[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Aurelie was certain she'd never in her entire life seen anyone move as quickly as Isaac once he heard her description of breakfast and breathed in the smells coming from the kitchen. One second, he was sitting up on the couch, still looking half-asleep. The next, he'd apparently zoomed in and out of the bathroom and arrived at the breakfast table, thoroughly clean, washed, awake, and ready to eat.

"Arceus' name, Isaac!" she exclaimed, bursting into laughter. "I'm surprised you didn't scorch my floors with that blaze of speed! Forget the speed limit–I think you just violated some laws of physics by moving that fast!"

Thankfully, the toast, jam, butter, and avocado slices were already on the table, along with two mugs full of hot chocolate. Isaac could whet his appetite with that for now, while the eggs en cocotte—really just a Kalosian term for baked eggs in ramekins within a water bath—were still cooking in the oven. As the oven timer started beeping, Aurelie gestured for Isaac to start without her and retreated into the kitchen to check on the eggs.

Belatedly, she added as she pulled on her oven mitts, "Also, pffft, I was never the steel chef, Isaac! I was just the host of the contest. I do love to cook, but don't tell me you somehow mistook me for Zev Harcourt!"

She smirked at the thought and struck a pose in the middle of the kitchen, smoothing back her hair with what she fondly imagined was Zev-like suaveness. "Well, I mean, I guess it's an easy mistake to make! We just look so much alike, after all. Happens to me all the time!"

Sliding out the baking dish that held the ramekins in their water bath, Aurelie pulled off the foil on top, judged the eggs to be done to her liking, and brought them to the table one by one, setting the first in front of Isaac. Then she plopped down in her chair and dug in eagerly with a fork. To her relief, the eggs had turned out nicely: soft and custardy with runny, gooey yolks and a little extra richness from some added cream, with a thick layer of herbed goat cheese, ham, and sauteed mushrooms on the bottom of the ramekin.

"I hope you enjoy! I can tell you're a big fan of food yourself," Aurelie remembered to say cheerfully between forkfuls of eggs. "I'd love to eat some of your cooking sometime in the future. The dishes you made at the cooking contest looked divine!

"Maybe even tonight, we can cook dinner together, whatever you feel comfortable making." She smacked her lips shamelessly at the thought but then smiled reassuringly. "I mean, assuming you feel up to it, anyway. I know smithing—and just standing around in a hot workshop all day—can really wear a person out."

Dipping a piece of toast into her eggs, she went on, "So today, the plan is to keep refining the shape of the blade, based on the measurements and historical specifications of the classic jian sword. Hey, don't fall asleep on me again!" she teased, interrupting herself to wag a finger in mock-admonition when she saw Isaac close his eye in what turned out to be just an ordinary momentary blink.

"Oops, false alarm," she chuckled, settling back in her chair. "So, more hammering to flatten the sword blade to the right thickness and then to shape the bevels on both edges, since the sword is double-edged. We'll have to be careful to make sure both sides of the sword are even and symmetrical, not to mention accurately recreating the gradual distal taper from the hilt to the tip."

She tapped the fork against her lips meditatively. "Man, this sword is almost like a dagger in its overall shape, but obviously much longer and sharper. No wonder it's supposed to be so maneuverable! Anyway, that's the plan for today. Whenever you're ready, we can head back down to the workshop."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Aurelie couldn't help feeling surprised and gratified to see Isaac devouring both her food and knowledge with equal eagerness and enthusiasm. Baked eggs were simple enough, but Isaac had eaten the dish as if it were ambrosia from heaven. Maybe he just really likes free food? she wondered with amusement. Not that I can blame him!

As for the knowledge—that was even more surprising. Of course, for Aurelie, being a blacksmith and bladesmith had always been an exciting and fulfilling prospect, but then, she'd been raised in a family of smiths and metalworkers. For people who didn't come from that background, the glamorous careers were things like being an actor, singer, athlete, Pokemon trainer, or doctor.

Right?

Yet, Isaac seemed genuinely inspired and happy about the prospect of spending a second day in a hot workshop, waiting for metal to heat up in the forge, and then banging on it with a hammer. Perhaps he had blacksmithing in his blood too, who knows? Honestly, he's always just been an odd alloy, she reflected affectionately, turning a warm smile in his direction.

