancy hilt phase these days, because she was on another one again, and you know what? That was perfectly fine by her. Her plan was to ride it out, see how many fancy hilts she could manage to hammer out, and then worry about matching them to blades later.

The real question then would be whether or not she wanted to keep the blades relatively simple or straightforward, or just go completely nuts with them and make them ridiculous so that the fanciness of the hilts was basically overshadowed by the rest of the sword.

Probably a little bit of each, honestly.

This is what happened when she didn't have any current ongoing other projects....

The Forge is open!

There was hammering in the shop that Tuesday, but it wasn't coming from one of the anvils. If anyone was looking for the blacksmith, they'd find her underneath the Crumbler, boots sticking out and making a terribly cantankerous clatter from underneath. Occasionally, there was also a curse or two (mostly 'Zards!" and 'Ah, dang it!'), a mysterious gush of fluid or a little bit of a spark or a pop, but then she just kept on tinkering away.

Occasionally, she'd roll out to take a peek and make sure no one had wandered into the shop needing help, but, for the most part, she was pretty busy under there with...well, whatever one did to the underside of a Crumbler.

The Forge is open!

The internet truly was an amazing thing, and because of something that had wandered into Amaya's attention, she was busy at work at one of her worktable that Tuesday, with sketches and notes spread out around her, a pencil tucked behind her ear and another one in her hand and somehow a third one that was occasionally dangling from her mouth as she worked. Occasionally, she'd drift over to the Crumbler to confirm measurements (although, really, she knew them fairly well by heart at this point, but precision with this sort of thing was key), and then she'd drift over to the supply closet under the stairs to start pulling out different ingots and sheets of metal to consider, and then back to work, rubbing her chin and somehow getting a smear of pencil lead onto it from her gloves.

Jotting down numbers, running a few semantics, sighing a little and rubbing the back of her neck and her shoulders from being hunched over her blueprints for so long. It would be a big task, to be sure, but it was an upgrade that would make a lot of sense, one that she was a little mad she hand't thought of before....especially if she was going to keep on keeping on here on the island.

And that was really the number that was the trickiest to work with, wasn't it? But, ultimately, when all was said and done, it was hard for her to look at the question of 'will it be worth it?' and think anything but a resounding 'heck yeah it will!'

If anything, it would just look cool, and she'd have proven that she could do it, at the very least.

The Forge is open!

You know, there was always something a little funny about when she came into the shop on Tuesdays that Amaya couldn't quite put her finger on. Almost like she was sticking out of something as an odd-man-out, or perhaps breaking some sort of combo. It was just an odd little feeling that didn't make a whole lot of sense, so she didn't dwell on it much, she just shrugged her shoulders, downed the last of her morning coffee, and got to work.

Just one of those things, she supposed. But she was hoping to get a lot closer to finishing up that project from Ignis this week, so she was pretty focused on getting through that and working good and hard, all the same.

The Forge is open!

Things were a bit quieter than usual in the forge that Tuesday. Oh, sure, the forge was roaring along, ready to be used, as usual, but there was no steady rhythm of Amaya's hammer on metal at one of the anvils today, or even the satisfying hiss of steam of quickly cooling metal. No clanking of steal or squeak of leather.

But it wasn't that Amaya was distracted by hydraulic press videos on her phone that day! It was....uhhhh....research! Yes! Research for her class, that's what it was! Definitely researching for her class...

Ahem.

The Forge is open!

There was a letter slipped under the door of the forge that morning when Amaya made it down into the shop, which almost immediately caught her attention. Her curiousity leading the way, she went to pick it up, and the intrigue grew even more as she recognized that it was sealed with the official seal of the Daventry. It'd been a while, really, since they sent an order, but it would make sense, wouldn't it? The Tournament of Knights was coming up soon, and they'd want to make sure they were at their shining best. Which, if what she'd been hearing about his work was true, they certainly weren't getting out of the blacksmith that had stepped in the replace her not long after she left!

