The morning air carried the familiar rhythm of Brooklyn waking up as Elias stepped onto Court Street, his canvas messenger bag slung across one shoulder and a mental list of errands competing for attention in his head. The divorce papers were filed, Sarah was officially out of his life, and for the first time in months he felt the peculiar lightness that comes with the end of prolonged uncertainty. But with that lightness came a sharper awareness of practical concerns he'd been avoiding while his marriage dissolved around him.
Money, specifically. Or rather, the mathematics of living alone in Brooklyn while running a specialized craft business that generated irregular income.
The walk to Gino's Hardware took him past the familiar landmarks of his neighborhood routine—the bodega where he bought his morning coffee, the dry cleaner that had been pressing the same shirts for the same customers since the seventies, the small park where dog owners gathered in informal communion over their pets' social needs. He'd walked these blocks thousands of times over the past eight years, but today he found himself paying attention to details that had previously existed at the edges of his consciousness.
Real estate signs, for instance. "For Rent" notices that quoted monthly prices that made his stomach clench. His workshop lease was locked in at twenty-eight hundred a month for the next two years, a rate that had seemed reasonable when Sarah's steady income as a graphic designer had supplemented his irregular commission payments. But now, walking past listings for similar spaces advertising rents of four thousand and up, he realized how precarious his situation had become.
The mortgage on the building that housed both his workshop and their former apartment was another fixed cost that wouldn't adjust to his newly single financial reality. Thirty-two hundred a month, locked in at a rate that had seemed manageable for a married couple but felt increasingly burdensome for a craftsman whose monthly income could vary from three thousand to eight thousand depending on commission timing and complexity.
Gino's Hardware occupied the ground floor of a narrow building that had probably housed similar businesses for the better part of a century. The familiar smell of WD-40 and sawdust greeted him as he pushed through the glass door, triggering the ancient bell that announced customers to whatever Gino family member happened to be manning the register that day.
"Morning, Elias." Tony Gino looked up from a parts catalog, his reading glasses perched halfway down his nose in the universal pose of small business owners trying to make sense of supplier invoices. "What brings you in today?"
"Steel wool, flux, couple other things." Elias pulled a handwritten list from his jacket pocket, though his real attention was focused on calculating the monthly overhead that kept businesses like this one operating. Rent, utilities, insurance, inventory costs, labor—all the fixed expenses that had to be covered regardless of whether customers walked through the door on any given day.
His own business model wasn't so different, really. Fixed costs that stayed constant while revenue fluctuated based on factors largely beyond his control. The difference was that Tony Gino sold necessities—screws and pipe fittings and replacement parts that people actually needed. Elias created luxury items for a market that could easily decide to spend their discretionary income elsewhere.
As he gathered his supplies, moving through aisles that contained solutions to ten thousand different mechanical problems, Elias found his mind turning toward possibilities he'd never seriously considered before. What if his newfound abilities could address the fundamental challenge of running a craft business in an expensive city? What if the rules he could forge into metal could solve problems more significant than dissolving bones or maintaining moral direction?
A coin inscribed with something like "Double Profit" or "Wealth Flows Here"—the concept seemed absurd in daylight, surrounded by ordinary hardware and the mundane reality of commercial transaction. But no more absurd than a kukri that could crumble bone through supernatural understanding of Nepali script. If meaning could be bound to metal through intention and comprehension, then why not meanings related to financial prosperity?
"That'll be forty-two fifty," Tony said, adding up his purchases on a calculator that probably predated the Clinton administration.
Elias handed over two twenties and a five, accepting his change with the automatic courtesy of long habit while his imagination continued exploring increasingly elaborate scenarios. A medallion that attracted business opportunities. A bracelet that helped its wearer make profitable investment decisions. Tools that somehow enhanced their user's ability to generate income through their natural skills.
The walk to the bank gave him time to think through these possibilities more systematically, and by the time he was standing in line behind an elderly woman arguing with a teller about overdraft fees, the practical problems with supernatural wealth generation had become depressingly clear.
