Ed woke the next morning to the sound of Jorgen pulling the ox from its stall and it licking Ed's foot. Nothing is more uncomfortable than a wet foot before dawn. Ed was wearing the clothes Jorgen gave him tied with a rope around the waist. The shirt was big enough but the pants were shorts for him. His legs hung out of them like two pale trunks. Ed wasn't used to sleeping like that. At his old house, you slept clothed all year because the place was underground and always stayed about the temperature of a spring morning.
Ed rushed to cover himself up, he had the morning afflictions. With crust in my eyes and stiffness in parts of his body, he tried to wake up and relax before anyone else came through.
"Good Morning!" said Jorgen. "The rest are already awake and headed to the house for breakfast. We were going to let you sleep, you were snoring and it's not daylight yet."
He led the ox from the barn and tied it off to the front door of the barn. "June will wash your clothes if you bring them down to the house for breakfast. Corvus has left some clothes for you by the door at the back of the barn. You will find a water pail and mirror back there so clean yourself up before you come in." He coughed lightly and smiled. "See you for breakfast..."
Ed was mortified. They were all creeping around and staring at him. He wasn't used to being this visible to everyone and there were ladies present in the barn. Ed changed and took care of his morning activities. Corvus' clothing was tighter than my normal. He was able to move comfortably but it was definitely clinging to him more than his normal loose, light, cheap clothing.
Breakfast was toasted stale bread and slices of fruit. Warm tea with honey was served and everyone ate quietly. Well except for Juniper who was scowling at the children. Ed could only imagine word got back that he slept in the barn last night because Priya was refusing to look at him. The twins were talking very quickly about some kind of bug they were going to catch today. Corvus was reading some kind of pamphlet about the new design of leatherwork.
As they cleaned up the table Juniper walked up next to me. "I am so sorry you slept in that stall. My daughter talked you out of her room, didn't she? She is so strong-willed."
Ed smiled and tried to up his sincerity. "Oh no, it was all me. She told me she wanted to sleep in the stall in the barn instead of with the twins, so I volunteered to go out there. I couldn't have possibly let a lady do something like that." Ed smiled and was using magic to make the most sincere smile he could. Ed began to think he even managed to make his teeth glimmer a bit. Too much power maybe.
"Oh what a gentleman. But listen to me next time, and make her! She won't admit it but she likes it when people are stronger than her. She has always been a mother to the other three and hates being in charge. It excites her when people give her orders and surprise her. She won't ever admit it but she blushes when people do." Juniper wiped a plate off with a brush into a bucket before putting it into the bucket of water.
"Oh is that so. I will remember that.." Ed said with a smile.
After cleaning up Ed excused himself back to the forge. Jorgen had already started piling up repairs outside. Ed made a quick mental list of all the items and ordered them in his head by the types of repairs. The forge was still lit but smoldering under the coals so Ed packed it full of wood and fresh charcoal. He was thinking to himself of ways to test out the miracles. Forging sounded like the best idea.
When Ed started to work he brought in a pick that had a broken head. He brought it in and started to heat it and focused on the idea of forging it like the most expensive pick he had ever seen. Trying to make it of a better than average quality. Ed imagined the most intricate patterns and the shine of fresh metal. And with that Ed started working.
His muscles knew what to do. The old blacksmith had never really officially apprenticed him and as such most people thought he was the backup guy when you couldn't get one town over for a real master smith. The truth was Ed had been helping the old man for more than 10 years. He was probably a master in my own right.
As Ed finished he quenched the metal in a bucket of oil trying to keep this image in his mind of the most extravagant pick he could make. he pulled it from the oil and sat it on the cooling table while the oil steamed off the hot metal. Ed could see from the warm metal that it was repaired but none of the intricate scrollwork was on it. Ed hit it slightly with a hammer and it resisted the marring so the metal was now better than the average pig iron that was used in these farm areas, but it was not what Ed would qualify as a miracle of smith work.
He tried next with a spoon. Ed imagined it as a remarkable spoon and tried to poor as many miracles into it as he could. But after Ed repaired the crack in the metal spoon it was obvious that it was simply still a spoon. It was just slightly shinier than the others. Ed sighed in frustration. Golliad had dangled this idea of having powers in front of him with absolutely no instructions on how to use them and he felt like he was failing. Ed was feeling less and less like a miracle and more like they were messing with him. Some lesser god was sneaking around behind blessing things just to be an ass.
Ed was the gods cruel joke on humanity then? They were bored maybe? Who knows. E gave up on the idea of being able to make miracles at will for the meantime. Thoughts of people flocking to him to create miracles and kiss babies disappeared from his head. He was just another poor sod that the gods tormented for fun.
Stacks of items came in and cracks were repaired. Missing pieces were molded back on or stretched out of existing metal. The plows blades were sharpened extended and hardened. A small selection of metal handles nails and other household items were either straightened, cleaned, or somehow repaired. None of it was hard work and there wasn't a ton of it lying around. It was just a good 12 hours in a forge, hammering and beating things straight and making repairs.
Ed walked over to the table of repairs and drained the last of a bucket of water he had been using to drink from. The only real thing Ed considered a miracle around here was that since he was brought back he seemed to be able to turn any normal water into clean clear cold water. "A party trick at best," he thought to himself. "Maybe I would be known as 'Saint Ed of Sharp Table Forks and Clean water'." And with that, the clean up began. Ed knew that Rennish should be returning soon unless he lost himself somewhere along the way.
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What Ed was unaware of was that in the months and years after this, the family would discover the following things about the metalwork he had done. Jorgens plow blades never got dull, ever again. The repaired forks and knives and spoons never rusted and always stayed shiny. The pick never broke again either and refused to get dirty and when the midday sun is shown on it you could almost see a pattern in the metal like there had been one when it was very first forged. Also 200 years later the wooden structures built and repaired with the nails made by Ed never fell to termites and never rotted.
Generations of that family lived on that land, in that house, and used those barns. But the name Ed was never muttered. Erust the smith, who blessed their family, was always mentioned around the middle of the growing season. It became a family holiday in the middle of the summer at first where you tried to fix something and make it better and give it to someone else. Eventually, the holiday spread around the countryside as the members of the family married and had children. Two hundred years in the future the Holiday of Erust came from it and was celebrated over a thousand kilometers. The name was shortened but families would visit other families and leave presents of household goods in their barn for them with no name. And this was the first Miracle of Erust, he never knew it though.