"As a reminder. On the first day, I actually made something with my own hands."
Boggins' expression flickered, just briefly, just enough for Frederick to catch it, before settling back into professional neutrality.
"As Your Grace wishes." He set the shirt aside. "Will you be returning to the forge tomorrow?"
"Yes. Thomas is going to teach me to make nails."
"Nails." Boggins' tone was carefully neutral. "How... practical."
"That's the point, isn't it? To learn practical things. Useful things. Things that matter to people who don't have servants to do everything for them."
Boggins was quiet for a moment, helping Frederick into fresh clothes with the efficiency of long practice.
"If I may say so, Your Grace, you seem different today."
"Different how?"
"Lighter. Less burdened." Boggins stepped back, examining his handiwork. "It suits you."
"Learning to make misshapen hooks suits me?"
"Learning to be human suits you." Boggins' voice was soft. "I have watched you all those years, Your Grace. I have never seen you smile the way you've been smiling lately."
Frederick didn't know what to say to that. So, he said nothing and went to find food to satisfy the hunger that physical labour had awakened in him.
But he thought about Boggins' words for a long time afterwards.
***
That night, Frederick sat in his study, the small one he preferred, and thought about the day.
About the forge and the fire and the impossible weight of the hammer. About Thomas' pointed questions and his unexpected acceptance. About Lydia, working beside him, her movements fluid and practised, where his were clumsy and uncertain.
About the village he'd walked through, and the people who had looked at him like he was starting to become real.
He took out a piece of paper and began to write. Not a letter—nothing so formal. Just thoughts, observations, the scattered impressions of a day that had changed something fundamental in him.
Today I made a hook, he wrote.It was ugly and malformed and will probably never hold anything heavy. But I made it. With my own hands. From raw metal and fire.
I've never made anything before. I've signed papers and given orders and watched other people create things on my behalf. But I've never stood at an anvil and felt the weight of a hammer and watched something take shape under my own force.
It's addictive. The rhythm of it. Strike, turn, strike again. No room for complicated thoughts. No space for worry. Just the metal and the fire and the endless attempt to shape one into something useful.
Thomas says I'll learn. He says everyone's first attempt is terrible. He says his own first hook looked like something a horse had stepped on.
I believe him. But I also think there's something more happening here. Something beyond just learning a trade.
I'm learning who I might be. Who I might become. If I'm brave enough to let go of who I was supposed to be.
He set down the pen and looked at what he'd written. It was rambling, unfocused, nothing like the precise correspondence he'd been trained to produce.
But it was honest, and that was something new.
***
The next morning, Frederick arrived at Corvenwell Manor's front door, after visiting the stables, just as Lydia was lifting her hand to knock.
He opened the door and gestured for her to enter. "After you."
