My fists clench.
I keep my lawn at two inches. Two inches is the optimal height for Kentucky bluegrass in a temperate climate. It promotes root depth, drought resistance, and natural pest deterrence. Two inches is CORRECT. Two inches is earned through weekly mowing, biweekly feeding, and daily attention.
His one and three-quarter inches is a lie. A magical shortcut. A cheat.
And I'm supposed to compete against it with steel and sweat and eleven years of honest labor.
I walk to the garage. The concrete floor is painted and sealed. My tools hang on a pegboard system I built from reclaimed oak, each outline traced in black marker so every tool returns to its exact position. The mower sits in the bay, cleaned and oiled after every use. The edger beside it. The aerator in the corner, tines sharp enough to puncture boot leather.
Not sharp enough.
I pull the whetstone from the top shelf. It's an old one—Kragmoor granite, dark gray with veins of quartz that catch theoverhead fluorescent light. I bought it at an estate sale seven years ago from a retired dwarven blacksmith. It can put an edge on anything.
I start with the hedge shears. Both blades. Long, slow strokes along the stone, steel singing against granite. The sound fills the garage, rhythmic, meditative. Metal filings curl away like tiny silver ribbons.
Next, the edger blade. I remove it from the housing, lay it flat on the workbench, and work the stone along its curve until the edge gleams.
The aerator tines. All thirty-six of them. One at a time. My fingers are bleeding by the twelfth tine—small cuts from handling bare steel—but I don't stop. Green blood smears the whetstone. Makes it grip better.
The pruning saw. The loppers. The hand cultivator. I sharpen things that don't need sharpening. I sharpen the flat head of a garden rake, which is absurd, and I do it anyway because the motion keeps my hands busy and my mind locked on the only thing that matters.
Winning.
I can't match his magic. Can't grow enchanted moss or conjure self-sculpting topiary. What I can do is execute. Precise cuts. Clean lines. Perfect geometry achieved through physical labor and orcish stubbornness.
The sun crawls overhead. I lose track of time inside the garage. The fluorescent lights hum. The whetstone sings.
By late afternoon, every tool on the pegboard has been sharpened, oiled, and returned to its outline. The garage is all steel and linseed oil and the iron-copper tang of my own blood.
I reach for the axe off the wall last.
It's a splitting maul. Eight pounds. Hickory handle, thirty-six inches, with a head I forged myself in a weekend metalworking class at the community college. The instructor—a dwarf namedGerta—said my technique was "adequate." Highest compliment I've ever received.
The cedar logs I ordered last fall are stacked along the back fence. I was saving them for a raised bed project. That project just became urgent.
I strip my shirt off because the afternoon heat is suffocating and I refuse to ruin another piece of clothing today. The cargo shorts stay. Standards exist.
The first log goes on the chopping block. I settle my grip. Shoulder-width apart. The axe goes up. Comes down.
CRACK.
The log splits clean. Two halves fall away from each other like pages of an opened book.
Second log. Up. Down. CRACK.
The rhythm takes over. Axe up. Axe down. Split, stack, reset. The pile grows. My shoulders burn. Sweat rolls down my body and traces the lines of the runic tattoos that cover my torso over old markings, green-black ink infused with bioluminescent pigment from the Kragmoor deep caves. They glow faintly when my blood runs hot. Warband tradition. Every orc in my unit had them. Battle prayers etched into skin so the ancestors could find you in the dark.
They're glowing now.
CRACK. Another log.
CRACK. Another.
The axe bites. The wood yields. My breathing evens out into something steady, mechanical, and the anger transmutes into focus and the focus transmutes into a plan. Raised beds along the south fence. Terraced, maybe. Cedar frames, hand-joined, no screws. Gravel pathways with uniform aggregate. A specimen tree—Japanese maple, the good kind, hand-grafted—as a centerpiece.
I can win this with craft.
CRACK.
