Book 4. Chapter 7
The next day, Brin woke with a kind of manic energy, a pressure to make progress in all the little things he’d been working on. Things were changing, people were moving, and one way or another, these slow peaceful days were coming to an end. He’d been through this in the past, but unlike before, this time he actually had a deadline. In two weeks Lumina would tell him what she had planned for him; he would either join her in the tower or go into hiding somewhere else. Two weeks to finish everything.
He wanted to start right away. The laser he was working on was close, he knew it, but he hadn’t quite cracked it yet. But as soon as he entered the workshop, Davi knocked on his door for their usual workouts. Davi was only able to make it about once every three mornings, so Brin couldn’t blow him off in favor of a project he could do any time.
When Brin opened the door, he noticed that Davi’s status still read [Bard]. That made sense, he supposed, since [Bards] were beloved and not everyone knew what a [Skald] was.
Davi was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He grunted a good morning, and then indicated the road with his shoulder. Brin nodded, and together they set off. It was too early for words. For Davi at least. Brin had woken up positively wired, but he understood the feeling.
They never got around to commissioning another set of weights. Jeffrey had told Davi that lugging around heavy weights or buying a new set in every city wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle for a [Bard] and insisted that he think of something else. After some thought, Davi had found a lumberyard that would let him lug some of their heavy logs around in the mornings. People basically let [Bards] do whatever they wanted.
They jogged to the lumberyard in question, and Brin enjoyed the cool morning air. None of the [Carpenters] or [Woodworkers] had arrived yet, but a few preteens who hadn’t been through System Day yet were already there and sweeping the shop.
Davi started right off by heaving a tree trunk ten feet long and a foot wide over his shoulders, and then starting in on squats. That couldn’t be right. If you only got the chance to work out two times a week, it didn’t seem fair that either of those days should be leg day.
Brin sighed and hefted a slightly smaller trunk over his shoulders and got to work beside his friend.
For most of the hour or so that they exercised, Brin was breathing too hard to want to make conversation, but he did manage to ask, “What have you been up to lately?”