And Aurelie had to admit, she enjoyed the company! It reminded her of how strange it'd felt when she first came to Hoenn and was working by herself in the forge for possibly the first time in her life. In Kalos, there had always been her father working beside her at the anvil or forge, not to mention her mother or brother tinkering with some fragile and exquisite bauble in the corner.

Tears stung her eye at the memories, which were fond enough to hurt, still. After a year of being on her own, running her own business, Aurelie thought she'd buried those memories deep. But I guess you never forget, she thought, her smile dimming slightly.

Taking a deep breath to gather herself, she perked up at the thought of forgetting, which, oddly, reminded her of their research together last night. "Oh! Wait! Actually, forget everything I just said for the plan today!" she laughed, her thoughts of the work ahead of them pushing away memories of the past.

"Remember how I had said the jian is classically made using sanmei techniques? Well, it's very different from the simple mono-steel approach I initially thought we'd take. But..." She clapped her hands together briskly, her eye shining with anticipation. "It'll ultimately make a better sword. So, let's get to work!"

Suiting action to words, the red-haired smith suited them both up in protective gear again—this time, taking only half as much time as she did yesterday on checking Isaac's goggles—and turned on the propane forge. Now that she knew she should be using sanmei construction, she explained to Isaac that—as was often common in smithing—they would be starting over from the beginning and creating the sword using a different, more complex technique. Aurelie showed no frustration or annoyance over the time lost, indicating that she'd often run into this situation before.

She stayed with using the 5160 steel as the hard, high-carbon "core" of the blade. However, because the distinguishing feature of sanmei was the protective layers of softer, more flexible steel on either side of the core, this time Aurelie added two pieces of mild steel on either side, leaving only about half of the core uncovered. Beckoning for Isaac to follow her, she put on a welding helmet and showed him her oxyacetylene welding touch, which she used to lightly weld all three billets of metal together with many showers of gold-and-white sparks.

"This is to help the billets of metal stick together long once to forge-weld to each other naturally from the heat of the forge," she explained to Isaac. "We also use metal flux, which is just a fancy term for steel dust, to help this process. It's basically like glue, but for hot metal!"

Because it was only three layers, the forge-welding happened without any particular drama, with all three layers sealing smoothly and neatly, free of air pockets or delaminations. Aurelie inspected the metal minutely and was careful to test it with the hydraulic press, watching alertly for bulges or fanning and breathing a sigh of relief when neither occurred. "A good sanmei achieved!" she exclaimed pleasedly, raising her uplifted palm toward Isaac for a spontaneous high-five.

From here, the process was similar enough to what they'd done the first day, with Isaac being invited to hammer the blade again using both the electric power hammer and the humble hand hammer. Aurelie took over after a few minutes every time. Under the repeated hammer blows, the new blade slowly took shape once more, the taper growing more pronounced and a central medial ridge becoming distinct.

They broke for lunch, grabbing sandwiches and lemonade at a local café around the corner. Even Aurelie was looking flushed and warm by then, so the cool, breezy day was welcome to both of them. She talked excitedly about the advantages of sanmei blades—flexibility, incredible sharpness, and resistance to rusting—while waiting in line, though she made an effort to chat about everyday things during lunch itself.

When they returned to the workshop, she worked again on heating, hammering, and shaping the blade. During this time, she told Isaac to practice drawing the illustration he wanted to use to acid-etch the sword, pointing him toward sheets of drafting paper, charcoal pencils, and a bottle of clear nail polish on another worktable. "I remember you wanted to draw a Gyarados," she said with a chuckle, "which sounds both super creative and super complicated. So, make sure you get it right using both pencils and a nail polish brush before we ever try it on the finished blade."

By six, Aurelie pronounced the workday over, and they adjourned back to her apartment. That evening, with the day's work evidently wearing on her, she was certainly happy to cook dinner alongside Isaac. Thank Arceus I went grocery shopping the day before he visited, she thought happily, grateful to be able to offer him a full fridge and pantry of ingredients to choose from for dinner options that night.

