As Kurt spoke, he actually took out the flatbread he had been treasuring against his chest again. The leaves wrapped around it had softened from his body heat, and the exposed bread was damp with sweat and had grown wrinkled.
"I'm still hungry! Hungrier than before, in fact."
Noticing Ruger's gaze, he began stuffing the bread into his mouth as he spoke.
Ruger felt more relaxed around Wizard Apprentices, and he certainly hadn't expected this god to pull out some bread and start eating.
Not far away, the hammer paused briefly, then rang out again.
Ruger's gaze instinctively swept past Kurt's shoulder toward the sound.
"Don't worry. As long as I pretend I'm attending to a customer, Ethan won't scold me." Eating his bread, he raised his eyebrows smugly. "You should know that some customers are very difficult. Usually, they haggle, and those are still the decent ones... The worst ones pick out a whole pile of faults before they even start bargaining. When that happens, you mustn't refute everything. You have to play along, pretend you're in a bind, then push back a little on a few points before lowering the price a bit..."
Ruger stared blankly at him.
Kurt's self-satisfied manner genuinely puzzled Ruger.
He talked on with easy confidence, utterly absorbed.
On his own island, where he held absolute control, it was perfectly normal for him to do something he wanted to do.
It was just that Ruger had seen so many people run wild on their own turf that someone choosing to be a blacksmith's apprentice was difficult to imagine, and a little hard to understand. In truth, this wasn't simply about being a blacksmith. Viewed another way, he was fulfilling his childhood dream and doing what he wanted in a place under his absolute control.