Expecting it to just be a request for a couple dozen spears and whatnot, she cracked it open and got to reading:

"To the esteemed Ms. Blackstone," she murmured along as she read, "we hope this missive finds you well. As you may be aware, the somewhat annual Tourment of Knights of Daventry will soon be upon us! Blah blah blah, so on and so forth, here's half a page of addendums...yeah, yeah, get to the poi--Oh! Here we go. ...previous blacksmith has since abandoned the shop....blacksmith in residence for the duration of the Tournament....also there is some trouble with the Bridge Trolls lately and due to this, several of our bridges are in need of serious repair... Yadda yadda yad--"

And then Amaya stared at the paper in her hands, read that again, and a third time just to make sure.

"1500 gold coins???"

Amaya breathed out slowly, shaking her head. That was the cost of nearly 30 work orders for the Crumbler! They must be really desperate if they were willing to fork out that much cash for a gig. She read through the letter again. For the duration of the Tournament. The Tournament lasted as most a few days, although the did mention that the sooner they could get her back, the better, not only for the bridges but because of everything else they'd like to get her hammer behind.

Fifteen hundred! She found herself whistling, impressed, and shaking her head.

She'd be a fool to say no, wouldn't she? Follow the money, that's what she'd always said. And it was just going to be temporary, right? Just revisit her old stomping grounds for a bit, do the job, get paid, then hightail it right on back to Fandom. Easy peasy! It was a no brainer!

We've gone and said the thing, and that's it, after that, game over. It's doomed.

Ah......zards.

Amaya breathed out again, slowly, shaking her head.

Fifteen hundred!

The Forge is open (but not a whole lot of work was getting done today)!

Amaya Blackstone was still absolutely not a cuddler, and an errant Truth Day that turned out to be actually Not That Bad^TM didn't change that one bit. She was, however, warming up to the idea of a nice post-party lie-in, with a touch of snuggling, as a treat. She was right back to being not a fan when that post-party lie-in was interrupted by the clatter and clash of something undeniably destructive going on downstairs in the Forge. From the sound of it, it almost sounded as if the oversized throwing star that proved to be the centerpiece of the weapons wall had fallen and crashed into one of the worktables, then which seemed to have had a clattering domino effect with some practice dummies that had been suited up with some armmor, and the way she had them set up would lead them right in the path of....

Amaya bolted up out of the bed, tossing blankets and quite possible her bedmate (sorry, Irene!) aside to crawl out, scramble for some clothes, rush out of the bedroom and throw open the door to the stairs to the Forge, thundering down the stairs with the nearest heavy object in hand, only to discover that it was not the preferred option of an intruder that she could just bash over the head and be done with it, but the least favorable option of all the possible reasons why someone or something was clattering around downstairs in the Forge.

Two little faces blinked up at her from where they'd barely managed to catch the last practice dummy before it landed on the bulk of the Crumbler in the corner. Amaya blinked back.

"Ahhhh, zards!" she promptly grumbled, sighing heavily as she lowered the cudgel and put a hand to her face to already start massaging out the headache. "It's kids again!"


[[ and the forge will certainly be open if anyone happens to want to swing by! ]]

With a week of celebrating her and Irene's respective birthdays by traipsing around Italy for a week behind her and a head full of inspiration, especially after that Florence visit, Amaya was ready to get back into the swing of things (heh!) and get back to work! She'd definitely been itching to get back at the forge, and though a lot of her ideas would need a little work at a literal drawing board, today, she just wanted to hammer off some of the rust

And the fact that she found her attention drifting off, revisiting some of the erm, well, highlights of the last week as she went about preparing some work was just proof that she needed to get back into the right focus. But the drifting only got worse, and add to that the heat of the forge, the sweat starting to bead and drip down her neck, the steady pounding rhythm of her hammer---

"Ah, zards!" That steady pounding rhythm of her hammer steadily pounded itself onto her thumb as he mind firmly drifted to a very different kind of pounding, and she flinched, stopping to shake the pain off, inspect it to make sure it wasn't too bad, and then tried to do a full body shake to get back on track.

"It's alright," she told herself, "you're just rusty, just need to get back into it. Like riding a..."

Nope, probably best not think about riding anything right now. Amaya breathed out, focused, and, with determination, returned to her work, though it wasn't long at all before a drifting mind was pulled firmly back with an injury, this time the hot heat of the metal, and, zards, how long had it been since she'd actually burned herself at the forge?

