It Must Be Good
She was in a distracted mood, today.
There had just been so much rain lately, and in the wake of those storms, the greenery had genuinely bloomed. It was unusual! At least, she couldn't remember anything like this in her lifetime, but, well, her memory wasn't that spectacular. But even if it had happened, how could she not be a little curious?
And so it was in her distractions over the desert brush that her steps led her gradually further and further away from her group. Had she been more aware, she might have taken a few fewer steps, or urged some of the others to come with her.
But for the moment, she was far too interested in her observations to worry about her group's distance. Indeed, she absolutely marveled at the flora. As she kept going, the wheatgrass seemed to only thicken, having not just defied the fierce winds and relished the recent rain storms, but flourished. Growth and color abounded, with blues and greens and oranges and yellows, the buds of fresh flowers that seemed to be trying to adapt to the odd climate of this year. She barely noticed the crunch of the coarse, gravelly earth underfoot, a contrast to her usual near-silent steps.
Even the fantastic brush and buds began to fade in its novelty, however, as the rumbling in her stomach amplified. Right. She wandered this way for a reason, did she not?
And so she lowered her head to the thick desert grasses, and with a seeking pull of dexterous lips against a clump of grass, selected only the best grasses (for what is the point in being able to choose if one does not choose the best), and easily pulled them from the earth.
The gazelle began to chew, and while chewing, she was able to finally satiate her needs of hunger and delight in the sights laid out in front of her, already planning what spot of grass she was going to sample next.
It was in the midst of all of this, her chewing and planning and idly enjoying the array of thick brush and colors, that something... changed.
Her ears perked up, swiveling in a rotation to better gauge the direction of movement. Was it her herd, moving in behind her? But no. The footsteps didn't sound like that at all. There was less weight to these, and they were fewer in number.
Her mouth stilled in its chewing, and she turned her head to better see.
It was far too late. In her vision there was nothing, save for a flash of motion and the glint of cold steel against the setting sun.
------------------------------------
Yasin stared at the lengthy gazelle horn that he had set upon the stone workbench at Mahmoun's Practical Blacksmithing. He stared, and he stared, and he stared.
Oh, it wasn't that he didn't have the tools. At this point he had acquired all that he needed: several fine-toothed saws of varying sizes to cut off portions of horn, an awl, a simple bow-drill, and plenty of metal rods and files.
But still. This trade isn't only about having the right tools, of course. Working with a new material is an entirely new process to learn. He had to get used to the feel of it; how it resists, how it fights back, and knowing just the amount of pressure before the material gives way, molding itself to his intentions. By comparison in his experience, working with iron and steel is near child's play. It fights back against a heavy hit, it can be shaped and corrected if the angle of his hammer is off. But the horn? No. He had to get this right, or the material would be broken.
He had, of course, practiced. Off to the side, a set of horns from different creatures -- mostly dusky bruul, for those horns were quite cheap to procure -- in various states were placed upon the bench.
The first attempt was a complete and utter failure. He thought to use a bow drill to drive a pilot into the horn after sawing off the tip, making way for the tang. But the smith was not used to the tool, and after it kept slipping along the grain, he applied too much force, and the horn split in two.
In the back of his head, a voice rasped: "This one will be mine and so it must be good. Even better. As good as I am. Yes?"
He had significantly more luck with the second attempt. He set the bow-drill aside, and turned to what he knew best: heat, metal, strength. A thin rod drawn from the forge, the horn held fast in a clamp, and he burnt the pilot hole in rather than drilling it. It worked, though... he and the rest of the workshop were not at all prepared for the smell. "Bruul-stink," was the word he used, which then became echoed by an amused group of workers and apprentices. He ended up setting his little vise-clamp workstation outside, and donning a keffiyeh.
It was after mastering this that he turned, finally, to spare gazelle horns. These took more effort to procure, and the work of a friend.
And yet, his mastery did not immediately transfer: too little force at first, then too much, overcorrecting, then the wrong angle and... the horn split.
