Better Tomorrow - Astire

Astire awoke from her rest, looking up at the malevolent sky of the Ghostlands with a sigh.

She was growing used to it by now.

She queued at one of the tents that had sprung up to provide food to the workers for her breakfast - it was a strange situation, she reflected, that she was within perhaps one of the most dangerous places on the continent, and the most excitement she was facing was wondering what fare was being provided by the kitchens that day.

It was an oddly comforting feeling.  Her blade was sheathed at her side, of course, and she practiced her sword forms each day, but she hadn't had to use it in combat for almost a week.  For all that it had been her skill at arms that had let her make a name for herself - in so far as she had - she much preferred this peace.

Soon she was back at work.

Her construction was coming along - not that it was just hers, of course, there were others working on it too, but she couldn't help but feel a certain ownership in it, and pride in their work.

She'd been assigned to work on one of the automated unloading stations.  They were some of the sturdier buildings being constructed, simply because they needed to be able to support the loads being lifted from the trains that would eventually be arriving.  The sheer scale of it had astonished Astire when she'd first heard it explained.

She nodded a greeting to the other workers as she arrived, unbuckling her sheathed katana and slipping it through the iron handles welded onto one of the barrels of mortar before spreading her wings and taking off.  It wasn't heavy, but it was bulky and awkward, and it had taken her a few trips back and forth trying various awkward means of carrying the wretched thing before she'd hit on the idea of using her sword as a lever - with her magic infusing it, it was certainly sturdy enough to tolerate the force.

It took her about half an hour to spread the mortar evenly across the stone block, starting from one side and making her way to the other.  She'd been getting more practiced from her first attempt, which had taken her nearly two hours (accompanied by much guffawing from the workers who actually knew what they were doing as they watched her fumbling around.)  The first day had been an exhaustive lesson in the finer points of mortar-spreading - far more exhaustive than she'd really thought was necessary, but she supposed it was better than one of the keystones of the building falling out at some point because it hadn't been properly placed. One of the lessons that had been hammered into her was not to rush it, and as much as she didn't want to delay the construction...at the same time, she actually did rather enjoy the simplicity of the task.

Once the mortar was distributed, she flew back down with the barrel and went to collect the block - really a brick, she supposed, but on a far bigger scale than anything she'd normally think of as one.  She noticed a couple of the other workers pausing to watch her, and couldn't help but wonder if they were just impressed or if they were worried she was going to drop it on them by mistake.  It wasn't as though there weren't heavier still objects being moved around by some of the Steelworks' machines, but she was probably one of the *smallest* things out there maneuvering the heavy blocks, and she hadn't exactly impressed them with her ineptitude when it came to all things construction - which might have been why she'd been relegated to working on the exterior of the building.  It didn't bother her, though; her work had freed up the crane that *should* have been lifting the blocks into place to go elsewhere, so it was still an improvement as far as she was concerned.

She set the block down gently, pressing it into place, drawing her sword and using the back of the blade to scrape away the extraneous mortar - something that would no doubt have offended various blademasters had they seen it, but as far as she was concerned she would much rather her blade were a tool of construction than a weapon of battle, and she could just wipe it with a cloth and leave it as pristine as it had been the day it was forged in any case.  Then she flew back a pace and stretched out her hand, sending a ribbon of light to wrap around the block and bathe it in a heat very unlike the unpleasant climes of the Ghostlands to help dry the mortar quicker.

Leaving the light there, she swooped back down to the main workstation to collect the bracket that would eventually hold a girder on the interior of the building and back up again, bending it into shape against the block and hammering the bolt in - there were some advantages to her arm of light not having any tactile sensation.

"One down, dozens to go," she reflected to herself, with a wry smile, perching on the block for a few moments to look back at the nascent trading post as it grew day by day.  And then she took off again, back to collect the next bucket of mortar and start the whole process again.