Eventually, she would call it a wash and put her focus into the less-likely-to-land-her-in-the-clinic task of device design, but then she just spent less time drawing and more time just daydreaming and wondering what certain people might be doing for dinner that day...

See, and this is why you didn't take vacations! They just set everything back!

The Forge is open!

Well, it was officially February now, which meant that Amaya's love of shiny gold coins was going to wrestle her disdain for all things mushy into submission for the next week and a half. She'd already gotten a few orders through the online shop to work on, but there were also staples like her metal roses that were going to take up a good bulk of her time. Which was fine, because she actually did enjoy making them, even if she wasn't exactly wild about the reasons why they were so popular this time of year.

Another thing she did not enjoy was advertising them, but she knew it had to be done, so she'd dragged out the sandwich board to put in front of the shop again:

Get that someone special a bouquet that's as everlasting as your love!
With METAL ROSES from Blackstone Foundry and Forge!

Other Flowers available, too, and special discounts on special orders!
Inquire inside for more details!

And, once that was finished, she was just going to go back inside and take a probably half an hour or so just to recover from the physical damage that writing that first line had actually caused her.

She might even need a full hour!

The Forge is open!

Amaya was coming into this week in the best way she could imagine: with lots and lots of things to do! Not only did she have a potential project to get in on whatever that whole thing with the cups was, but she had some of those lockers and safes for Liliana's artifacts to start brainstorming on, the turkey-legged candelabra to finish up, and a lot of metal roses to start hammering out for the mushy holiday. That, she figured, could at least wait until February proper, and then, thinking about February naturally lead into thinking about March, and March meant her birthday, but also, she now knew, Irene's, and...

Ohhhhh, she was going to have to think of something really good for that.

But then that also lead her to wondering what Irene's plans for...the mushy holiday might be. Not like that! But professionally! She'd been doing bespoke pieces for her...mushy holiday open house for a couple of years now, she should really get their heads together on some ideas for this year if she was doing it, and, ohno, what a tragedy that would be, having to spend all that time brainstorming together, but somehow, Amaya was sure she'd survive...

So, yeah. Plenty to do, plenty to think about, which meant that Amaya was looking forward to a good, productive week ahead of her.

The Forge is open!

On the one hand, Amaya was deeply upset to check her emails that morning and find a request for a special order for a git for the mushy holiday, reminding her that it was going to be landing on them all too soon, however, on the other hand, the customer sent her a reference picture for what they had in mind, and, well...

Okay, this? This, she could work with, and this, she could also build a few other inspired pieces out of that might move well in these next few weeks for the online shop (maybe even the actual shop, too!), so she was definitely getting to work.

If she was stuck having to deal with the mushy holiday anyway, might as well make the most out of it, right?

The Forge is open!

With most of her special projects for the holiday all finished and the rest of the online ones ready to be shipped out, Amaya's focus around the shop today was going to be just sort of putting together a few last minute gift suggestions for anyone still needing fine metalwork, weaponry, or armor for their loved ones this holiday season. That meant prominently displaying the little boxed sets to throwing stars or quivers of fetching arrows, dagger pairs, rings and things, and adjusting the lighting a little bit to really shine on some of the more interesting weapons on the weapons wall.

Never hurt to try and push some of those last minute sales! Especially since, well....a Snuggie wasn't exactly conducive to effective blacksmithing work. In fact, she was digging out the sandwich board again to set outside in the street to let everyone know that they had less than a week left, but lucky them, if they bought certain items today, they'd get themselves a sweet deal for the holiday! And if that didn't bring some people in, then, well, it wasn't her fault they apparently hated good deals and saving money on fine merchandice!

The Forge is open!

It truly was the most wonderful time of the year: the time of year when Amaya was too busy in her shop to even notice half the holiday crap going on outside her door because she had a good, hefty list of projects, between in-person orders and online ones, to keep her hard at work in her own little blacksmith bubble, which was precisely her preferred spot to be.

Well, one of them, but this was clearly the one that she could openly publicly admit to.