Instead of research, they watched TV, bickering amiably about the best shows to pick. That night, with Isaac once more installed on her couch and Aurelie drifting off to sleep in bed, she found herself thinking about family again. But somehow, without the bitterness that usually accompanied such thoughts.

It really felt like going home, she thought sleepily, but...in a good way? I wonder why... And then she fell fully asleep and forgot the question entirely.

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]The level of sheer unswerving dedication and concentration that Isaac could bring to bear when he was truly engaged and interested in a project impressed Aurelie to no end. When she'd told him to practice sketching and painting his imagined Gyarados image to prepare for the decorating and acid-etching step, she thought he'd work on drawing for a couple hours at most. But then another hour passed, and yet another, and he was still working at it!

By the time Aurelie was ready to call it a day, the last Gyarados that he had painted with the nail polish brush looked almost worthy of being hung in a snooty Kalosian art gallery.

"That's incredible!" she enthused, her single eye wide with admiration. "I don't think I would've had nearly that much patience at your age—or ha, any age!—to be able to sit down and draw something like that. Maybe you missed your calling as a painter, youngster!"

When at one point he made a passing comment about the sanmei technique seeming like a "finer" or superior technique to using mono-steel, Aurelie was quick to correct him in a cheerful lecture while reheating the metal in the forge. "Using folded steel, whether it's just three layers like with sanmei—or San Mai, as a Johtonian or Kantonian might say–or 100, 500, or a thousand layers of Damascus, has drawbacks as well as benefits compared to using just one type of steel.

"In a way, it's kind of like working with people, compared to working by yourself! When you're on your own, you know exactly what your own capabilities are and you can go at your own pace. But you're also by yourself, so you don't have someone else to help you or add their strengths and talents to bolster your weaknesses." She figured Isaac, with his many varied friends and allies, ought to know very well about that.

"But when you're working with others, you can also have personality clashes, even disagreements or fights, and that can slow you down or cause problems." She sighed ruefully, thinking of her own flaws in this area. "Steel works much the same way! Every weld point where two different steels join together is a potential fault zone where the blade can split apart, especially after a hard impact.

"So, it's just different. A more complex and intricate process, not necessarily better or stronger. But more often than not, it's more beautiful to look at." Aurelie flashed a playful smile. "And as they say, a thing of beauty is a joy forever, right?"

The next day, he surprised her by waking her up with coffee and tea. Startled by his energy in the morning, Aurelie was nevertheless delighted by his enthusiasm and initiative. "Oooh, bon jour, sunshine!" she exclaimed laughingly, accepting the coffee and filling it with sugar and cream. "Definitely an A+ apprentice in my book so far."

Again, it reminded her of family: of eagerly asking to help her father in the forge with every little thing, especially once he started teaching her his craft. Like Isaac now, she couldn't wait to get to work back then. It delighted her to see him behaving the same way this morning.

Back in the workshop, the first few hours were devoted to the final details of perfecting the shape of the blade, ensuring that it had the proper diamond-shaped cross-section, tapering thickness and width, and light weight. Then she hammered and shaped the tang of the blade. "This is the back portion of the sword that connects to the handle. It's very important to get this part right so that the blade is actually usable."

Leading Isaac over to the drilling machine, she had him hold the blade in place while the drill was running. "We drill holes in the tang so that we can use pins to attach handle material, like wood or bone, to the tang and provide a solid mechanical bond," she explained over the whine of the drill. "I like to do this part early before hardening the blade, because otherwise...well, the metal's just too hard to cut through!"

After another quick lunch, this time in her apartment, eating leftovers from dinner along with cheese omelets and more crusty bread, they returned to the workshop. Aurelie had Isaac stand just behind her shoulder while she worked at the grinding machine—a whirring machine that used pulleys and wheels spin an abrasive, sandpaper-like belt to quickly remove and polish steel. A Klinklang winked out the side of the grinder, its continuously clicking gears providing the motive power for the machine.

"Edge geometry is an art unto itself, I've always thought," she told Isaac over the droning hum of the grinder belts. "But this won't take as long, since we're making a blade with blunted edges. This is mostly to put the final polish on the blade, so it comes out all shiny and bright. And there!"

