Citizen 1250 Amphinomus

“So you're telling me if I want to get the finger joints to move like yours do, I need a byproduct of making olive oil? Where can I even get that? I don't think we even have any olive trees in my village…” Phino’s voice quavered as he looked at the blacksmith in a bit of a panic. He was looking for a way to make the prosthesis he made for Temnein not so squeaky and stiff. He had tried many, many different methods of building the fingers, but regardless of shape or material, the separate pieces simply ground and sparked off of one another when they moved, regardless of if the movement was mechanical or magical. In frustration, Phino had ranted about the situation in the mess hall, and Patates had mentioned a smith in Altas who made prosthetics that were stunning, and more than that, silent. The trip here had taken so long, and now he was going to have to go hunting for a way to make olive oil so he could collect the byproducts? Surely that was too niche an item to just buy in the market? Phino’s stomach rolled. This was too much. 

“Woah hey, hey, easy there sonny. Don't you go throwing up around my equipment now.” The smith sighed, pushing his hair out of his eyes with a soot covered glove as he looked over Phino. “Tell you what, I have a couple of olive trees in the back. On that shelf over there is a large cloth, take it and spread it out under one of the trees, there’s a split in it so you can wrap it around the trunk real nice and snug like. Then, grab the trunk firmly but gently in your magic, and shake the dickens out of it. The olives will come right off, and then we can use my press.” The blacksmith’s smile was calm as he beat away at the delicate looking rods he was working on, gesturing around the room with the shining bronze tip of his prosthetic tail.

Phino blinked in surprise, his head shooting up to look at the smith. “Wait… You… you'll help me? Can… would it be ok if i took some home with me afterwards? Temnein really needs the added mobility, their-”

The blacksmith’s mouth fell into a frown the more Phino spoke, before he simply cut him off “Yea, yea sonny, no need to keep yappin, I already agreed. Now, go get those olives before I have time to change my mind.” 

“Yes, yes of course!! Thank you so much, I’ll be right back! This is so huge for us!” Phino practically flew over to the shelving unit, picking up a large blanket with tiny olives embroidered around the edges. ‘Well that's an adorable accent!’
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The process of laying the sheet out underneath the tree was hardly difficult, but the shaking! Phino had spent a long, long time trying to figure out what the best way to ‘shake the dickens out of it’ would be, whatever that meant. After twenty or so attempts with only a few fruits falling, he decided to hell with it and just shook the tree as hard as he could. To his surprise, a tidal wave of olives dropped down into the waiting cloth, bouncing around wildly, but the cloth was the exact size to keep all of the fruits perfectly contained. Smiling with glee, Phino gathered the edges of the fabric together, careful to keep the edge of the split closed as he waddled back into the smith’s shop with his large bag of olives. 

“Well done sonny! Now, take em over to the basin. Yep, that one over there, the one with the olive carved on the side, next to the wheel, yep, that's the one! Once yer there, just dump the whole lot in. Pick out any leaves and sticks that float to the surface, and then get all the mud and gunk off of the olives. Just swirl your hand around in there a bit, grab any that seem too dirty and give em a polish, everything should just come right off.” The blacksmith’s voice guided Phino over to a large stone basin, full of stone cold water. The task was simple enough, and nearly meditative as Phino sat, picking leaves and cleaning the olives to the drumbeat of the forge hammer. 

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“Those seem pretty clean now.” The closeness of the voice startled Phino, who jumped away from the basin with a yelp. Standing behind him was the blacksmith, a bemused smile on his face. Phino blinked in confusion, he hadnt even realized the smith had stopped working, but the silence fell on his ears heavily now that he realized the noise wasn't there.  “Eeeasy there sonny, its not wise to be jumpy in a smith’s shop. Still, these look plenty shiny. Now, take your magic and pull out the pit in each of em. Here’s a bucket for your pits, be careful not to crust them. Once youve got em all picked let me know.”

Phino nodded as he watched the smith walk back over to the forge, twisting some tool this way and that over the rods he had constructed. Phino took a moment to stretch before getting to work picking the pits, fighting back a yawn that was teetering at the edges of his consciousness. How long had he been at this? Grabbing an olive in his magic, Phino split his magic in two, one half wrapping around the olive itself, and the other encircling the pit itself. Phino tried his best to be gentle with the olive, he really did, but the force needed to actually extract the pit seemed to be far, far higher than he expected. Eventually though, the small oblong seed was pried out of it’s fruit. Phino let out a sigh of relief, chucking the pit into the provided bucket. This was going to be a lot more magically intensive than he thought. 

He began experimenting, trying two, three, even six olives at a time. The process required a lot of magic investment, but the quantity of removed pit’s skyrocketed as Phino set about creating a method for himself. The work was exhausting and smelled strange, but the increase in quality for Temnien’s hand was something he was willing to work towards… and besides that, this was kind of fun! Phino found himself wishing Evdo had an olive orchard, as before he knew it the little bucket was full of pits, and all of the olives bobbing around in the water had had them removed. “I think I'm done with this step?”

“Aye, that you are. Take those bags there, and fill em about halfway with those pitted olives. Be sure you got every pit out, or it will make the batch bitter!” The voice came from far away, drifting through the smithy, but Phino hardly noticed, already looking for the bags.

Phino found the burlap sacks easily, also denoted by olive embroidery. Either this blacksmith did kind of teaching thing often, or they were a very large fan of embroidering olives! Lifting a large batch of olives in his magic, Phino spun them around to remove as much weather as he could before adding them into the sacks. Full to halfway, he only ended up with four sacks, much less than he expected he would get, considering the weight of the sheet he had carried them in with.

The blacksmith came back in, carrying a basket with an assortment of earthenware bottles and rough metal tins “Ah, good work. Now, we just take these sacks, and squish them under this wheel. Go over it a few times, and then we can pour hot water on the bags to make sure we got all the oil. It will collect down here, and then we’ll need to give it a few hours to separate properly. You can stay for dinner while it clears.”
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Their work went on for hours, Phino long since losing his sense of time in the joy of making something new. By the wee early hours of the morning, Phino was glad to be done with it, but found himself leaving holding a surprisingly large tin of grease made from the discarded and unused portion of the process that the smith had called amorge, a bottle of Olive oil, and the entire bucket of pits to plant his own orchard full of olive trees for his troubles. More so than that however, was the first taste of the new olive oil they had pressed. It’s flavor still coated Phino’s tongue as he strolled happily down the lane, ready to make the long journey back to Evdo. 

Author: Babykitten