In addition to Liliana's little puzzle-lock safe box, which she was very into trying to find something exceptionally clever for, Ignis had oh so handwavily stopped in yesterday, as well, to discuss a few things. But the safe was currently taking up most of her time, in both creating molds to help her get the designs on the sides from the papers just right, as well as trying a few different ideas for the locks to see which might work best, which meant mostly being bent over a series of springs and gears, pieces and parts, occasionally taking a moment to pause and stretch out and have some more coffee and check on the experiment she was running in the materia incubator, before getting right back to it, usually with a new twist or idea to try.

The Forge is open!

Amaya was, of course, hard at work in the forge, and, even better, she was hard at work on a specific project, which was easily the best kind of hard work! And that hard work meant that there was a work table covered in sketches and ideas and almost comically large anatomy tomes all open to diagrams of skeletons and bony hands in various positions, there were a few prototype bones and mock-ups here and there, as the blacksmith herself took to her anvil and hammered out...more bones.

At some point, there was going to be welding and warping and bending, and she was really looking forward to that part, too.

And don't even get her started on the spikes a little further down the line, too!

Really, it didn't take much to make this woman happy. Give some bones and a little wiggle room on some spikes, and she was pleased as punch, really.

The Forge is open!

You could bet that as soon as things went back to normal and the forge stopped being a Starbucks with a little kiosk out front, Amaya was going to take advantage of it and use the weekend to sort of 'catch up' on the work she'd missed during the week when she couldn't actually forge much outside of pulling up one of her makeshift crucibles from her shop classes. As such, then, today was mostly about putting some finishing touches on what she'd hammered out that weekend and trying to figure out where to put all the new pieces on the weapons wall or various other displays around the shop.

The sandwich board had also been pulled out, scribbled upon, and set out in front of the door to catch people's attentions:

Happy Halloween!
From Blackstone Foundry and Forge!

Take your costume to the next level with authentic weaponry and metal pieces!
Rush Jobs Welcome!

Never hurts to be prepared during ANY Fandom holiday!

The Forge is open!

With the school trip coming up next week, Amaya's focus this week was definitely on finishing and wrapping up on her small list of online orders and generally putting everything in order for having the shop closed for an entire week. Which was always a little bit of challenge...not in that it was a lot of hard work or anything like that, but just because there would always be that little pang in her gut of remorse for having to potentially miss out on a week's worth of work.

That pang was usually soothed with the reminder that she usually managed to be pretty productive, inspiration-wise, on these trips, so she'd be coming back with her pockets full of ideas, sure, but it still hurt, just a little.

It also didn't help, she felt, that she was thinking quite a bit on the whole roommate situations for these kinds of things, and what the best way to manipulate that whole 'plus one' system to better ensure that she didn't wind up in an unfortunate pairing for the entire week.

There was, of course, one very clear solution to this conundrum, but Amaya was firmly pretending that that actually wasn't on the very forefront of her mind at all. Definitely just focusing on wrapping up her current projects, that's all, certainly not obsessing over middling little details like plus ones....

The Forge is open!

There Amaya was, minding her own business (quite literally, really), working on some swords and daggers and axes and what have you, when some poor, hapless delivery boy showed up to wheel into the shop a special delivery for her, straight from Daventry. More than a little wary about what might be coming to her from back home, she enlisted the delivery boy to help her lift the large, relatively flat package up onto one of her worktables, paid him handsomely for all his trouble, and then frowned at the mystery package before grabbing a comically large blade for the task at hand to slice through the tape and see what this was all about.

Only to reveal quite possibly one of the largest pumpkin pies she had ever seen.

And inside, a note, although considering the absurd size of the baked good, she had a feeling she knew exactly who was to blame for this.

"Dear Amaya," she read, murmuring it out loud to herself, "I'm sorry I missed the chance to come and visit you--" She pulled back from the note with disgust. "VISIT ME? Why would....?"

But she read on: "but as I'm sure you know, the pumpkins are in full season here in Daventry, and so I thought I'd make you this pie to make up for my absence, to let you know that we're thinking of you here in our quiet little hamlet, made all the more so now that you're not here to shout and holler and chase all the squirrels and badgers trying to get into the fields to enjoy the pumpkins before we can. Much---ugh---love, Wente Fey."