Aurelie turned off the grinder and held the blade up to the light, letting the illumination gleam off the near-mirror luster of the steel. She smiled at Isaac with satisfaction.

"Good work today," she told him. "I promise, it's almost over! Tomorrow, we'll thermal cycle the blade and then quench it." Aurelie couldn't help exhaling a little apprehensively there. "Quenching's always a make-or-break moment—sometimes literally!

"Then we'll temper it in the tempering oven for a few hours, to soften the steel and make it less brittle after quenching. At that point, we'll work on the handle. And then, finally, we'll do the drawing and acid-etching part."

Poor Isaac. He'd barely gotten to leave her shop or apartment all day, aside from some quick walks or breathers outside. She hoped he wasn't getting too bored by the exciting day-to-day life of a working blacksmith at this rate.

At that point, Aurelie's stomach grumbled, startling a laugh out of her. "But for now, let's have dinner! At least, I hear one vote for that. How does chicken fricassee in mushroom sauce plus salad sound to you?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]If Aurelie had been able to read Isaac's thoughts about his role and responsibilities while working with her in the forge, she would've had a good chuckle at the idea of him serving as a "sexy wrench holder". Definitely not the use she'd put him to, if she had a choice. But she would have vehemently agreed that he was an exceptional listener and student who picked things up quickly, rarely got in the way, and was impressively proactive about helping out where he could.

"Really, Isaac, you've taken everything in stride incredibly well," Aurelie told him, with fond pride evident in her face and voice. "Well, I guess after facing down Groudon cultists, raiding ancient tombs, that ordeal on Mt. Pyre, and having Zev as a boss, you're not about to feel intimidated by a little heat or some sharp edges, right?"

She thought ahead to the next day with a strange sense of prescient nostalgia. It would be a busy time, combining the process of creating the handle with heat-treating and quenching the blade. So much left to show and teach Isaac, and yet so little time...

And then Isaac's proactiveness evidently extended outside the workshop too! When he offered to cook dinner for both of them, the red-haired smith perked up with interest. "Oh! Well, I mean, you don't have to, but if you want to..."

She laughed softly as she led the way up the stairs again into her apartment. "I mean, who am I to turn down the services of the, uh..." Picking a metal at random, Aurelie exclaimed, "The Aluminum Chef here, in my very own kitchen!

"You know, since aluminum is lighter-weight, more flexible, and used in a wider variety of applications than steel." She grinned, amused and pleased to be able to throw in a random metalworking reference into the conversation. "Less durable too, but still strong enough to be used in baseball bats and skyscrapers.

But anyway..." Aurelie walked into the kitchen and gestured to the fridge, cupboards, and pantry. "If you're offering, then I'm happy to switch roles and be your student and assistant for the evening. Teach me your ways, mon professeur!"

Inside the kitchen, Isaac would of course find a variety of hand-forged and crafted tools and utensils, from the expected range of different knives to tongs, spatulas, kitchen shears, pots and pans, a ladle, slotted spoon, and even colander of stainless steel with the Iron Lady Forge's mark on them. After their meals together, the ingredients were a little depleted, but there were still some spinach, mushrooms, leeks, carrots, onions, and lettuce left, as well as chicken thighs, pork sausage, and half a dozen eggs. Her Kalosian upbringing was made evident in the ample supply of bread, potatoes, cream, butter, olive oil, and garlic.

"My spices are pretty basic," she mused, rummaging in a cupboard. She came up with only a small handful of plastic bottles. "Thyme, rosemary, basil, and nutmeg. And salt and pepper, of course."

Aurelie rubbed her hands together thoughtfully. "So, what do you think you can make? Or if you're stumped, we can still do an easy chicken fricassee. I thought of it because it's a fairly quick, straightforward recipe, for all that it sounds snooty and fancy." She smirked. "Those silly pretentious Kalosians, right?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]After spending the last few days being nominally "in charge" of teaching and directing Isaac, as well as making the sword, it was sheer relief for Aurelie to step back for a little while and let Isaac tell her where to go and what to do for. He quickly surveyed the contents of her fridge and pantry, and to her pride, he seemed pleased with what he found. A model of modern efficiency, he then found a pair of recipes on the internet that resourcefully incorporated nearly all the ingredients she had.

