The Picture With Me Wearing Blue Gloves Was Taken On March 21st (when I Planted Some Cacti Seeds) And

"What's that shiny and long blade of grass you use called?"

He looked down as he hesitated.

When he looked up, he answered as if he was trying to melt the frost with his touch, "It can be called a 'blade' but for me, it's a broadsword."

"You can hurt people with that, right?" I asked him. It didn't look that dangerous to me if it could.

He lurched back like I hurt him.

"If it came to it, yes," he answered, all the same.

I didn't like that I was going to hurt something but I picked a blade of grass.

"Do you want to know what I can do with this?" I twirled the blade between my fingers.

He just looked at me odd.

I held the blade the way the nymphs taught me and blew some air. The shrill sound caught him off guard. Laughter overcame me like the abrupt rain the area we're in is known for.

"Will you teach me how to do that?" he asked when I calmed down enough to talk.

It was at that moment that I realized that I would do what I could for him like I would for any of my plants back at home.

"It would be my genuine pleasure," I replied with a smile.

Hey!! You followed me so I checked out your blog and I just want to say I absolutely love your writing!! I love how magical n beautiful the scenes you create are!

Thank you. :) This actually made my day.

don't give up

There are a few walks longer than the one of going to make the grave of a friend. I'm on my way to make the grave of about five thousand friends. My men were sent to scout an area and were ambushed. No one survived. As I am their king and friend, I felt every death.

Right now, the least I could do for those men and their families is at least pay tribute to them. I knew each of them like I knew my own brother. There were no better men in the kingdom than those who just lost their lives.

The Mourning Mountain isn't too far but every step feels further away from it. I want to go back to the throne room and hear that they're coming back, safe and sound. Not that some of the bodies couldn't be recovered or identified. I don't want to hear that some families wouldn't be able to bury their loved one.

At least my brother and his men are okay. They'll be back before the week is over.

"Why are there so many sunflowers, especially by the boarders?" my stranger asked when we passed a field of some bowing sunflowers.

"There's some bad magic, I don't know what, that the king has tried to protect the kingdom from. But everything he tried didn't work. Ages ago, the mages who used the magic I use figured out that sunflowers were the best defense."

"Did they ever tell the king what they found out?"

I knew he was looking at me but I couldn't tell which he was more concerned for - me or if the king found out sunflowers were good protectors against magic in general.

I stopped to look over the elderly sunflower field. They should be getting ready to go to seed so the next generation could defend the kingdom. But that also means that I have to work in some black gold deep into the soil for them.

"No. They never told him and he never found out," I solemnly stated. It's just not how we were.

“Burn the witch! Burn the witch!” shouted the crowd, drowning out the distressed warnings of one person. “No, you fools! She can control the flames!”

Hey! Are there blacksmiths in your story? I'm a hobbyist blacksmith and I'm here to help!

Blacksmithing is one of those things that a lot of people get wrong because they don't realize it stuck around past the advent of the assembly line. Here's a list of some common misconceptions I see and what to do instead!

Not all blacksmiths are gigantic terrifying muscly guys with beards and deep voices. I am 5'8, skinny as a twig, have the muscle mass of wet bread, and exist on Tumblr. Anybody who is strong enough to pick up a hammer and understands fire safety can be a blacksmith.

You can make more than just swords with blacksmithing. Though swords are undeniably practical, they're not the only things that can be made. I've made candle holders, wall hooks, kebab skewers, fire pokers, and more. Look up things other people have made, it's really amazing what can be done.

"Red-hot" is actually not that hot by blacksmith terms. when heated up, the metal goes from black, to red, to orange, to yellow, to white. (for temperature reference, I got a second degree burn from picking up a piece of metal on black heat) The ideal color to work with the metal is yellow. White is not ideal at all, because the metal starts sparking and gets all weird and lumpy when it cools. (At no point in this process does the metal get even close to melting. It gets soft enough to work with, but I have never once seen metal become a liquid.)

Blacksmithing takes fucking forever. Not even taking into account starting the forge, selecting and preparing metal, etc. etc. it takes me around an hour to make one (1) fancy skewer. The metals blacksmiths work with heat up and cool down incredibly fast. When the forge is going good, it only takes like 20 seconds to get your metal hot enough to work with, but it takes about the same time for it to cool down, sometimes even less.

As long as you are careful, it is actually stupidly easy to not get hurt while blacksmithing. When I picked up this hobby I was like "okay, cool! I'm gonna make stuff, and I'm gonna end up in the hospital at some point!" Thus far, the latter has yet to occur. I've been doing this for nearly a year. I have earned myself a new scar from the aforementioned second degree burn, and one singe mark on my jeans. I don't even wear gloves half the time. Literally just eye protection, common sense, and fast reflexes and you'll probably be fine. (Accidents still happen of course, but I have found adequate safety weirdly easy to achieve with this hobby)

A forge is not a fire. The forge is the thing blacksmiths put their metal in to heat it up. It starts as a small fire, usually with newspaper or something else that's relatively small and burns easily, which we then put in the forge itself, which is sort of a fireplace-esque thing (there's a lot of different types of forge, look into it and try to figure out what sort of forge would make the most sense for the context you're writing about) and we cover it with coal, which then catches fire and heats up. The forge gets really hot, and sometimes really bright. Sometimes when I stare at the forge for too long it's like staring into the sun. The forge is also not a waterfall of lava, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.

Welding and blacksmithing are not the same thing. They often go hand-in-hand, but you cannot connected two pieces of metal with traditional blacksmithing alone. There is something called forge welding, where you heat your metal, sprinkle borax (or the in-universe equivalent) on it to prevent the metal from oxidizing/being non-weldable, and hammer the pieces together very quickly. Forge welding also sends sparks flying everywhere, and if you're working in a small space with other blacksmiths, you usually want to announce that you're welding before you do, so that everyone in a five-foot radius can get out of that five-foot radius. You also cannot just stuck some random pebbles into the forge and get a decent piece of metal that you can actually make something with, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.

Anvils are really fucking heavy. Nothing else to add here.

Making jewelry is not a blacksmithing thing unless you want jewelry made of steel. And it will be very ugly if you try. Blacksmithing wasn't invented to make small things.

If there's anything here I didn't mention, just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

for 2024:

read a lot and read everything

film and art and music are what builds ur soul

be outside

love and romance will not come to you any quicker if you are focused on it constantly

possessions don't improve things

movement does improve things

university is <4 years of the rest of your life - make the most of it

find the pleasure in hard work

lose the pleasure in scrolling

creation is essential

joy, love & intelligence are the tenets of life

stagnation isn't inevitable. no person is in a fixed state. you can always change

You have been abducted by a UFO. After you slowly regained your senses, you thought that the alien would dissect, torture or experiment on you, instead they are talking about saving you and others from that oppressive and hellish planet called Earth.