Location: Tardide Village & Surrounding Fields
Time: Days 517-521 | Telia: Days 8-12
Realm: Telia
The next four days blurred together in a haze of hammer strikes and forge heat.
Master Whitestone worked like a man possessed, his hands moving with the kind of focused intensity Jayde recognized from sixty years of watching specialists perfect their craft. The charcoal made everything easier—hotter fires, cleaner burns, metal that responded like butter under his hammer.
Jayde helped where she could. Holding pieces steady while he welded joints. Pumping the bellows when his shoulders gave out. Adjusting angles based on Federation engineering principles she couldn't fully explain but knew were correct.
"The curve needs to be exactly thirty-two degrees," she'd say, and Whitestone would squint at the glowing metal, make minute adjustments, and somehow get it perfect.