His joke about chopping and smashing, just like they had been in the forge, made the red-haired smith chortle. "Plus hot fire and lots of things we need to keep an eye on so they don't burn. And in the end, we turn raw, basic components into a polished finished product. I'm not saying every good chef would be a good smith, or vice versa. But in your case, it might be true!"

Unfortunately, when the recipe called for an immersion blender or regular blender to puree the soup, Aurelie frowned. She'd always wanted an immersion blender but never gotten around to buying one, when her regular business had so many expenses, and a regular blender or food processor would take way too much counter space in her tiny kitchen. Digging around through her drawers, the red-haired smith finally dug out a potato masher and decided it would have to do.

Applying the potato masher took some more elbow grease than the immersion blender would have, and the resulting soup was a bit more chunky than silken-smooth in texture. Meanwhile, Aurelie's sidelong glance told her Isaac was preparing and plating the sausage-stuffed chicken with enviable precision. She grinned and sighed ruefully, before taking an appreciative sniff of the sauce he was whipping up.

By the time both dishes were laid out on the table, Aurelie found herself actually in danger of drooling. She eagerly dug in, her eye going wide at the flavors of sausage, chicken, cheese, spinach, and sauce all blended together. "Oh my gosh! This is so good, Isaac!"

Between hearty bites and brimming spoonfuls of soup, she alternated more praise for Isaac's cooking—which was frankly delicious and quite satisfying—with sheepish apologies for her soup. All in all, though, Aurelie pronounced herself contented and grateful.

"Thanks for this," she said sincerely as she sopped up the last of the sauce with a piece of bread. "That was a good recipe you found! A little more work than what I had planned, but worth it in the end."

That night, they watched an old favorite martial arts movie of Aurelie's, before heading to bed. It was funny how quickly they both seemed to have fallen into the nightly routine, even though he'd only been staying with her a couple nights. The next morning, they whipped up thin crepes and omelets together, with more coffee and tea to caffeinate them for another day in the workshop.

"Today, we start with thermal cycling the blade," Aurelie told him, as they put on their safety equipment. "Thermal cycling is a process of heating up the blade to a certain point—I test with a magnet, because the steel loses its magnetism at a high enough temperature—and then let it air cool again.

"This happens at least three times. Each time, I heat the blade to a slightly lower temperature. This helps relieve stresses in the metal and makes it stronger."

Illustrating her point, Aurelie heated up the propane forge and started the process of inserting the blade into the forge. Eyeing the color of the metal, she nodded and pulled out the blade, testing it with a small magnet. Then she waved the cooling blade through the air until its color faded to a dull red and then put the blade back in the forge.

For the final cycle, the red-haired smith handed the tongs over to Isaac to try this step himself. "It's not very difficult to do, but it's very important," Aurelie told him. "Now, just hold it in there...

"Keep an eye on the color. Okay, I think it's ready. Here, take the magnet and test if it's attracted. Nope, see, the magnet's not really drawn to the metal. Okay, now just let the blade cool down. Don't drop it, now!" she cautioned him. "Next, we'll normalize, which means doing this one more time and then letting the metal cool down all the way to room temperature."

After this, she sent Isaac to the workshop's shelves to pick out a handle material that he thought his teacher would like. He had a variety of woods, synthetics, and a few types of bone and animal horn to choose from. While the wood ranged classically in different shades of buff and brown, the synthetics were bold and striking—red, green, blue, purple, and black, with contrasting veins of jewel-hued color.

"Next, comes the hardening." She couldn't help drawing in a sharp breath at this, even after having done this thousands of times in her life. "This is the most critical part of the bladesmithing process—the make-or-break moment. We heat the blade to a specific temperature, lower than the forging temperature, around 900 degrees Celsius.

"We hold it in there for long enough that it 'soaks in' the heat. And then..." She pointed to the tank standing next to the propane forge. "Take the lid off that, Isaac. Yup, that's vegetable oil in there."

Sliding the heated metal out of the forge, Aurelie took a deep breath and then—muttering a mingling of curses, endearments, and prayers under her breath all in the space of thirty seconds—plunged the blade into the oil. A few flames licked upward, but not high, and she didn't back off. Relief suffused her face when there were no audible pinging or clanging noises from within the tank.

