-- John POV, Traveling --

  Some days had passed since the evening that he had been talking to Lilith, and once more he was traveling to Laketown.

  It was early morning, a sunny day with bright blue sky just disturbed by the occasional fluffy cloud passing by. Some birds were singing in a distance.

  He barely noticed any of it, he was tired of all the traveling regardless how pleasant the day was. Skyview Monastery was just to far away from any town, and for every thing he needed, be it materials or to talk to the authorities he had to travel to Laketown and back. It was a major chore.

  But soon the traveling would end. At least that was the plan.

  His horse knew the way meanwhile after so many travels back and forth. He barely needed to do anything to guide his horse, and had plenty time to think.

  Lilith had easily agreed to his idea to bring her to his workshop in Laketown. He could understand why. For her it was a step closer to freedom, a huge leap even. For him, it was more about efficiency and also comfort. Back to his house, his workshop. He could work better there. They could work better there. Also Laketown was the place where he had friends.

  He smiled at a memory. Lilith had been worried about gossip if he brought her with him. At first he had not thought about that at all, but now that she had brought it up, he could very well see how the rumors would spread. To him the idea was more amusing than embarrassing. Let the people talk.

  With slight curiosity he remembered that she had asked him if he was living alone. She had been worried about the gossip, but now and then he was wondering if that had been the sole reason for her to ask. Well, time would tell, he assumed. First things first, and that was to get permission to bring her to Laketown.

  Tomorrow he would talk to the praetor about his plan. The man had been supportive so far, reasonable. Certainly he wouldn't be against establishing better working conditions, more efficiency in production, and with that, a promise of higher quality. He was the one to benefit from the improvements firsthand.

  -- Lilith POV, Skyview Monastery --

  Now, this was frustrating.

  She sat on the stool in her cell and watched her hands. Beautiful, slender, elegant hands, her alabaster skin nicely contrasting with the polished black of her claws.

  She really wanted to like her hands. But right now she could not.

  The problem had first reared its ugly head when she had been working in the monastery kitchen. She could not hold a knife as well as the monks could. She could not hold a ladle as well as the monks could. She was clumsy. It had shown, but it hadn't been an actual problem there. They were cooking stew, not trying to win a beauty award with the food. If she couldn't peel potatoes as well as the others could, they were either patient or switched work with her so she could do something that she was better at.

  But now, she wanted to do proper forge work with John. And all she did was to fail. She couldn't hold a hammer properly. John had changed the hammer's handle, so she could hold it better. She still couldn't hit anything with the hammer. Well, meanwhile she could, but it still made her feel incredibly clumsy.

  Not to mention any of the more delicate tools.

  Now John had offered her to bring her to Laketown to work with him in is workshop there. Like a normal person.

  She really wanted that. And if John gave her so much, she had to give something back. Even if it was only the work of her hands. Her clumsy hands. She had to get better with her hands.

  Right now the only thing she was good at was carving runes into hot, malleable metal. There, she excelled. And surprisingly, she was good at giving a blade an extremely sharp edge. But only because for once her hands actually were good at that. They were not all bad, she had to admit. Just bad at what she right now felt to be the important things. To hold tools. To use tools.

  She couldn't forge a blade at all. So what good were the her skills, if she'd always depend on someone else to forge a blade that she could inscribe and sharpen?

  She sighed.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  John was incredibly supportive, but each time he modified a tool so she could work better with it, she was reminded that she was inferior. Lacking. She certainly appreciated John's help. Some day she wanted be able to help John better and return these favors by helping to make his work the best in the kingdom.

  The rune crafting book had mentioned runic body paint to enhance a persons abilities. Like runes could enhance a weapon, they could enhance a warrior.

  She had found a rune for dexterity and another one for accuracy. Those would be excellent for her clumsy hands.

  Even better was the fact that the ink which John had bought for her to practice calligraphy actually stuck on her skin. Not quite as well as she wanted, but it didn't wipe off as easily as dirt or soot got off. She could paint runes on her skin.

