Tea for Sarah

[arlenarkenstone]

With Thorn gone for a few days the furnaces are quiet and cold. Arlen doesn't like it that way, because he likes the heat and there is a kind of life and energy to the lab with his assistant around. It might not just be the furnaces and the glassblowing. It's kind of nice to work with somebody else again, and Arlen had forgotten that.
But he still has Aodhan. The teapot likes it in the lab and likes being used to make tea, and it has gotten very good at keeping out from underfoot. Probably it likes Thorn too.
When he knows Sarah is coming to visit, Arlen clears a space at one end of one of the big tables and sets Aodhan and some cups on tiles there. The cups are kind of chipped from him and Thorn using them around the lab but they are clean, and the tiles are scratched and marked up because they're the heat-resistant kind that they use around the glassworks to set super hot metal and glass on. It is not a pretty table that he has set up but it is the best he can do. The whole lab is one huge room big enough to be an auditorium and the traditional furnace takes up a lot of one end of it and Arlen looks very small sitting alone at one end of a table in the far corner, huddled up and waiting with his hands under his arms to keep warm. Not that it's all that cold but it seems like it is by contrast.

Comments

[arlenarkenstone.livejournal.com]

"There will be an extensive testing process, running... fluids through it, something of the same viscosity as his blood." He looks at the little cakes and very delicately picks one up. He does not bother wearing his gloves in the lab. "He has the manual dexterity I lack, and he is... of an artistic bent..." Thorn reminds him just a little bit of Einrich in some ways. "He has learned glass blowing very quickly, and what we are doing is especially delicate work. We made much of this as practice." He gestures at the chemistry equipment that fills a couple of the tables. Beakers and alembics and retorts and pipes and tubes and vials of glass. There was a lot of practice.

The teapot hops again and wriggles and settles down on the hotplate.

[sarah-branigan.livejournal.com]

She looks over the equipment again as he explains. She's had enough familiarity with Schreber's lab to know what most of the items on the tables. Briefly, she wonders where Daniel gets all his equipment, and if he needs any more.

"Thorn is a student at my school," she comments after another sip of tea. "I don't see him often but I know he takes very seriously whatever he puts his mind to."