[SE] Playing with Fire

It was a bit of a relief, Jigano had to admit, having a friend who understood much of where he came from - and who he was. Their specific circumstances and details might have differed, but in broad strokes their worlds had enough similarities that they could make sense of each other's pasts with little need to explain every small thing. And after Remi's casual displays of his animal shifts and insular confusion over why Jigano wouldn't want to flaunt his own abilities it was soothing to be with someone who was similarly cautious about exposing that part of himself.

Jigano tilted his head curiously at another little difference between their worlds, but again nothing so large as to make it hard to understand each other. "I admit, I'm rather partial to the moon," Jigano revealed with a wink for his friend. "The hair, of course, but also I was raised as my mother's son to respect the God of the Moon from her homeland. As Oracles we often negotiated between the mortal and the divine, as well as the living and the spirits, something He presided over. Later, when I came into more of my own powers as they differed from hers I felt a kinship with the god Thoth as well, a southern god of knowledge who also took the moon as his domain."

But this festival was about the sun and fire and light, and what better way to bring light into dark places than with: "A lantern!" the bard revealed with a grin. "Hammered sheets of copper for the sides with excised sun and flower designs to let the light through. Set it in a copper base and cap for sturdiness with a silver plate finish on top and bottom for style and shine." Ambitious, to say the least, and he might need Caiside's help for shaping said base and cap, but he bet he could still manage to hammer the copper sides into thin sheets and cut the designs from it with a jeweler's saw. In fact, if he plated silver to the inside of the copper sheets they would be even more reflective, though they'd need to have the smoke residue from the candle cleaned from them regularly. So, sliding panels for easier polishing, then...

Afire with inspiration, his tongue offered playful compliments while he listened intently to his friend when he spoke of his parentage, remembering earlier conversations of the demigod's foster father and never getting to meet his real one. "I am sorry for that," the bard offered sincerely in the face of the smith's loss. There seemed to be little else he could say without prying open lost memories that this didn't seem to be the time or place for. How Melenos had died, and who had slain him, and how Caiside had learned of what he was... Perhaps conversation to be had on a quiet night with a significant amount of wine, during the Leafchange festival of the lost.

They worked quietly for a little while, Jigano struggling far more than Caiside as he sought to remember childhood lessons he had done his best to avoid. Heating the silver and copper together into fused plate and then hammering out the thin sheets to become the lantern's sides was, as he'd suspected, the easiest part. Fighting to plate and then shape the components for the lantern's base and top that would later be soldered together was nearly impossible for him, and he was grateful for Caiside's interruption as he gave up on them for the moment to begin cutting his thin sheets into matching smooth-sided rectangles. "My father was a smith," he said wryly, remembering the conversation of their first meeting. "Hence my last name: Silversmith. He wanted me to follow his footsteps and take over the forge someday. Torch was swimming in smiths, though, because of the blue fire at the town's center that allowed for the shaping of rare starmetals. And I lacked the strength for it, more my mother's son than his. Still, he taught me what he could force through my rebellious head, and I helped him at his work until I was eighteen. The last time I touched a forge was ten years ago, though, and I am pathetically out of practice." He nodded ruefully to his lumpy attempts at the side, awaiting reheating and another attempt to shape them. "When you finish your mirror I would be grateful for a hand with these! I think I can sort the top out if I keep trying, but the bottom is too finicky for my rusted skills, I'm afraid." Not unless he used far more material than was necessary to just solder squares of metal together to construct it, which he would do if he had to, but he hated to be so wasteful when good metal was so rare.