You think about Bella a lot. More than you should. More than you want to.

In your defense, there is not much else to do: man the forge, certainly, lean against the front counter with an expression of fixed disinterest, playing cards with yourself while you wait for the next order-- which always comes, in spite of your best attempts at self-sabotage. The only thing left when all else has been done is to sleep, and sleep deeply-- and once it holds the reins the mind tends to wander.

It started simply enough: she brought you designs for a quiver, lovingly sketched curves and baroque depictions of flowers and ginkgo leaves. You had gazed at it first with a keen sense of suffering, the kind of familiar ache that duty always brings out of you. You begin to worry that it will start seeping out through the bright violet of your eyes, that she'll look at you, looking at the sheaf of new parchment and charcoal and wishing that just hoping hard enough would make you dissolve-- but somehow you don't, and she doesn't really look at you much at all, and before you can protest Isabella Foster has walked out of your shop with her bag full of books and left you with... something.

Work. Longing. You think work, again, for good measure.

It isn't hard to make. Two weeks down the line you hang her the result: expertly tooled leather, ginkgo leaves and tulips as the arms of the rising sun, a buttoned pouch on the side with her initials twisted into the branches of empty winter trees. She takes it and smiles.

There are so few things that make you feel light. There are so few things that fill you with joy at the thought of creation. Every time she hands you a new stack of drawings your heart twists with panic then settles into a steady, sure rhythm. It is a familiar feeling. You used to feel this when you were young, when it was not so hard to pretend to be worthy because you knew you were. You felt it when you made your first knife. You feel it, fleetingly, when you hold your hammer up and it strikes the blade of a sword and the ting matches the ever quieter song in the back of your mind.

You think about her this morning, more than you should. More than you want to. A soldier picks up their spear with a newly made tip, sharp and black and shining. You hand it over with a smile that doesn't quite look like a smile. You are trying, but when they thank you it is with the kind of hurried tone of voice you've come to recognize as a failure on your part, to be charming, or warm.

It is winter, you think. You don't know how warm they can expect you to be, in the dead of winter. It's snowing outside, just after dawn. There is no warmth in the air, or in you. Until you see her, books in hand, and wrestle an unexpected lightheadedness into the back ground.

Be cool, you think. You're fine. Everything is fine.
"Welcome back," you say. It is a surprisingly successful attempt at nonchalance, considering.