Small-Town Crafter 4: The Adept Artificer (A Low-Stakes Cozy LitRPG) (Small Town Crafter) by Tom Watts

Author:Tom Watts [Watts, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

That evening, Master Cooper and I had dinner at the craftstead. Janey was still working in her alchemy lab even after darkness had settled over the yard and the wolfhounds had been fed, and after all the way down the sloping hill Douggie Fernglass had set the town streetlights glowing, lamp by lamp. No offer of hot food or fruity wine could coax her out of her workshop. Having just secured an order from Sara-Rose, who was the new head of Jace Porter’s manor, Janey was entranced in her work and wouldn’t stop until it was complete.

Sara-Rose was restoring a neglected wing of the Porter manor and needed some kind of special varnish for the old timber steps, beams, and floorboards. Janey, who was determined that her store at the craftstead would become successful where all her other alchemical business ventures hadn’t, had told Cooper and me that she wasn’t leaving the lab until her varnish was done. Besides the need to make her store profitable, she also shared something that Cooper, Chris, Paisley, Phil, Ophelia, and all my other friends and I understood all too well; time spent working in her craft was a time full of satisfaction and free from regret of any kind. A person who loved what they did and did what they loved didn't spend a second of that time yearning for something else.

Cooper and I had vegetable chili for dinner, accompanied by a fresh loaf of spiced bread that Cooper had bought from Rolls and Dough, and a bottle of alcohol-free mulled wine gifted to us from Paisley, whose brewery venture with her uncle Jace was doing very well indeed. The chili was extra spicy since I was the one who had made it. One of many hard-fought-over rules in our home was that the chef always decided on the heat.

That night, Cooper was much less cantankerous than usual, and in fact seemed especially tired, like the bags under his eyes had bags of their own. I knew that he had been working all day on a full set of insulated, self-opening and closing windows for Lester and Bill Green, the newly retired couple who owned a house on Walker’s Street. This wasn’t a project that would tax a master artificer like Cooper, yet he seemed worn out by it.

“Have you visited Healer Brown lately?” I said.

Cooper pointed his fork at me. “I know what you’re getting at, laddie.”

“Concern about your health?”

“I’m as healthy as the day I was born. Well, no. Healthier. I was born three months premature, and I was a sickly lad when I was younger. Nothing like the strapping piece of human engineering that you see now.”

“I just thought you were going to ease off a little.”

Cooper gave a sigh and looked at me thoughtfully. “I suppose I just got wrapped up in finishing those damned windows. There was a time when I could work eight hours straight and still have enough in me to run to the top of Brewer’s Pike and back.

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