The front workshop smelled of honest labor.
After finishing the chicory tea and helping Mira wipe the deal table clean with a damp rag, Ren Vale returned to the front room. He stood in the center of the oak floorboards, his hands resting on his hips, surveying his small domain in the pale morning light that flooded through the bay window.
There were no starlight furnaces here. There were no frozen stillness chambers lined with gold-silver metal filigree, no time shifted weight fields humming at the edges of hearing. No rotting thick parchment rolls screaming under the weight of burned lifetimes.
The artifacts that had nearly torn the continent apart had dissolved into mountain silt. In their place sat the modest, tactile implements of an ancient, peaceful trade.
Ren walked to the master workbench. He ran his bare palm along the smooth, oiled grain of the seasoned beech wood.
At the far left corner stood his paste station. A wide, shallow heavy clay bowl held three cups of fresh wheat paste, mixed that very morning from sifted white flour, soft spring water. A pinch of powdered alum to discourage bookworms. The paste was semi-clear, smooth as clotted cream, and smelled faintly of fresh bread. Beside the bowl lay three hog-bristle brushes with lathe-turned birch handles. A wide two-inch flat brush for sizing large leaves of paper, a one-inch round brush for running glue down quires. A delicate badger-hair tipped quill for care corner repairs.