First, there was the matter of scrutiny. Any significant or sudden improvement in his financial situation would attract attention from exactly the kinds of institutions and individuals that a sensible person tried to avoid. The IRS would want explanations for income that couldn't be traced to documented business transactions. And if his prosperity became too obvious, too inexplicable, he'd find himself dealing with people who made their living by redistributing other people's wealth through methods that didn't require paperwork or legal justification.
Brooklyn had gentrified considerably over the past decade, but it was still Brooklyn. Still a place where sudden wealth could make a person interesting to organizations that preferred their business relationships to be unencumbered by government oversight. Elias had no desire to explain his supernatural abilities to representatives of either the federal tax authority or the local entrepreneurial community that operated outside traditional banking systems.
"Next!" The teller's call interrupted his increasingly paranoid speculation about the dangers of mysterious prosperity.
His bank balance, displayed on the small screen after he inserted his card and entered his PIN, confirmed what he already knew but hadn't wanted to confront directly. Thirty-eight thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars in combined checking and savings. Not poverty, certainly, but not security either. Six months of expenses, maybe seven if he was careful about discretionary spending.
The mortgage payment would deduct automatically in three days. The workshop rent was due next week. Utilities, insurance, materials, food—all the ordinary costs of maintaining life and business in an expensive city. Without Sarah's income, without the financial stability that came from dual careers, his situation had shifted from comfortable to merely sustainable.
As he walked home, his messenger bag heavier now with hardware store purchases, Elias found his thinking shifting toward more practical applications of his abilities. If supernatural wealth generation was too dangerous, what about supernatural productivity enhancement? What if he could forge tools that improved his own work rather than creating mysterious windfalls that would require elaborate explanations?
A hammer that never missed its intended target. Tongs that maintained perfect grip regardless of the size or shape of heated metal. Files that cut through steel with impossible precision. Engraving tools that could reproduce any script or symbol with flawless accuracy, regardless of the complexity or his familiarity with the language.
Such tools would allow him to work faster, more accurately, with better results. He could take on more complex commissions, charge higher rates for specialized work, build a reputation for craftsmanship that transcended the ordinary limitations of human skill and precision. The improved income would be traceable to demonstrable improvements in his work quality—no mysterious windfalls, no unexplainable prosperity, just the logical result of exceptional craftsmanship commanding exceptional prices.
The more he considered this approach, the more sensible it seemed. He was, after all, a blacksmith. Making tools was what blacksmiths had done for thousands of years before the industrial revolution relegated them to the margins of economic relevance. If he could make tools that worked better than ordinary tools, tools that incorporated supernatural advantages in ways that appeared to be merely exceptional rather than impossible, then he could solve his financial problems while staying well within the bounds of plausible explanation.
By the time he reached his workshop, Elias had already begun planning his first experiment in supernatural tool creation. Something simple, something that would provide clear evidence of effectiveness without raising questions about the source of its advantages.
A forging hammer. Although he had a pneumatic hammer for heavy work, making a traditional forging hammer was relatively straightforward, and a good portion of the detailed work in metal still required the intimate control that only a hand-held hammer could provide. Both finishing the billet into a semi-finished piece and the precise engraving work with chisels demanded the nuanced strikes that came from feeling the metal's response through the hammer's handle. If he could forge a hammer that enhanced this connection—one that seemed to know exactly how much force each blow required—he could complete works more quickly and with far less finishing required afterward. Such a tool would also prove invaluable for the inscription work he planned for future pieces.
He had not yet decided what specific engraving he would attempt with this hammer, but he intended to try something different on this piece, something that would test both the tool's capabilities and his own growing understanding of how intention could be embedded in steel.
If he could dissolve bone and anchor spiritual conviction through understanding and intention, then surely he could create a hammer that struck with impossible precision and efficiency. And if he could do that, then perhaps the mathematics of living alone in Brooklyn while pursuing a craft that increasingly felt more like calling than occupation might become somewhat more manageable.
The workshop fell quiet around him as he began planning inscriptions that would bind effectiveness to steel, wondering what patterns of meaning could transform simple tool into something that responded to the smith's will as naturally as his own hand.