The small town of Umber on Imobalize, the main river of Leddweg, a small country on the Whannoy Continent existed, but only just. Very few maps even had it on, but that was because most people couldn't find it to plot it in the first place. It wasn't even technically on the Imobalize, but was a couple of miles away from it, with what had once been the expectation that it would grow to fit the name. That didn't happen. Umber was as big as it was ever likely to get. People that lived in Umber were farmers, or the family of the farmers. Umber itself had a small town hall, and a religious building for the God Wrodrellis, though no worshipping was actually done in it as this was seen to be too time consuming, instead it was mostly used to bury the dead.

The village, like all places that have hard working men in it, also had a pub. It's name had long since faded, and even the landlord no longer knew what it was. In many ways, Umber would be the last place you would expect anything big to happen. That's because usually happen couldn't find Umber on the map. Everyone knew everyone else, and the was a real community spirit in the village. If one farmer needed extra help getting the crop in that year then help would be given, unless it was 'old man tweed' who thought he owned the village, and was mean to everyone. The people weren't unhelpful to him, they just avoided him as much as possible, or at least they avoided the painted white cane he carried around with him, and used to whack people that got to close, which was anyone within a five foot diameter.

A few vague travellers had somehow managed to pass through the village once, and had been the talk of Umber for close to six months. The Landlord, Darren Masters, had become a sort of celebrity for a while as he recounted how the strangers had acted, and the funny way they talked, often with Darren doing a very good impression of them, as the icing on the cake of his performance. Among the children of Umber, the landlords son had become a celebrity aswell, not that there was anyone who didn't know who anyone else was in the village. Ethern took after his father, with the ability to mimic other people, though he also took after his mother, doing tarrot readings for the other children, where as she did it for the women of Umber, who needed some thing to believe in without a God.

Ethern had once borrowed one of his mothers decks, and done a reading for a girl he had liked at the time. When his mother had found out she had given him the hiding of his life for meddling with the occult. Though this just seemed to raise the general respect held for him by his peers, which was always worth the punishment it had entailed. Even the adults of Umber were afraid of the mad rolling pin weilding maniac, as she was often called behind her back, and a very safe distance of several hundred feet away. One of the strangers that had stopped over a night had also had a tarrot deck, Ethern had seen it when he had been sent up with the breakfast for the strangers. Only the pictures moved, unlike in his mothers decks, and the symbolic representations had been different aswell.

Ethern had always been taught that it was rude to stare, so he had tried his best to avoid doing this, but even purposefully looking in a different direction he had felt their pull. A strange magic had woven itself into those tiny slips of cardboard. The stranger who carried them had laughed when he had sensed Ethern looking at them, even without his eyes focused on them. Then the stranger had made Ethern sit down and while he did a reading for him. Knowing it was rude to refuse a customer, he had no choice but to sit. His mother had never found out about that little escapade, which saved Ethern from a hidding. But six months on, he still remembered every card that was placed on the table, and how they interacted with each other, as if it had just happened.

Winter was coming, as it did every year, to stop the fields from baring any more crops. Only the night before had the first flakes of snow fallen on the small sleeping village of Umber. The farmers had collected in most of the harvest, though the Jenkins had all been sick, so a man or two went from each farm to give him a hand, knwoing that if they didn't then the family could well starve to death over what swore to be another long hard winter. Ethern, turning 16 only a few weeks before, had gone from the pub to help, though that was more out of choice than anything else. The other lads had been glad of the help, and the entire collection of the harvest of the Jenkins crop had been done in the space of a day.

The crop itself was bagged up and left on the porch of the Jenkins so that they could collect it when they were feeling better. Ethern had then gone with the other lads back to the pub for a celebratory drink, though his parents still trteated him like a child, and refused to let him have any alcohol. Half way through the relaxation from the day's work, Stan Corse, the blacksmith came in and took a pint of ale in his mug. Only the week before had the village had to bury his son after an unfortunate accident which had occured when the two of them were trying to shoe a horse, although it wasn't supposed to be a blacksmiths job, he did it all the same. Everyone who had known Earny, which was the entire village, had attended the funeral, to pay their respects.