Pulling out the blade, she let out a long-held breath. "It's all in one piece, thank Arceus. And it's straight too," she added, holding it up so she could eye its length. "No warps or bends. Hand me that file over there, Isaac—that flat metal tool with the blue plastic handle."

Aurelie slid the surface of the file across the blade and beamed. "And now you can tell if it's hardened. If the file 'catches' or 'bites' into the metal, like sandpaper, then it's still too soft. But if it skates across—ooh, just like this—then the metal is hardened!" She puffed out a breath and grinned.

"Well, we did it as far as the blade's concerned. Now, next for the tempering. And while that's happening, we can work on the handle together. That should take us to lunch. And then the drawing and acid-etching."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Aurelie broke into a broad grin at Isaac's fist pump of victory, as well as his soft sigh of satisfaction at a job well done. "'I knew we could do it,' you mean. This was definitely a team effort!

"Having you around to keep an eye on everything, getting things when I needed them, and taking over some of the work now and then..." She smiled softly. "Not to mention you pitching in to help with dinner too! It all adds up. A few minutes here, an hour saved there, and the sword is done half a day or even a day earlier than I expected."

It was strange. Aurelie had never worked side-by-side before with anyone who wasn't a family member. Frankly, the idea of working alongside someone she didn't know and trust almost completely had always felt weird to contemplate, even if having a second pair of hands and eyes in the workshop would've been an immense help any number of times.

And yet... Working with Isaac these past few days hadn't been weird at all. It'd just worked.

Now, on one hand, they'd only been working together for three or four days. That wasn't very much information to go on. Maybe they were still in the honeymoon phase, so to speak. On the other hand, the information they had showed that Aurelie and Isaac did collaborate well together. For someone new to smithing, Isaac had gotten comfortable relatively quickly with the process and environment. And that had put Aurelie at her ease and made her feel comfortable working alongside him.

Sometimes, when they were in different parts of the workshop, both focusing on a task, Aurelie had seen him out of the corner of her eye and thought for a moment that he had dark hair and blue eyes, for some reason...

"It is weird to think we're almost done here, you're right," she agreed with him, shaking off the distracting thought. "Next time, I say you teach me something you know!

"I've pretty much taught you the only 'skills' I have—smithing and, uh, tabletop roleplaying..." She threw in air quotes around the word "skills" and smirked a little at the mention of roleplaying games. "So, next time, I say it's your turn."

With that, she investigated the handle material that Isaac had selected. "Oh wow, Salamence shell!" the red-haired smith marveled, looking at the pearl-white material. "I didn't know I still had some of that. It should be lightweight yet strong and aesthetically pleasing. Nice choice."

She lingered in front of the handle material shelves a moment longer to pick out some mild steel for the bolster and guard, as well as the pommel. Then Aurelie showed Isaac how to prepare handle scales, by cutting the Salamance shell into two identical flat, parallel blocks that fit the tang of the sword, using the band saw. "Careful about your fingers!"

Then, the red-haired smith had Isaac fulfill his role as a holder of things by having him, in fact, hold the sword in place while using the drill machine to bore a series of three holes into the tang. After carefully lining them up to the two Salamance shell blocks and marking where the holes should go, she then had him hold those in place to drill holes in those too. "These holes are for the pins to hold the grip to the tang," she explained. "Pins provide a very strong mechanical connection, which is valuable so your handle doesn't fly off the sword!"

After the initial fitting was done, Aurelie headed toward the tempering oven, where she simply slid the sword into the oven and set the temperature and time. The simplicity of this step belied its importance in making sure the hardened blade wasn't too stiff or brittle. Most of its difficulty lay in knowing the correct level of heat and amount of time and—well, just being patient for three to four hours.

Meanwhile, she beckoned Isaac to follow her toward the belt grinders again, where this time, they used a lighter sandpaper belt to grind the handle. "For swords, I usually go with an oval or ovoid—is that the right word?—shape, because it's smooth and easy to grip but lets the user know where the edge is. We want to go slow on this part, because it's easy to take material off but very hard to put any back on."

