Northern_Lights_2021

27 On Saturdays, in the evenings ripe with free time and amber skies, Adisa would wander down the copper road to the goldsmith’s workshop. The shop was the second building on the right of the main road, and many people would often gather near the forge. The goldsmith, who recognized the preeminent respect which came with his craft, had built the shop so that his workspace was completely visible to the outside. The display cases were shoved to the back under the cover of the roof, but the crucible, sanding station, embossing table, and anvil all coagulated into the front, spilling out onto the sidewalk and street. The goldsmith, sweating in the open sun next to his fires of invention, worked from noon to nightfall, sometimes hammering on large cups and dishes, sometimes tapping away at small sections of shining rings or coiling individual links of fractal chains. The processes which he employed were repetitive and tiresome. A shining billet could be retracted from the forge thirty or forty times before being set onto the anvil, but Adisa’s attention never wavered. He would crouch in the red dust, carefully watching the leather gloves clamp the long tongs again and again. The crowd did the same, for though the work was hardly captivating, the gold always shone with an eminence so bright that they could not tear their eyes away for a second. They would stand, watching the hammer slam again and again over glowing bits of the superheated metal. The smith, with an endless supply of material, would take seven or eight days to finish a single project, meticulously bending, straightening, reheating, and stenciling the piece until its perfection could not be missed. Adisa would sometimes not get Saturdays off, and he would miss the completion of some projects, but he would make it every day he could, gleefully anticipating the next creation. His mind would wander as he sat motionless in the rusted road. He would imagine the objects in different times and places around the world. If a coin was being minted, he could see it in the hand of one of the merchants that often visited the village. He would follow it with his mind, imagining it as it passed from the cold, dark purse of the traveler into his warm hand, his skin being able to perceive the beveled and embossed surface without consciously realizing it. Since it was in his mind, the gold could be spent on anything, so instead of imagining it purchasing fruit or wood, he would imagine that it had been traded for a ship so large that its crow’s nest rose higher than any crow would ever fly. When a cup started to take shape, he could almost taste the fine wine which could be sipped from its lip. He could see it sitting in the china cabinet of a rich mansion, resting pleasantly next to an identical dish set. If the cup had eyes, it would probably be able to see out into the mansion’s courtyard, with its beautifully crafted garden full of white and purple flowers. Anything but red. Red was the color of the desert dust he saw every day. It was the color of the loose cobbled road he took to the village almost every evening and morning, and it was the color of the sky every night, its light always seeping into his house and bedroom. The Goldsmith Kelson Brewer