ᴄᴀᴍᴘ ʜᴀʟғ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ;; ᴀ ᴅ ᴠ ᴀ ɴ ᴄ ᴇ ᴅ discussion

...

Asra walked walked towards the cleaner, cooler part of the forge and leaned against one of the long work tables, pushing a strand of dark hair out of her face. She looked at the small throwing knife that she had just finished, which was now in the palm of her hand. The knife was a new design she had wanted to try that should be a lot more balanced and should throw much better than the ones she had been using. She set the knife on the workbench next to her and ran a hand through her hair. Despite the fact that she wasn't a Hephaestus kid, she really enjoyed designing and making her own weapons.

Asra glanced up to see that the girl next to her had looked at her. This girl was defiantly a Hephaestus kid. She looked at home in the forge, and there weren't a lot of non-Hephaestus kids who actually came in here. Asra was one of the few. Most other campers would just ask a Hephaestus kid to make something for them.

"Hey." Asra said to the girl casually while she tried to remember if she had seen her around camp before. Asra didn't claim to know all the kids at camp, but you would have thought she would have seen the girl at meals or something. Maybe she was a new camper.

Asra raised an eyebrow at the girl's terse greeting and obvious brush off. It kind of bugged her when people were rude for little to no reason whatsoever. She turned to pick up her knife from the table just as the girl put her notebook down. Now Asra wasn't really a nosy person (not like some people she knew) but she happened to glance at the notebook. It was full of notes on making weapons out of Imperial Gold and Celestial Bronze alloy. It didn't look like she had been having much luck, as the alloy of Imperial Gold and Celestial Bronze wasn't strong enough and all the other things she had added reacted badly.

Asra turned to lean against the table again, tucking the knife into her belt to test out later, but she kept thinking about the girl's problem. It was a tricky one, and Imperial Gold wasn't a material campers really worked with here. Maybe if she evened out the ratios of gold and bronze with something stronger like steel... She thought, but then shook the thought off. It wasn't really Asra's problem at all.

((Do you have any idea of where to go with this?))

Asra stood up and stretched, intending to go out and test her knife. She pulled the knife out of her belt and looked it over one last time before leaving the forges. It felt a little back heavy to her. Maybe I should grind down the handle a little bit. she thought as she walked over to a grinding wheel and took a minute bit of metal from the handle sending off a small shower of sparks. After a moment she took the knife away and flipped it in the air, catching it in her palm. There, that's better.

((I'm going to start some commotion. Maybe that will get them talking.))

Asra was just turning away from the grinding wheel, still-warm knife in her hand, when there was some commotion from the main area of the forge. There were shouts of "Hey slower!" and "Get out of the way!" Asra turned in surprise at the commotion. A camper had apparently had been trying to forge some kind of weapon and messed it up, setting his pants leg on fire and dropping the red-hot blade.

How did this happen? She wondered as she rushed over. The thing was, Hephaestus kids didn't make mistakes like this, they were too good at making things. As she came closer she saw that the camper wasn't a Hephaestus kid, he was some idiot camper who thought he could forge a longsword by himself. When she was close enough, she waved her hand, calling some water from a nearby tank to quench the fire in a cloud of steam.

After she had quenched the fire, Asra stood for a moment, watching the aftermath. She was mildly surprised when the girl hurried past her to teach the idiot boy about swords. She leaned against the wall to watch for a moment. Frankly the girl didn't seem like the teaching type. As the girl passed her Asra couldn't help but comment. "You were good at teaching that kid." She said. She didn't really plan to say that, she just did, mostly because the girl who had given Asra a not-so-subtle brush off didn't strike her as the teaching type.

The girl obviously didn't usually get complements and wasn't used to it. This sobered Asra up a little bit. She could remember having similar feelings when she was a kid, that she was doing everything wrong and that no one really cared. Not that she never did anything wrong as a kid, she was a social worker's worst nightmare, but still. She stood up straight turning what she perceived as a more casual attitude into a more serious one. She shrugged. "I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true."