Briana felt her shoulders drop and she exhaled. "Glad to hear it."
'Keep the fires burning' was pretty literal, in the smithy's case. Blacksmithing wasn't exactly a wildly in-demand job in the twenty-first century. Most of the smiths, Briana herselfincluded, were also fully qualified welders, because that kept food on the table. A couple of them had jobs that had nothing to do with metalwork at all, but kept their hand in the game at weekends, pursuing smithing as an intensive hobby rather than as a job. Bree liked working with brass and bronze herself, though she wasn't a sculptor and certainly wasn't making a living at any of her brass specialties. Damien, Doll's older brother,wasa sculptor and was just beginning to build a name for himself.
But art, like smithing, rarely paid the bills, so Renaissance’s summer Faire was in many ways a fundraiser that kept the forge running the rest of the year. Most of the smiths volunteered several hours over the course of the six-week Faire, making horseshoes and swords to draw attention and drive sales that would help the smithy stay alive over the winter months. The older, more skilled smiths who came in were usually paid, because Damien hated asking people to work for free, but Bree knew a number of them put their wages back in the pot. Damien muttered about it, but gratefully.
Dahlia leaned over enough to knock her shoulder against Bree's. "You doing okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I don't know what I'd do without the smithy, though, so I'm always relieved to hear the money's coming in at Faire."
"You'd never come out of the mountains," Doll said gently, and Bree smiled.
"Tempting as that sounds, even my enthusiasm for rock climbing falters at fifteen below."
Mine doesn't,her goat said contentedly, and she couldn't help laughing quietly at it.
I know. But I can't be a goat all the time, and humans aren't designed to be nearly as fluffy as mountain goats.
Her goat gave a general sense of disapproval that made Bree chuckle again, and Dahlia smiled. "Your goat's making a case for wintering over in the mountains?"
"Mostly being disappointed by puny human bodies. Which, to be fair, I kind of get. Terrible design, humans. Weak backs, bad knees,somany joints…"
"Crazy levels of stamina and recuperation, though. You don't see horses out there sawing their own arms off if they get trapped rock climbing. They just up and die."
"Mostpeopledon't saw their own arms off, either, you dork." Briana tilted her head, listening for the sounds of the forge, and climbed to her feet. "Damien's wrapping up. I'm going to help cool things down. Beer after?"
"Beer after," Doll agreed as they went to help finish up the day at the smithy shop, including one last-minute sale of a beautifully forged rapier that Bree hadn't expected to sell at all, given its price tag. As soon as the customers were gone, everybody at the smithy grabbed each other and bounced around, hugging and laughing and cheering the purchase, although Damien, a born pessimist, said, "He'll probably reconsider overnight and come back to return it in the morning."
"I don't know, man," Bree said to him. "I thought he had strong nerd energy. I think he'll keep it."
"Strong nerd energy and strong purchasing power aren't necessarily the same thing," Damien said gloomily.
"Take the win, man," said one of the other smiths, and Damien gave a huge, put-upon sigh, but nodded. Everybody cheered again, and the last few minutes of closing down were done with quick, happy efficiency as everyone pitched in.
After-hours at the faire had always been Briana's favorite time, when people could relax and release their daytime personas and unwind after what had essentially been an eight-hour-long performance. The past couple of years hadn't beenquite as much fun, though, because shehadbeen trying to avoid Laurie Torben, so she had often left the site right after closing. The relief of not needing to do that anymore was unexpectedly uplifting, and she was giggly and happy as the blacksmith crew headed up to the tavern together.
Because the Thunder Bear Tavern wastheplace to be after-hours, and always had been. It was the oldest vendor at the faire, dating from sometime in the seventies when the town of Renaissance, Colorado had decided to lean into its name and begin a Renaissance faire back in the earliest days of those being a thing. Briana had the vague idea that the main Thunder Bear brewpub in town had comeafterseveral years of success at the faire, in fact, but it was all before her time and her grasp on the brewery's history was shaky. Either way, she was glad to be able to join her friends in buying a drink, although she had no intention of hanging aroundatthe tavern if Laurie was there.
He wasn't, though. At least, not when they arrived, and for the moment that was good enough. One corner of the tavern was filling up with the musicians who often spent the evening playing for fun, with music ranging from traditional folk songs to modern pop. The tavern staff were much more relaxed than during the day, yelling at their fellow fair-workers to hold their horses and not be so impatient, or to get their butts behind the bar to pull pints themselves. Somebody was on the cash register, ringing up sales as fast as they could, while noisy, cheerful conversation spilled through the open-air tavern. Briana sat down at one of the wooden picnic-bench-style tables with the other smiths crowding around her, and for a while just let the music and chat wash over her.
She had missed this. Just the camaraderie, the hanging out and listening to people without needing to talk herself. She'd missed listening to the musicians try to one-up each other, and the brave, if not necessarily talented, people who sang along withthem. She'd missed thefunpart of the faire, not that the daytime work wasn't fun, in its way. Performing the role of a bygone-era blacksmithwasfun, and teaching people was fun, but it was still a job, because not only did the smithy rely on the income from the faire, but the faire itself was a summer tourism lifeline for the town. At least half the shops and vendors were local businesses, and the rest traveled from all over the country and even the world, as did the visitors who arrived in droves every summer. Letting all of that go for a while was just…nice.
"Don't open your eyes," Doll murmured at her side. Briana had barely realized her eyes were closed, but now that she knew, it was incredibly hardnotto open them, even when Dahlia whispered, "Laurie Torben just showed up and is right in your line of sight."
"Maybe I'll turn out to have laser vision and be able to blast him away if I open my eyes," Bree said hopefully.
Dahlia giggled. "I think laser vision would slice him to bits. You need concussive blasts, like Cyclops in the X-Men."
Bree couldn't help opening her eyes at that, although she tried hard to make sure she was already looking toward Doll before she did. "Wait, which one’s Cyclops?”
“The one who blasts red light out of his single-eye-like visor,” Dahlia said dryly. “We’ve been over this, Bree.”
“The only one I can remember is the hot guy with the playing cards. Wait,concussiveblasts? They're concussive blasts, not heat vision? You're a huge nerd, Doll. A huge, huge nerd."
"I'm not. Everybody knows that."
"Who here knows who Cyclops is, and that his blasts are concussive, not heat?" Bree asked, raising her voice a little. Out of the eight or nine people at the table, three hands went up, including Dahlia's.
Paul, down the table and dressed in an outfit that would have let him be an extra in any movie about ancient Greece, said,"Cyclopses don't have eye blasts at all?", which got a groan from Carrie, who was sitting next to him.
