Winter 71, 125
In her early hours of existence, Hanabi felt like a crazy dog discovering life like a child. Through mischief, through curiosity, through challenges and pushing limits. How had she ended up in a mine? Hanabi had decided to go hunting and came across some turkeys. Turkeys that she found clucking in thorny bushes to protect themselves from predators. Determined to taste this new meat and bring something back to her camp Hanabi had rushed into the bush with a quick and brutal leap that had earned her thorns all over her skin.
Her prey, although stupid and annoying, was nonetheless fast and slipped with ease between the branches of the thickets. Hanabi progressed slowly, hesitant to move quickly les she get scraped even more. To hell with all these encumbrances! She would have this turkey, no matter what. Then, she fell into a hole that she had not been able to avoid as the foliage of the bushes was so thick and hid it from view.
She must have fallen about ten feet or so before sliding down a tunnel of sorts. She managed to find a couple stones in the cavern she ended up in and she was able to make a makeshift torch. She could see that all her skin was covered with small, superficial incisions due to the thorns. Lifting her torch, Hanabi noticed that she had landed in a cave. Well, it was a mine, but she didn't know it yet.
She advanced into the first cavern with her small light, looking for a crack in the rock that would be big enough to allow her to get out. But as her flame slowly faded, she came face to face with a scene that looked odd to her. On the ground lay a pickaxe head in poor condition and a pickaxe handle all alone. A skull adorned the entrance to what finally seemed to be a mine. Luckily, there were still unused torches that she used to replace her improvised light.
She walked for a while through the well-ordered but infinitely long hallways, until hunger gnawed at her again. Completely starving, she began to think that she would never get out of here alive and that it was a waste of time to continue walking. That's when she did the most logical thing for someone desperate - she picked up a pickaxe and started mining, wedging her torch between stones. Well yes, if she had to die, she might as well do it surrounded by pretty precious stones and gold. That way, people would think she had died at work, not stupidly lost after hunting a turkey. She was overreacting – yes she was hungry but she wasn't going to starve… and she could always go out the way she came, but where was the adventure in that?
Hanabi dug the stone fervently, sometimes finding pieces of iron that she slipped into a bag recovered from a corpse a little further away. She had also collected bits of clothing so as not to wander around naked in the mines - even if she seemed to be alone. Well, she was focused on her work and even found it enjoyable as an activity. The suspense of wondering with each blow of the tool if the stone would break and if a jewel would fall out. Something came to break her peace. Something that had just moved right next to her.
It was a spider – a fairly large one so she bashed it on the head and then it died. Hanabi's eyes reflected the meager light from outside filtering through the gaps in the rock. A thin film of sweat made her pale forehead gleam with the effort and the high temperature. Although she was in a mine, the place was so cramped that her own body heat was almost trapped. It'd become annoying after two hours of work.
She had done some exploring and found that it connected to a more active area where other people were mining away. Probably serfs to some lord who owned the land. Hanabi blended with them as best as she could and even was able to buy a better pickaxe than the degraded one she'd found.
Hanabi extended her arm and tore a new sliver from the stone. She dug with a rhythmic cadence, enjoying in this regular beat the willpower needed to lift again and again the pickaxe firmly held in her hand. Despite having just having arrived not too long ago, she liked to flex her muscles and feel every part of her body mobilized in a useful effort. For she needed both money and the means to buy better equipment and to kill time until her other projects were done. She was stuck in the area for the next week or two.
Why be averse to manual labor? This was a most welcome workout for her, and could also be lucrative… She wiped the sweat running down her eyelid with a sigh. A thin smile appeared on her face in the shadow of the cave. She might as well stay a little longer in order to contribute to strengthening her physique, so weak in comparison to her creator's… Besides, what would he have thought of her latest decisions, her selfish choices?
She shook her head and smiled more widely - solitude had this strange habit of plunging her into thoughts. How time dragged on when no one was standing by your side.
Hanabi squinted, not because of the darkness of the place, but because of the aches and pains she had acquired from long hours of mining. She tensed her fine woman muscles and tore a new fragment from the rock. The night had not been a good confidant and had given birth to more questions than solutions in her mind tortured by the same existential questions.
Quenching her thirst through exhaustion was her only salvation for the moment. Her nights of keeping Mordva safe had been mostly pointless. The nearest stream was miles away so her throat stayed dry. She didn't know much of what aelheim was like but she imagined it must be better than life in Jian because it was not very pleasing. War raged on just a couple dozen miles away from the mine and yet the miners still worked. It wouldn't be long before Hanabi too joined in on the fighting.
The pickaxe in her hands was becoming familiar to her. She had ended up recognizing its slightly twisted handle, the hollows in its wood and the rust on its blade - a clear sign that the person who had sold it to her had ripped her off. In any case, the woman was gradually becoming skilled with it. But in the end, did she really want a good pickaxe? Of course, the disadvantages of a bad one were numerous, such as how long it took to break off a piece of rock. But it had benefits were that she could stay in the same spot for so long without having to look for more ore. She was here primarily to kill time, after all.
But eventually she ran out of steam and was forced to haul a sack of her mined ore to a nearby village to try making it into something useful. She was skilled in carpentry, but not smithing. Hanabi's eyes lit up in front of the burning oven in the smith's shop. She couldn't believe how she had changed so much in such a short time. Just a short while in this country and she'd already mined some ore and found a forge. And that's saying something considering the growing desire she had to really transform the fruits of her labor into a useful tool.
She still doubted that the old man who owned the place was being generous. She suspected he wanted to lure her in and convince her jump into his bed at the right time. But he had at least had the decency of showing Hanabi the ropes and taught her some basic techniques for creating metal weapons. For a fee, of course.
"Little one, show me what you can do. I'm not expecting a miracle, but I trust you to make something that I could rework."
Putting on a blacksmith's apron, Hanabi first started by heating the furnace. When it was at a decent temperature, the young girl began to fill it with iron ore, emptying a small bag into the opening provided for this purpose. Shortly after, the iron, the old man helped add material to transform it into steel. After that, it got hot enough to be poured into the right mold.
Hours and hours passed before the steel cooled and was usable. After fastening it together with some wood, Hanabi tested it to see if it could be used correctly. The girl's movements weren't as fluid as she would have liked, her muscles were sore from beating the metal and mining all day. Letting the spear rest on her shoulder, Hanabi was pleased with herself, she had just forged something and she was proud of it, even if it was kind of shit.
