Gen’s head snapped around so fast his wet hair whipped across his face.
His voice came out loud and incredulous, carrying across the entire clearing.
“What the hell is her deal with this Saxønilly asshole? Every time I build something, you bring her up. I built a whole cabin in 3 days, you talk about Saxønilly. I made a kiln, you talk about Saxønilly. If I took a shit in the woods, you would probably tell me Saxønilly does it better.”
Vyxia’s face went scarlet.
Her hands balled into fists at her sides and her tail lashed behind her hard enough to leave a groove in the dirt.
“FIRST OF ALL, I do NOT talk about Saxønilly every time. That is a gross exaggeration, I barely talk to you. SECOND OF ALL, Saxønilly is a genius artificer who has been perfecting her craft for 4000 years. She has built structures that would make your little mud hut look like a child’s toy. And THIRD OF ALL, you are a HUMAN, which means you could never understand the genius of a dragon anyway. So there is no point in comparing you two. It is like comparing a mountain to a pebble.”
Gen sighed, long and heavy, and rubbed his face with both hands.
“I guess, bro, I will never understand then. Must be nice being so perfect all the time. Just pure, unadulterated dragon brilliance every second of every day.”
“That is EXACTLY what it is like,” Vyxia said, jutting out her chin.
“And do not forget it.”
Gen turned back to his kiln.
He walked around it again, running his fingers along the surface, checking for any weak spots.
The clay was starting to show the first signs of drying, the wet sheen fading into a dull matte finish.
No cracks.
No structural weaknesses.
The whole thing held together exactly as he had designed it.
He let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.
“Alright. No cracks. That is good. That is really good.”
Vyxia had followed him without thinking, her feet carrying her around the kiln in a slow orbit.
She kept her arms crossed, her expression fixed in that same bratty scowl, but her eyes tracked his every move.
She studied the way his fingers pressed gently against the clay, the way he leaned in close to examine the joints, the way he muttered small approvals under his breath when he found something that worked.
She tried to find something mean to say.
Something cutting and clever that would wipe that satisfied look off his face.
But the words died in her throat.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Nothing came out.
She stormed off toward the log pile, sat down hard, and stared at the ground with the fury of someone who had just lost an argument with herself.
Gen did not notice.
He was too busy inspecting the kiln.
The top rim looked solid.
The chimney opening was clear.
The firebox base had dried evenly.
He stood up straight and cracked his neck.
“I should probably do my second project.”
Vyxia’s head snapped up.
Her voice came out sharp with surprise.
“Second project? Human, you just finished that contraption. Are you not going to take a break? Are you not going to celebrate? Most humans would be Frank Ale-ing by now, or throwing a party, or sleeping with their harem after accomplishing anything even minorly impressive.”
Gen looked at her.
His expression was flat and tired and completely serious.
Vyxia blinked.
She waited for the punchline, for the sarcastic follow-up, for the human to laugh and admit he was joking.
It never came.
She stared at him.
This human, this creature of brief lives and endless distractions, had just built something functional out of mud and fire, and his immediate reaction was to start planning the next thing.
She had lived for 985 years.
She had seen humans accomplish great things.
She had watched them build and create and achieve impossible goals.
But she had also watched them stop.
Every single one of them had stopped eventually.
They would finish a project and then they would Frank Ale, they would sleep with their harem, they would throw parties and spend weeks doing nothing.
They would burn out or lose interest or decide they had done enough.
Gen did not seem to know how to stop.
Her mind raced, trying to rationalize it.
Humans were creatures of patterns.
They had certain behaviors, certain limitations, certain thresholds they simply did not cross.
Gen had crossed all of them.
He worked without rest.
He built without celebration.
He treated every success like a stepping stone instead of a finish line.
A human by now would have Frank Ale’d.
They would have slept with their harem.
They would have thrown a party.
How the hell was a human so…
not human in nature?
She turned it over in her head, looking for an explanation that fit.
And then it hit her.
Gen was not human.
Not fully at least.
That had to be it.
There was no other explanation.
He looked human, he sounded human, and he had all the right parts, but inside, something was fundamentally different.
Something that made him keep going when every other human would have stopped.
Something that made him look at a finished kiln and immediately think about what came next.
Yea.
That was it.
That was the only thing that made sense.
She filed the realization away and watched him walk back toward his workshed.
He disappeared inside for a moment and emerged carrying two things.
The first was a strange box made of interlocking wood, roughly 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide, with thick walls and a heavy lid.
The second was a smaller structure, built from planks nailed together, that looked like a miniature house with a door that swung open on leather hinges.
Gen set them both down near the kiln and stepped back to study them.
“Fridge is not going to be useful yet,” he muttered to himself.
“Leaves are starting to fall, so it is autumn. Temperatures are dropping. Food will keep fine for a while without refrigeration. But come summer, I will need it. For now though, the smoke room is more important. That is the real priority.”
“Smoke room. Need bricks or mud for the base. Mud would work short term, but it is not durable. Bricks are better. Bricks last longer, hold heat more evenly, and do not crack as easily. So I need to mass produce bricks.”
He looked at the kiln.
Then at the pile of clay he had left over.
Then back at the kiln.
“Alright.
Step one.
Dig up more clay.
Step two.
Shape the clay into brick molds.
Step three.
Fire the bricks in the kiln.
Step four.
Build the smoke room properly.
That is the plan.”
He grabbed his shovel and started walking toward the treeline, but he stopped after a few paces and turned back.
“Wait. I need molds first. Can’t shape bricks without molds. And I need to build a drying rack. Can’t fire wet clay, it will crack and explode. Need to let them air dry first, maybe 2 or 3 days depending on the weather. Then fire them. Then build.”
He started pacing, his hands moving as he talked, sketching invisible shapes in the air.
“Smoke room needs to be airtight except for the smoke outlet. Need a fire pit underneath, separated by a grate. The smoke rises through the food, picks up moisture, and exits through a chimney. The temperature needs to stay low, maybe 150 degrees, so the food dries slowly instead of cooking. Too hot and it burns. Too cold and it spoils. So I need to design the fire pit with a damper to control airflow.”
He kept going, walking in tight circles around the smoke room and the kiln and the pile of clay, his voice rising and falling as he worked through the details.
“I should line the smoke room with clay as well.
Seal the joints, keep the smoke from leaking out.
And I need a way to hang the meat.
Racks or hooks or something.
Maybe horizontal poles, spaced evenly so the smoke can reach everything.
And I need to decide what kind of wood to use.
Different woods give different flavors.
Hickory is good for pork.
Applewood is good for fish.
I have no idea what trees grow around here apart from aspen and birch.”
Vyxia sat on the log and carefully listened to all of it.
She did not understand half the words he was saying.
Dampers and grates and air-drying cycles blurred together in a wall of more engineering jargon that should have bored her to tears.
But she felt flustered anyway.
There was something about the way he talked, the way his hands moved, the way his eyes lit up when he hit a problem and started working through it out loud.
He was not trying to impress anyone.
He was not showing off.
He was just thinking, the same way she thought about strategy and battle formations and the fine art of making her siblings cry.
It was the dedication.
The focus.
The way he poured every scrap of attention into whatever he was building.
She had never seen a human do that before.