But with that death, Stan needed a new apprentice to help him in the forge, but the farmer's sons were all working on the Farms, and didn't have time to learn a new trait, nor the comfort in the prosperity of their own farm to leave it, yet Ethern was not tied down to any farm was about the only one that was able to learn, and wouldn't be missed on a farm while this needed to take place. He got up and walked over to Stan. The bearded man sat staring into his mug of ale, which was untouched resting between his giant blackened palms. "Stan?" He asked, sitting down opposite the blacksmith. Stan didn't look up. Ethern realised that this was going to take a lot of work if it was going to happen.

Unsure how he did it even to this day, Ethern leaned forward and spoke Stan's name again. Stan looked up, though this wasn't what he wanted to do. Ethern managed to get the attention of his deep, sorrow filled eyes, and hold it. "Are you alright?" Ethern asked him. Stan nodded weakly. From watching how his father had managed similar situations, Ethern asked in his most friendly and comforting voice whether Stan was sure. Great big tears began to well up in the smith's eyes. Everyone was keeping their distance, but Ethern now had the full attention of the pub on him and Stan. Stan hadn't cried when his son had died, or at the funeral, and all that emotional backwash had been building up since then. But it wasn't time to quite yet. Now he had begun, Ethern had to continue. "Why don't you tell me ay?" He asked Stan, though it was more of a request, bordering on an order direct to his sub-conscious.

Stan began to tell Ethern about how his son had died, and how it had been his fault. Even under the best of circumstances, his father, who had spent years practising the art of getting eople to talk, and listen, couldn't have cracked a man that quickly. As the minutes passed by, Darren brought over a drink, a proper alcoholic beveridge for Ethern, showing the amount of respect that he had suddenly got. Ethern, though tempted, knew the trick would end as soon as he let his concerntration wavered. Stan had started to talk about how avoidant he had been of work since the death, already having regained a fair amount of his character. The blacksmith recounted how he had been all week, and then how rude he had been to everyone that had come into the forge, especially Rudell, who's horse had lashed out and killed Earny. Then he broke down completely and cried out every emotion he had burried since the death.

Stan had to be escorted out when it was closing time a couple of hours later, and he had fallen asleep on the table, emotionally drained out. A couple of the sturdy farm lads walked him back to the forge, each taking one of Stan's massive hands around both of their shoulders. Ethern had had to stay down to help clear away the glasses that had been left on the tables, including his own untouched drink. Although Ethern had hated himself for getting Stan to break down, he knew it was for the best, now at last Stan may be able to get over the death, and move on with his life. Darren patted his son on the back in a fatherly sort of way to confirm that he had done the right thing, which was more than Darren had been able to do in the six previous nights that Stan had come in, ordered ale in his mug and then sat there all night staring into it's depths.

Ethern felt very guilty that the reason he had done it was to try and put himself in the best position to take on the apprentice blacksmith's job, though no one else knew this. It was gone midnight when he climbed up into the converted attick that was now his bedroom. With heavy eyes, and a strange feeling of being very drained, which he put down to the manual work he had done on the Jenkins' farm, Ethern got into his shabby P.J.'s and slunk into his bed. Sleep welcomed him almost instantly with open arms, and as he relaxed his body and his mind he embraced her thankfully. He slept soundly for most of the night, apart for a time around 3 a.m. when he began to nave a vivid nightmare, involving many things from a council of 12 blind men, all wearing purple robes chanting undiscernable words, to a war fought between men and beasts, and other men and even bizzarer beasts, he watched as an outsider would during all of this, not having the sense of self that most dreams and nightmares were consistent of. It was as if he was detached from reality, yet it all seemed so real. He could hear the clang of the blades around them, and once or twice he nearly felt objects as they passed through him in the general melee, which had never happened in his dreams or nightmares before.

But after a while, the war faded, the dreams became much more typical of the ones Ethern had had so many times before. He woke up remembering only fragments of the nightmare, and not much else. If he ever learned to read or write, he would deffinitly write a book ebbing from that, just becasues it seemed worthy of being written. Ethern stretched and got up. He looked at his handed down clock, which was very battered, bruised and faded around the edges. It said the time was quarter to eight. Ethern got up and got dressed quickly, to get down to the pub bellow and give it a good clean, which was one of his choirs. It never seemed to make much difference, but doing it seemed tomake his mother happy. Ethern grabbed a bucket, the one with the fewest rust holes in it, and walked the two miles to the river Imobalize. The reeds on either side of the bank had grown high over the years, and non of the village folk had time to come and fight a losing battle, cutting then down, unless someone needed a new roof, for whatever reason, then they would come and cut some down for themselves.