After she questioned Isaac about the comfort level of the handle, as well as the size and shape of his instructor's hands, it took a few hours to shape the handle mostly to Aurelie's satisfaction. By then, the sword was done tempering and had cooled off in the oven, so she had Isaac fetch it for her while she collected supplies for the epoxy and pins.

"This part is pretty easy," she chuckled. "Smear the epoxy in the inside of the handle! Think of it as preparation for your painting process."

Once that was done, they cleaned off the tang thoroughly, attached the handle halves to each side of the tang, and inserted pins into each previously drilled hole. To her relief, everything lined up smoothly. Aurelie put the handle into a clamp to hold it all together while the epoxy finished curing.

"This should take about an hour to finish," she told Isaac, wiping off her hands. "So...lunch?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Aurelie snorted and rolled her single eye in amusement, as well as genuine skepticism, when Isaac, with his typical self-deprecation, described his main skills as merely "quick wits and trying everything at least once". Even she, as someone who felt at once like she knew a lot but also very little about him, knew better than that. Not that he was wrong, either, though—Isaac was definitely a fast thinker and far braver and more willing to try out new things and meet new people than Aurelie was.

"Those are your biggest strengths, for sure," she agreed while they were assembling the handle, talking over the whine and hiss of the drill press. "But you've got lots of other skills beyond that." She said this with the calm conviction of someone stating a well-known fact, like the sky being blue or Pikachu being Electric-type.

"For instance, I've never met anyone who could talk to so many different people, bring them together, and get them to see your point of view," she went on, remembering their first meeting when he confronted some thugs vandalizing a shrine and gave them a lecture that made the hardened men wilt in shame. "You also really understand people, I think, probably because you pay such close attention and you care so much.

"And you're a great learner. Which is not a quality that most people have," Aurelie went on, remembering how long she'd taken to learn new skills as an adult. "You stay curious, you're energetic and engaged, you're not afraid to ask questions, and you're not daunted by challenges, from what I've seen. "

As they worked on the final steps of fastening the handle to the tang, Aurelie concluded with a rueful chuckle, "Now, maybe not all these things are teachable skills—more's the pity for me, your prospective student! But as far as I'm concerned, any of them blow my knowledge of how to hit metal with a hammer out of the water."

From there, while the blade was being tempered and the epoxy was curing, they'd broken for lunch. She grinned when Isaac called her "bosslady" and picked a favorite taco place a few blocks away, close to the department store. Having only eaten tacos once or twice in Kalos, she'd been addicted to their steak tacos for weeks when she'd first moved here.

When they came back, the egg timer she'd placed next to the worktable clamp was beeping insistently. Aurelie smiled in relief. "Perfect timing!" she exclaimed, hurrying over to open the oven.

After conscientiously checking that the handle construction seemed solid and unlikely to split or give way, Aurelie took the blade back to the grinders. This time, she focused again on the handle, cleaning off excess epoxy and ensuring the pins were smooth and flush with the Salamence shell scales. Then she worked on shaping the handle, giving it a gentle swell in the center so that it would be comfortable to grip with one or both hands and sculpting the basic profile of the guard.

"Now," she said brightly, turning to Isaac, "we'll get to the more individualized creative parts. I mean, every part of making a sword is creative, but I guess these parts are a bit more...artistic?

"In that bin," she went on, pointing toward the shelves where Isaac had previously been sent to pick handle material, "you'll find a selection of disc-shaped pommels in bronze or brass. I...make them sometimes when I'm bored or don't feel like working on a knife." She flushed, though she couldn't have said if her embarrassment stemmed from being a knife nerd or not having the proper enthusiasm for knives at all times.

"Anyway," Aurelie hastened to add, "they all have different Pokemon carved on them: Ninetales, Scyther, Gallade, Corviknight, Copperajah, and so on. Go on and pick a pommel that you think your teacher might like!"

Before he could turn away, the red-haired smith flashed him a warm smile. "And then, after that..." She started walking toward the station with the nail polish, brush, and tub of acid. "It's finally time for you to put your hard-practiced drawing skills to work and paint your...uh, Gyarados, right?...on this blade."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT