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As I worked on my own mining, half-keeping an eye out for the bird-horses who had comes running to help, my mind began to wander to the uncivilized ways of Helovia. There were no bridges here over the streams, no roads, no real paths. There were no houses and no sculptures, no mines and no shrines as far as I was aware of. It was sad, in a way, bizarre, really. No writings, no drawings. Nothing. Strange, isn't it? I shook my head slowly as I gathered a sizable amount of metal, chunks of it, many ores. I half-heartedly flowed into in a sculpture of a flying bird, tail feathers extended and beak hooked, before dissembling it and pulling it apart. The tail feathers were too weak to hold it up easily. About an hour later, after the bay pegasus retrieved enough for several feet, and the little painted horse did too, I tilted my head towards them, and spoke.
"Take a break younglings, and listen to me teach for a bit before we continue our work." Flames flickered up around the collective metal, enough for about a half-foot of the wall, counting upwards and width-wise. "There are some basic principles to building and crafting I expect you to know and understand well if you are to train under me. The first is the Law of Stability. A structure must have a wide base, low center of gravity, and be symmetrical, or have the weight evenly distributed, for it to be a strong, stable item. For example, when I construct this bird, it would fall over. Why?" It was a rhetorical question, and I launched into an explanation before they could answer. The bird was a slender phoenix, on the tip of its tail-feathers, wings launched forward. "All the weight is on the front end of the bird, near the shoulders. The tail feathers are very thin and would snap under the weight of the bird. And the center of gravity is high, not low to the ground as it should be to make sure it holds up well." I let the metal melt away, the flames dying around it. Next, I construct a small arching bridge, the structure made of triangles. "The triangle is the strong shape, as the conflicting forces push against each other." I let it fall away again.
"Questions?" I ask, and as I glance at each of them, another part of my mind is creating a tree out of metal, enjoying the sensation of creation.
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