'Imagine something like this: it has no beginning, yet no end; it is not nothingness, yet it walks with nothingness; it knows not time, yet time is its friend.' At the break of dawn, Vulcan takes her tongs in hand to pluck out a half-molten glowing red lump of iron from the forge, placing it atop the Shaper and suddenly remembering what a priest from Lachedamon once told her. 'It is destruction, a destruction that cannot be avoided.' She gently flicks her wrist, then begins to beat the iron with her hammer. When Vulcan still lived in Minos, she would use any spare time she had to visit the hall where the memories of heroes of generations past were honored. There, she and her friends whiled away their time. She would say very little, preferring to listen attentively to the various sermons and debates of others. 'As for why man pursues eternity, we strike the earth with enough fervor as to seem mad, hoping to reveal some scant ruins with a handful of phrases carved upon them, only to proceed to worship them as fragments of some eternity itself. Even were we merely to confirm that the concept of 'eternity' even exists, that alone would be comfort enough to those of us fated to die one day.' Vulcan thinks back to the candles that stood before the statues in the hall back then. Those offered by the pilgrims in praise of their ancestors burned silently, somewhat resembling the very same people there to pray, awed and quieted by the words of the priests. Afterwards, the more their flames grew weaker, the more they danced madly out of control, much like the thoughts of those silent pilgrims. Once more she uses her tongs to pick up the iron that has just begun to take shape, and plunges it into the water. It hisses and sputters in surprise, before quieting down just as quickly. Once more she places the iron into the furnace, treating it the same way she did before, over and over again. Vulcan truly understands the Minoans' obsession with these grandiose sentiments, for Minos was far too ancient, and yet Minos was far too young. Its history stretched back towards infinity, yet it had nearly died. Though she is not particularly interested in either the worship of eternity nor dreaded mortality, to take it a step further, she believes this to be a common point between the cultures of Sargon and Minos, one bred in both their hearts. An irrelevant, elusive dream. She places the finished work upon her anvil. This unremarkable iron ingot was the daily task of Minoan blacksmiths, passed down from generation to generation. One day in the future, it will find itself in a different shape, or perhaps reforged into the already-broken spine of some equipment. She powers down the furnace, and takes out some honey biscuits she had baked at the same time. I care only for the present, she tells herself.