Amaya finished the note with a wrinkled nose and an unpleasant taste in her mouth, but she would give Wente this much: the pie was going to do wonders to take care of that second part. And she supposed there was some consolation in knowing that she'd been thisclose to being subjected to a surprise visit from her very huggy former neighbor.

And if there was one thing Amaya had plenty of, it was comically large blades that could be used to slice up a comically large pie.

The Forge is open!

Amaya Blackstone was a woman who prided herself in her work ethic. She was a woman who believed that, even when she didn't have any outstanding projects on her roster, there was still plenty to do around her shop. Upgrading the Crumbler, putting out some more standard weapons to sell in bulk online, refining some of the trickier methods she'd been working on, or even just clearing out some failed work by melting it down and refounding it into something else.

So understand that the fact that there was no tell-tale ringing of her hammer echoing through the shop that day was for a very good reason.

And that reason?

Amaya had discovered photoshopped images of dogs with weapons was a thing, and this was going to distract her all day, and perhaps even lead her to painstakingly craft a few of her own, even with her very limited photoshop skills.

The Forge is open!

When it came to the little stabby dagger-hand mace/pick-axe commission that had come through via her website, Amaya had spent the better part of the week working on the more detailed stuff with the weapon's head and pointy bits, including spending an astonishing amount of love and care on that little tiny metal hand. Now that she was working on the much easier part of the handle, she got to thinking, as she worked, what other things she could make that incorpated more tiny little metal hands.

Could be a little weird, sure, but she figured there had to be a niche market for them somewhere, and, by golly, if there was, she was going to find it.

Probably wouldn't hurt to start with this client, actually, since they were already in the tiny hand accessory game, so she'd make sure to do a good job on it to maybe curry some favor and additional jobs.

Well, she'd do a good job regardless, because she took pride in her work, but, well, you know....

The Forge is open!

Okay, so, maybe, lately, Amaya had just been sort of forging and smithing things without really paying that much attention to what all was collecting and building, and it soon became apparent to her that she might need to do a little inventory check, a little purge of what was stuffed into the closet under the stairs, and maybe a revamping of the weapons wall for a fresh new look for fall.

Clearly, the giant shiruken needed to remain the centerpiece in which all other pieces were build around, but she was thinking maybe a little less on the wispy little swords and more emphasis on heavy weapons. Heavier weapons felt a little more autumnal, so your broadswords, your maces, definitely your axes. Maybe some bows and a nice display of various arrows with different fletchings and arrowheads for a nice variety, because, well, you know, hunting and all that.

So don't be minding the mess of weapons and armor scattered about the shop today, as Amaya worked diligently not at her anvil today, but at her wall, throwing a few things up to see what sticks...

Not literally; it was Blackstone steel. If you threw it at the wall the right way, of course it was going to stick.

The Forge is open!

As was now becoming the tradition, Amaya's lesson yesterday bled into her work today, and all those rings and things got her thinking on how it had been a while since she added a new chainmail piece to her armory.

Of course, it didn't take her very long into it to remember why she didn't do nearly as much chainmail as she did, say, plate mail and weapons, because oof, was all these little tiny rings labor intensive. Granted, she was never one to shy away from hard work, and she did like the daintier stuff every once in a while, but about halfway through, she had half a mind to just sort of cast the rings instead of doing them all herself, but that felt a bit like cheating, and Amaya Blackstone was no cheater!

She did start to wonder, though, if the next fashionable accessories she should pump out for whatever the next big fancy event around here might be should be a bit chainmail based, actually...

The Forge is open!

Yesterday's class had inspired Amaya to do a bit of trellis work, using her guillotine to make notches in a bunch of metal and now, today, she was working on fitting and forging those pieces together in its neat little lattice, and then trying to figure out just what to do with it. Obviously, she was considering adding a lot of spikes, but she was also thinking metal flowers could be a reasonable touch. A flower trellis for all seasons, and metal flowers had become a bit of a side specialty of hers.

But that got her thinking of trying to design up some flowers that, upon closer inspection, were actually somewhat weapons related...where petals on a daisy were little swords or a peony was actually a spiked mace or a violet only with shields. Once she had the trellis pieces together, perhaps she'd have to start sketching up a few designs.

If anything, it was something to keep her busy and occupied unless something better (i.e. more directly profitable) came along.

The Forge is open!