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Osu rushed down the path, his face a picture of excitement. He was getting to see Rahujo again! And the fire! He spun to a stop by the doorway. Maybe he could sneak up on Rahujo! Quietly (which wasn't hard, since he floated anyway), he peered around the edge of the door, looking for the smith inside.

Ieyasu shook his head faintly at Osu, a smile on his face. The wisp had been ecstatic about going out today. It wasn't hard to guess why. Keeping an eye on the Aerandir as he approached the doorway, he tapped the bamboo staff against his shoulder. Pausing at the entrance to the forge, he knocked.

Oh no! Ieyasu was going to give it away! Osu ducked back around the edge of the door, floating behind it. He'd need to be extra, extra sneaky now!

Osu carefully stuck his head around the side of the doorway again. Spotting Rahujo, and seeing that she hadn't turned around yet, the wisp ducked into the forge. Spotting a likely place to hide, he dived into it. Now, he just needed to be quiet! Only.. he could feel himself about to laugh. Uh oh...! He tried to stifle the giggle welling out of him by clamping his hands over his mouth... but that wasn't so effective when your hands were ethereal. The laugh spilled out of him before he could stop himself.

Ieyasu knocked again on the doorway, before attempting to shout over the noise of the hammer. "Rahujo!?" He had noticed Osu diving away, and figured it probably wouldn't be the best of ideas to allow the wisp to try to give the smith a fright when she was hammering out red-hot metal. It wasn't so much that Osu would be hurt - he couldn't touch anything afterall - more that Rahujo would be.

Aw, ok, the game was up. Dissolving into peals of laughter, Osu promptly floated up from behind a workbench. He grinned at Rahujo mischievously before waving happily. Throwing his arms out to the side, he spun around in a circle, giggling again. Then, he floated over closer to the smith, clasping his hands behind his back and smiling broadly.

Ieyasu grinned, taking a step into the forge. Watching Osu give up his game of hide and seek (he could never stay patient for long), he glanced up at Rahujo. "Hey there, Rahujo. I hope we weren't interrupting anything important..?"

"Ah, I see." Ieyasu grinned, before casting a curious glance over at the blade. "Problems...? Sorry, I don't know much, if anything, about smithing."
The kitsune paused as Rahujo passed him the anklet. He gazed at it for a moment, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Wow... this is beautiful. It's great." He looked up at the smith, his expression a warm smile. "Thank you so much. It must have taken you ages to finish this!"

As the two grown-ups talked, Osu took the opportunity to return to the forge fire. It was so big and pretty. Clapping his hands silently, the wisp giggled again, before pointing at the flames. He seemed oblivious to whatever Ieyasu and Rahujo were speaking of. Then, just as he had fallen quiet again, he made another sound.
"Fy.... fy!!" He pointed ecstatically at the flames, as if for emphasis.

Ieyasu nodded his head as Rahujo explained, before turning to Osu. He furrowed his brow a little. Osu had never made a sound like that before. Crossing his arms and tilting his head, he smiled. If that was what he just thought it was... Seeming thoughtful, he watched the two Aerandir.

Osu turned to look up at Rahujo, watching her with open curiousity as she picked up the taper. As she lit it and held the tiny flame up to him, he giggled again, rushing up to cup his hands around it. You could make more fire from fires already there! That was neat!

Ieyasu nodded with a wry smile at Rahujo's comment. "I'm thinking it may be a good idea to keep a bucket of water in each room in the house, just in case..."

Osu stared at Rahujo for a moment, a clearly quizzical expression on his ghostly face. He tilted his head, seeming to think to himself as he gazed at the smith's blind eye. He wondered if it hurt. He remembered how painful it had been when he had burnt his paw as a gryphon. The smile was momentarily gone from his face, as he hovered by Rahujo. But then.. as he thought about it... she didn't seem to be sore. And look, she was smiling now! Maybe the pain went away. Afterall, his hurt had gone away after Ieyasu put that green stuff on his paw. Maybe Rahujo put some of the magic green stuff on too! Cheering up again, he smiled at Rahujo.

"Two more. Ehm... twine and rope, I think. We're getting there." Ieyasu grinned at Rahujo. "Thanks again for all your help. And for putting up with Trouble over there." He nodded over at Osu, who simply giggled. "I guess we should go and try to track down those last couple of bits. You coming, Osu?" He gave a nod and a smile to Rahujo. "I'll see you later. Remember - if there's anything I can do for you in return, just let me know. Bye!"

Turning, he exited the forge. Osu cast one last wistful look at the hearth, before waving to Rahujo and floating after the kitsune.

The forge had been unusually silent for several weeks, the massive double doors shut over and the hearth cold. Even the frog which usually made its home there had eventually gotten bored and left. Outside, the kitchen had been tidied, the pots and utensils which usually hung from the roof stowed in cupboards and chests. Inside, if anyone had cared to look, the forge was tidier than it had been for a long time, tools all hung up and dust settling on the anvil.

Rahujo had left on a cool, breezy morning, three weeks ago, packing her sturdy outrigger canoe with supplies and tools. Pushing the boat off the beach, her mind drifted to the small collection of assorted objects in her bag...

Several hours later, after she had made her camp on Uissa, she lit a small fire and set the kettle to boil, then lay down on the floor of her tent and spread her artifacts out on a piece of rough cloth. A stainless steel butter knife, a padlock and key, a ball-bearing, an assortment of nuts and bolts, a rusty antique dagger, a cracked and discarded piston from a generator engine. From her wooden chest, she brought out a small stack of books - everything from a colourful kids' book about metal to chemistry and metallurgy textbooks. Thus prepared, she fetched the kettle and made herself a cup of tea.