He couldn't help but think that the gazelle was fighting back at him in some way. Refusing to take part in this work. He knew this was nonsense, of course, and he just needed to try again--
"Sayyid Yasin?" A voice disturbed him from his thoughts. Yasin saw out of his peripheral: Muneeb, a young apprentice, with a soft-spoken voice that was at odds with his overconfident personality.
Yasin spoke with a somewhat distracted air. "Do you think the spirit of the gazelle feels it, Muneeb, when we fit its horn into a work of metal? Are we prolonging the creature's existence in some way? Is that why some horns fight me, and others take to the work easily?" Yasin didn't know why he had decided to just pour his inner monologue onto the poor, hapless Muneeb.
Muneeb blinked a couple of times, and said awkwardly, "Uh... I-- um, don't know about any of that, sayyid. I am no imam."
Yasin gave a long sigh of breath as he looked to Muneeb. "Forgive me, Muneeb." He shook his head, then turned his body away from the workbench and collection of attempts and horns. "Yes?"
Muneeb seemed very obviously relieved to be moving on from whatever that was all about. "I'm done with my tasks, sayyid." Muneeb stated, a little proudly, an energetic twinkle of self-accomplishment in his eyes.
"Have you?" Yasin asked. "All of the fresh batch of iron has been shaped into bars? Ready for forge-work?"
"Yes, I have been practicing!" Muneeb replied, chin up, gesturing with his hand towards his workstation, where a neat stack of iron bars awaited inspection.
Yasin nodded. "Very well. Come, let us take a look. After that, I've another batch of hinges for you to work on."
Muneeb's expression faltered a little. "More, sayyid?"
Yasin smiled a small smile as he led the apprentice over, walking away from the horns and workbench. His voice was likely a bit over-enthusiastic, a tone meant, perhaps, to encourage the younger and less experienced that he frequently worked with. "Of course. You should be pleased. Sayyid Mahmoun has secured great business!"
The notable gazelle horn, the one that Yasin had been staring at, the one that was intended for this work of his? That horn simply remained where it was as the journeyman-and-apprentice walked off. It had no thoughts or reply of its own, no insight to offer to Yasin's wandering commentary. And Yasin mostly allowed those wandering thoughts to depart as the necessity of day-to-day work took its place.
But still, even as he continued to speak to Muneeb and assist him in his tasks, lingering in the back of Yasin's head, mingled with a small bit of apprehension: what kind of gazelle will this one turn out to be? Will it take to the tang, and in some way find some new purpose in the handle of this blade? Or reject it, as though some final way of rejecting the very sort of thing that took its life?
------------------------------------
The gazelle struggled to process what had happened to her.
Wasn't she foraging, moments ago? She could still taste the herbaceous, faintly sweet desert grasses. But that flavor was mingled with something more metallic.
She remembered, then, the sound, and the steel.
She remembered sounding out for help, and in alarm, but she had wandered away from her herd. Her instincts told her to flee, but she was now on the ground, and her hooves found no purchase. She attempted to rise, but could not. There was no strength in her.
She remembered that she had kicked. A writhing with her feet, uselessly kicking at air, as though one of her stray motions could arrest the creature doing this to her. But as the strength drained from her, she didn't even have the energy to continue doing that, and her legs ceased all motion.
She thought she heard something move closer, and observed a shadow cast upon the desert flora. Her mouth hung slackly open, the blades of grass she had so eagerly consumed now uselessly drooping down.
She supposed there was little else to do at this point, and she was so, so tired. Her body yearned to let go, to drift away, to spare her from the anguish she felt.
But... wait. The flora. Her attention shifted that way, away from the looming shadow, away from the pain, and away from the lack of strength in her limbs. Away from the exhaustion. And while the color drained from her sight, still, those greens, oranges, and yellows were in some way almost brighter, more in-focus, and somehow closer.
She found her focus entirely dwarfed by those flowers. Because there had been so, so much rain of late. And even with her poor memory, she knew then that she had never seen colors like that.
And so as the last of her breaths left her lungs, the gazelle found herself marveling at the beauty of it all.