Ethern dunken the bucket in the water to fill it and then he dragged it back to Umber. By the time he had reached the pub again it had lost about half of it's water content, but there was still enough left to mop the floor. Ethern put the bucket down near the door and went to get the mop. He usually worked from the front of the pub to the back, leaving via the back door. He dunked the mop in the bucket and then began to slosh the water on the floor. Darren, his father told him to stop from the stairs where he stood after Ethern had done only about half of the floor. He went over to him. "Dad?" He asked once he was close enough to have a 'normal noise level' conversation, which to his dad was within a few feet.

"Eth, Stan Corse, stopped by this morning to thankyou for helping him get over the death of his son. He also wanted to know if you were able to take the apprentice job in his forge, seeing as you're the only young man available, I said he could see you at about ten." Ethern stood still for several seconds, as his father turned and went back upstairs.

"What should I do about the floor?" He called up, realising he had only a quarter of an hour to get over to the forge, the remainder of the floor would take about twenty minutes all by itself.

"Well, get a move on and finish it." His father called down. Ethern had expected as much. He got back to work, going as fast as he could. He finish with about five minutes to spair, though by that point he was panting a little, and sweat covered his brow. Ethern put the mop away and emptied the rest of the water onto the street, like he usually did and then strolled over to the forge which was only a few minutes walk, what with Umber being such a small place. He stood outside for a second, not sure if he should knock or not. In the end he opened the door, like a customer would and went in. Immediatly, he was hit by the heat from the forge. It filled the room and burned it into an oven. Ethern already felt his eyes watering from the heat. Stan looked up to see who had come in. When he saw it was Ethern he walked over and shook his hand very firmly. Then he walked over to the tools and went through some of their names, and purposes.

He made Ethern put on a thick apron to stop his clothes being ruined by embers and the like from the red hot forge. Then Stan handed the Landlords son a massive hammer. He informed him that the best way to get maximum styrength out of it was to bring it over his head and put some of his weight behind it when he brought it straight down, which he was to do where-ever the smith tapped a piece of metal with a much smaller hammer. Ethern could barely lift the lump hammer, let alone raise it above his head. Stan took it from him and lifted it easily with one hand to put it away. They wouldn't be using such heavy weights to begin with, most of the time it was only small things that needed to be forged like nails, or possibly door handles or hinges. "Stan, where do you get all the iron to do this with?" Ethern asked as the question occured to him.

Stan chuckled, but it was the laugh of a master explaining to someone who knew absolutely nothing, not that one of happiness, which could not fill the blacksmiths heart this soon after his own son's death. "Well, most of it comes in a small cart that comes along once a month to a bigger village about five miles away. I hand over some money, get some iron, bring it back to the forge." Ethern nodded, hoping he understood right. He had never thought that there were places outside of Umber, but thinking about it now, it made sense.

"So when do you go? How come no one sees you leave?" Ethern asked.

After taking a seat, Stan informed him that it was the "First Monday of evey month, and I usually leave an hour or so before dawn, and arrive back after night fall. If anyone's called in during the day Earn tells...told me, he always said I was ill or something, no one noticed really, but then I don't have that many customers every day." Ethern nodded again. "Right, lets get on with learning you a trade. How do you think we make nails?" Ethern looked at him, without a clue. "Ok, here are your options, do we a)take a metal rod and file it down until it is nail sized, b)file off the old rust, c)melt down some iron, and then pour it into a mould, or d)shatter a stretch of iron into shards and then shape these into nails?"

Ethern looked deep into the eyes of Stan, trying to see glimmer in the eyes, becasue he had no clue other wise. "...c?"

"Good, now tell me why?"

"Well, filing down a rod untill it it nail sized would waste a lot of iron, if you just file off the old rust the nail will get smaller and smaller, and eventually would be gone, if you could shatter a rod of iron then there is nothing to stop it from breaking when it is used?" He hazzarded.

"Good. We melt down Iron, and then mix it with one or two other metals to strengthen it, slow the rusting, and make it less likely to break."