  But now she had hit another problem and was staring angrily at a very scrawly dexterity rune painted on the back of her right hand. Runes needed precision. A rune like that would do nothing to solve her problem.

  She could not draw a proper rune with her left hand. And to put a rune on her right hand, she had to use her left.

  She was about to scream in frustration. Or bite her hand.

  She was generally bad at holding delicate things like the calligraphy brush. And exceptionally bad at it with her left hand as she just discovered.

  She needed the runes on her right hand.

  But to draw a rune with her left had shown to be quite impossible. Probably her own mistake though. So far she had been practicing all runes with her right. Seemed she would have to do it all again, this time with her left hand.

  Nothing to do about it right now. Go back to square one. Practice runes with her left hand. Chalk on slate, and once that worked sufficiently well, ink on paper.

  Hopefully she could learn to paint runes with her left before John returned. So that next time they worked in the forge, she would have rune enhanced hands.

  -- Lilith POV, Skyview Monastery --

  Days had passed and John was still traveling. Once he had told her a single trip by horse takes a day, so even if he only needed one day in town to get everything done that he wanted to do, it would still be three days for him to come back. Better, she tried to be patient and do useful things.

  The runic body paint still didn't work any better. Well, a little breakthrough. She could paint both dexterity and accuracy runes with her right hand on her left. One on the palm, the other on the back of her hand.

  Then use the enchanted left to paint runes on her right. Still not good, but better than the first attempt that she had made. And she was practicing to paint runes with her left in every free minute now.

  John had left, and past the hope for a better future, he had left her something practical. A lump of bronze.

  Since she had hurt herself in the attempt to show she was stronger, more durable than the rod of glowing steel, he had forbidden her to try something like that again.

  But John was resourceful and in general the helpful type. Bronze, he had told her, became soft at lower temperatures than steel. It was not as hard as steel either, so bronze weapons had come out of fashion long ago once the knowledge how to forge steel had spread. Bronze was still popular among sculptors, John had said.

  Apparently bronze and iron were quite special in that they became soft before they melted to turn liquid. She had seen this when John melted the tin that she had been working with in her early days. Tin was solid, and then in in the heat, from one moment to the next, it turned liquid. It was a funny thing to see the liquid, silver, shiny tin flow from a tear in remaining dull gray peel, but there was no intermediate state. Tin was either solid or liquid, never like clay.

  So bronze it was for today. Her clawed hands still were quite impractical for this sort of work, but even in John's absence, she had managed to fire up the forge and heat the lump of bronze till it was soft enough for her to shape.

  Unlike steel, bronze felt much better to touch. It wasn't just that she didn't have to heat it up so much before the bronze turned malleable. It was quite the different thing altogether. It didn't have that nasty bite that the hot steel had when she touched it. In her mind she marked iron and steel as demon-unfriendly metals. Bronze was demon friendly.

  Now she held a soft ball of bronze in her hands and tried to form a little dragon sculpture from it. It was a bit like shaping clay. The bronze was quite willing to change shape under her fingers. Still her claws got in the way much too often. They were great for engraving details, but every time she wanted something smooth, her claws ruined the surface if she wasn't extremely wary of them.

  After a little while the bronze had cooled down too much to be shaped any further.

  She watched the thing. A dragon. It was not. Not even close.

  Ah well. Today there was no rush. She had days to fill until John returned. She put the not-dragon shaped lump of bronze back into the forge and worked the bellows to bring the coal fire back to speed.

  The next dragon sculpture would be better. And if she was lucky, she could surprise John with a polished, golden, shining bronze dragon sculpture when he returned from Laketown.

  "Squeak!"

  She jerked up and turned. Mice! A whole group of them.

  "Squeak!"

  "Dragons are stupid?" She wasn't sure if she had gotten this right.

  "Squeak!"

  "I shall make a mouse hero statue instead?" She had to grin.

  "Squeak!"