Lake Lewisia #979

Only at her advisor's insistence did the grad student abandon the safe and familiar confines of the research library and step into the hot and noisy environs of the Handfast Forge. "Books can tell you about the iron traditions," the blacksmith confirmed when they had led her to a glowing forge, "but you have to feel the metal to understand why the magic works." By the end of that first visit, not just her ears but her very bones were ringing with the echoes of hammer falls, and she knew the smell of impurities burning out of pig iron, and she thought maybe the books would not tell her everything after all.

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LL#979