Sitting cross-legged with the steaming mug in front of her, she put one hand out and picked up a random object - the bearing. She held it up and examined it closely. Its surface was cold, hard, smooth and utterly impenetrable to her - nothing like the bronze which she had grown up working and which generations of her ancestors had worked. When she lifted a piece of bronze, she could feel a warmth from within it, feel the stresses and flows within the metal, instinctively know the best way to heat and work it to produce anything she wanted. Pick up steel, and all she could sense was cold hardness.

Rahujo sipped her tea and frowned, putting the ball-bearing back on the cloth. The padlock and key met with little more success - she could figure out the structure of the plating on both, some sort of brassy alloy, but the underlying metal still felt dead under her fingers.

She swapped the padlock for the butterknife. Her tea had ceased to steam, and she put down the cup, shutting her eyes and concentrating harder.

The problem, she reflected, was that she didn't really know how she did what she did - her ability to sense metal had just happened, something she had almost taken for granted as normal, like an extra sense. She had had an affinity for metals from an early age - she remembered sitting on Mhairi's floor bending her teaspoons back and forth, and being upset when they snapped - but she had only realised her abilities when she had found Mhairi's purse of change, and started playing sorting games with the shiny coins.

Mhairi had let the young Aerandir be - change being relatively useless on an island without any shops or commerce - and soon she was able to sort the different coins by touch alone. She had really startled her guardian, however, when Mhairi had come back from a shopping expedition with plenty of coinage for her little girl to play with, and Rahujo had been able to count all the coins heaped in her little hands without moving a single finger... Rahujo smiled in rememberance, her eyes still closed.

Anyway... She consciously forced her thoughts away from her reminiscing and back to the cold metal clenched in her fist. She tried to somehow focus, to extend her senses to the metal in her hand, without any success. She tightened her fingers around the knife, as if she could force it to obey her will and give up its secrets, but to no avail. Half an hour later, her tea was cold and her hand had a deep indent in it from the handle she had been clutching, and she was no nearer to her goal.

She went to bed unsatisfied but determined, and in her dreams she saw herself at her anvil, with a red-hot slug of what she knew was pure iron in her tongs, sparks flying under the impact of her hammer, striking firm and true with a perfect connection to the metal that she held...

Rahujo stared into the flame of her improvised furnace. Not hot enough... she thought, fanning the hungry flames wiith a large piece of bark she'd brought with her. She chewed her lip and studied the furnace.

Built into a handy cleft in the rock of the small island, a chimney in a shallow cliff near the shore, the furnace was rough but serviceable. It was similar to the types she'd used on other islands to experiment with bronze, but while the heat would have turned copper and tin bearing ores into a molten puddle of bronze and slag, the iron ores she'd gathered just sat there, glowing richly in the flame.

Perhaps, she thought, stepping away from the improvised furnace, if she took the small samples of ore back to Cetalu, back to the hearth of her forge, she might get the heat that she needed. But she still hadn't even solved the problem which she'd come out here to solve - her lack of ability to connect with iron...

Afterwards, she never did figure out what had caused the explosion, only that if she had been any closer it might have killed her. There had been a brief crackle, causing her to look around, then the cliff face erupted into a firestorm of burning charcoal, shattered rock and splinters of ore.

Focused and directed by the chimney in the cliff-face, the explosion roared over her head, blowing her backwards to land hard on the stony shore. The entire bird colony on the island took off, dark shapes streaming into the sky above her as she struggled for the breath that had been knocked out of her. Steam erupted from the sea as half of the furnace's charge and fuel landed in it, the rest scattering around Rahujo's prone body, the flames singing her fur and searing her face.

In the echoing silence of the aftermath, as she beat out several small fires that had started in her fur and wings, all she could think was that she had failed, wasted the weeks that she had spent on the island fruitlessly working on a problem it seemed that she could not solve.

Then she noticed a strange twinkle, a cold hard sensation amongst the heat of the ashes and still-burning charcoal fragments that surrounded her. She lifted her head, and noticed a red-hot lump of rock sitting an inch or two from her finger, waves of heat radiating from it... yet the odd chill that had alerted her still persisted.

Wincing at the pain - a shard of hot rock had seared a shallow channel into her shoulder - she twitched her fingertips closer. The sensation grew. Closer, and while her fingertips screamed at her that they were getting too hot, could not stay for much longer without getting burnt, she could feel something she had never felt before. Cold... blue... coruscating... alive...

Suddenly exhausted, she let her head fall back onto the stones of the beach, and closed her eye. Did I...?

---

She woke up with a pounding head, the sun setting across the ocean, the debris lying around her now cold, all the little fires extinguished. Her shoulder throbbed, as did a hundred little cuts and grazes all over her body.

Grimacing, she pulled herself upright and looked around. The cliff was a wreck. The blast had blown the chimney into a wide gash in the rock, surrounded by rubble and blackened from the fire. A cone of debris extended outwards from where the furnace had been, the ground scorched and covered in charcoal and rock fragments.

She got to her feet slowly, leaving an angel-shaped shadow on the beach where her body had shielded the rocks and pebbles from the falling ash, then paused, remembering what she had felt just before she let herself slip into unconsciousness.

Rahujo bent down and picked up the walnut-sized lump that had lain beside her hand, studying it intently. It was still slightly warm, and in the fiery sunset light, she could see an odd glint from the fissures and cracks of the rock. She ran her fingers over the surface of the rock, noting the slightest odd tingle as she did so. Hmm... The coating of ash and slag came off when she knocked the rock against the ground, leaving a distorted sphere of dark silvery grey metal.

A smile slowly grew on Rahujo's face as she realised what she held in her hand. Iron. I made iron.