Grounded

I must have tried a dozen times. I Just could not translate what I saw in my head, to useable steel. The frustration and shame of that pile of discarded slag, shattered billets and a floor covered in the panicked flux of an amateur. I could do better, I needed to do better.
 
I set down my tools, unhooked the billows feed line, and stepped out of the Skyforge. I needed air, and space and grass. I headed back through the main compound and headed down via the mess, requesting from Julian a small platter. Whilst I was still learning the niceties and had difficulty picking up on social cues, but Julian did not, and sensed my frustration almost before a word had passed my lips. He made his way around the counter and hugged me, wordlessly. Well, hugged my leg. I was grateful for it, too. A small slip of anger evaporated off me as he squeezed. I think he felt it too, and with a satisfied nod and he scurried back to the kitchen, appearing moments later with a basket nearly the size of him, holding one end while his mage-hand carried the other.
 
"Still working on it, then?" he said as he climbed his step ladder to the counter; hefting the basket up with him. I nodded.
 
"I've almost got it Julian, I just can't find the right weighting. The balance is wrong, and it's causing stress fractures every time I test it."
 
"Balance is a funny thing, Xerrakir. It's not always even. Take you and I, for example. I'm a 3ft deep gnome, and you're a nearly 9ft Bugbear, But we both know I could beat you in a fight, do you know why?"
 
I stopped and thought at that, perplexed. My handspan alone was nearly bigger than his body, and he had magic yes but...
 
"Because you'd never lay a finger on me, would you!" he interjected, smile beaming. He was right too, the little scamp.
 
I chuckled outwardly at that, another slip of anger sliding away.
 
"The balance is not in our size, but in our relationship to eachother. Sometimes it's about more than what we see. Wise words from one so small, I know." he pushed the hamper to the edge of the counter, and I accepted it gratefully.
 
"As always, Julian, with but a few words you reset my course. I shall think on this. I can almost ken the solution; I am close now, I'm sure of it." I bow to him, and take the hamper as he turns to help another member of us, similarly hungry for food and wisdom, no doubt.
 
I head out of the compound, toward the World Tree, as we call it. It, of course, is not the Yggdrasil from the stories, though it is a mighty tree. It's boughs reaching far into the skies.
 
Beings are milling about as usual, relaxing in the open air, though today few are near the tree's base, and so I head over to it; the tree looming ever larger in my field of view till it is all encompassing.
 
I sit and take off my anchor hooks; not needing them so close to the tree. Something about this area grounds itself, and we don't need to hold on as much. I open up the hamper to find a fresh selection of cheeses, small pots of chutney, various cold cut meats breads and fruit. And a small bottle of La'heean whiskey. That little scamp indeed! I must find a way to thank him later, a rare treat indeed.
 
I sat beneath the World Tree for some number of hours, working my way through the platter idly, trying to visualise the steps required for my chosen task. How to balance such a tool. Despite repeating the process a dozen times in my head, every hammer stroke, every pump of the bellows, as I had been taught, I could not figure out where I was going wrong.
 
One of the suns had started to wane, a void cloud passing across the sky, and a beam of light poked through. A tiny ray, pointed squarely at me. Well, almost. I looked down and followed it's path. It had settled on a fork, which was currently sitting upright at the end of a wedge of drunken goat cheese. The light was bouncing off the steel, casting a prismatic sheen across the hamper as a whole, splitting off at right angles at the edge of the fork.
 
Right angles. A wedge. A shaft of light.
 
"By her Talons" I exclaimed in a whisper, it was clear now. I hurriedly packed the hamper, hooked on my anchors, and near sprinted back through the compound to the forge.
 
Every hammer stroke was right. The colour of the steel exactly as I pictured it. As I quenched this new creation; I felt the last of the frustration and shame slide away, before I'd even pulled it from the tank. This was right.
 
I pulled it out just as Seldash entered, and turned to him smiling a wide toothy smile.
 
"It's done Seldash!" I held it aloft for him to see.
 
"What," he exclaimed, his trademark passive resting face not visible in the slightest, replaced by fascination and shock,
"in the nine hells is that".
 
"I'm calling it 'Julian's Bar', and this....this will help."
 
Aloft in front of me, a 2ft flat bar of forged steel, a claw at it's base, a spiked pick at it's head, and then at right angles to that, a curved adze, and at right angles to that, the wide flat head of a hammer. A tool for those sent on missions to rescue anyone trapped. A multi-tool capable of dealing with several situations all at once. With the balance of the whole made true by it's independent parts. I had been trying for weeks to have them all aligned in one plane, not seeing what I needed to.
 
"Huh." Said Seldash, the first time I'd heard him lost for words in the two years I'd known him.
 
I had never known true pride till that day.