Daily Grind (Open)

Lena looked up when she noticed someone else browsing her wares, putting her usual "customer service" smile on her face and trying to push the incident with the rude customer out of her mind. No point in taking her frustrations out on someone else, after all. After giving Nova a brief greeting, Lena left her to browse her wares, looking to her with a bit of curiosity. She seemed fairly young, and definitely had the look of an adventurer of some sort. Her eyes then wandered over to the large sword she was carrying with her. It was quite the mental image, imagining a cute girl like her swinging around a zweihander off all things.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course. It just wasn't something she expected. Either way, when Nova finally asked her about potentially sharpening her blade, Lena nodded. "If that's all it is, then it's only ten Rupees. For an extra five, I can also give the blade a good polishing to make it look as good as new. If you don't mind waiting, I can have it done in about forty-five minutes, give or take. Twenty if you decide to just go for the sharpening. Otherwise, feel free to look around and see if anything else strikes your fancy. Everything you see here, I made myself."

She spoke in a tone that made it clear that she was proud of her work, yet she kept herself humble enough to not come off as bragging. Either way, while she was hardly any sort of master blacksmith, most of the weapons and armor she had on display were still of pretty decent quality. Nothing so amazing that a legendary hero would be able to vanquish an evil sorcerer or anything grandiose like that, but more than reliable enough to get the job done for simply fighting monsters and/or defending yourself against some bandits. If nothing else, it wasn't bad at all for a random Hylian girl who was just barely getting her foot out of the door.

She might still be a bit new at the whole "running a shop" thing, but her father taught her well.

Nova Arondale

Lena smiled at Nova's response. She was already liking her a lot better than that last customer. She was admittedly eager to get a good look at the large weapon, as she could already tell it wasn't your run-in-the-mill sword. She was also lucky that she was used to carrying heavy objects around, otherwise, this would have been difficult. Granted, she wasn't exactly strong enough to actually swing such a large sword around, but simply carrying it from the counter to the grindstone wouldn't be too much of an issue. Even if it wasn't by much, Lena was stronger than she looked.

When she heard the question, Lena blinked "...eh?...nowadays, yeah. It wasn't always this busy, but there's been a big boom in business lately. I don't really keep up with current events enough to know if there's an actual reason for it, but needless to say, no one's complaining. I'm sure not...well, unless I get some pompous idiot coming at me with an impossible demand like the last guy who was here, but those have thankfully been few and far between." She then looks to Nova curiously "How about you...pardon the assumption if I'm wrong, but you look like you've done a lot of traveling around. Is there a lot of monster activity out there?"

As she waited for a response, she got to work, starting up the grindstone and using it to smooth out the worn edges of Nova's blade. Due to the sheer size of the blade, it was going to be a somewhat long process, especially since she had to be careful not to smooth it out too much in any given area, but she was confident she could handle it. And she had no problems with working while speaking with Nova. In fact, it was quite the contrary; some small talk while she worked would be nice for a change.

As Nova introduced herself, Lena smiled and nodded. "No worries...I'm not exactly big on formalities myself, so no harm done. Either way, name's Elena Clarke...but feel free to just call me "Lena". Everyone else does."

Lena frowned at the confirmation of monsters still roaming the fields, up to including groups of them openly attacking traveling merchants. Letting out an annoyed sigh, she muttered quietly "I was afraid of that...looks like I'll have to just buy the ore...ugh...it's so expensive though..." She frowned. While her decision to pre-make a lot of basic equipment was working in her favor, it ate through a lot of her supplies at a faster rate than usual, and she was low on some specific ores. Sure, she could just buy them, but it was less expensive to mine for the ore herself; provided she could actually find someone who'd be willing to keep the monsters off her back.

That was the tricky part, though. There were a lot of mercs who were willing to do bodyguard work, but most of their fees were a bit too high for it to be worth the trouble. The one time she did manage to find someone who was willing to do the work for cheap, he turned out to be an absolute joke. He was only interested in fighting monsters, and got bored when all he had to fight were a bunch of "weaklings". He then proceeded to straight-up abandon Lena when he caught sight of some Lizalfos, forcing her to abandon her plans altogether and head back to the city with barely anything to show for it. A miserable experience all around.

Then he had the gall to show up at her shop a few days later and demand to know why she hadn't paid him yet, which she told him in no uncertain terms that she wasn't about to give a single rupee to a useless bodyguard who couldn't even be bothered to do the one thing he had been hired to do. Needless to say, she wasn't going to be hiring him again. She had briefly considered asking Nova, but decided against it, since she didn't want the young adventurer to feel pressured into doing it just because she was in the middle of repairing her blade. She wouldn't say no if she offered it to her on her own, but otherwise, she had no intentions of bringing it up.

Either way, when faced the question about her time as a blacksmith, she smiled a bit. "Professionally, I've only been doing it for about two and a half months. Though, I've been training for it since I was little. My dad's a blacksmith in Kakariko, and he started teaching me everything he knew when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I'd be lying if I said it was easy, but apparently I had a natural talent for it, just like he did when he started learning...or so he says. "Like father, like daughter", I guess. And now here I am; just recently turned 21, and I have a shop of my own. I've still got a lot to learn, but I can't say I haven't been enjoying it...some setbacks aside."