I don't think there are any warnings, and it belongeth to me, Jared G. Juckiewicz.
It was still light out when Michael and I returned from our expedition. Indeed, the sun had barely begun to descend, marking it as just a little after noon. Sara was plittering about in her garden, and Vixen and Lydia were helping her. Contrary to most expectations, Wolfsblood and Kitsune make good gardeners. Both kindreds have the strength and the dexterity it requires. And rare is the animal that will trespass where our sorts frequent. They looked up as our pickup pulled into the drive, and as we exited we were asked what had happened. See we had given the impression that we meant to spend the entire day, in town, shopping for tools. And knives. Possibly a new rifle for Michael. Fishing gear. You know. Manly things. Well. That plan went awry at our first stop. Which I promptly explained with much chagrin.
See, we’d started at the DIY shop. Just wandering up and down the aisles, at first, looking at tools. Making the odd comment. It wasn’t until we reached the aisle home to such things as hammers, picks, and most importantly, axes, that the trouble began. See, Michael chose that moment to announce that, actually, he was needing a new axe. So we began discussing the various merits of the various sorts. Double-bitted heads, daggered heads, heavy splitting heads, thinner cutting heads. Fiberglass handles as opposed to wood hafts or plastic ones. I personally favour wood myself. A hardwood, for preference. Oak or Ash. Hickory or possibly Maple. Possibly Alder or Poplar, under the right circumstances. I have a lot of experience with axes. We then wound up debating haft length, and materials for the head, and balance. It got a shade on the heated side.
Michael, being as he is, decidedly young, not more than a few decades, was quite taken with the idea of one of the newer axe styles going about. Call it a hand-and-a-half, haft-length wise. Too long to be easily swung one-handed, but not long enough to be worth wielding as a proper two-hander. With a modern fiberglass haft. The head, with broad, sweeping flanges jutting out just behind the blade (useful for splitting wood, less so for other things), manufactured out of some sort of hardened composite. Well, I took issue with this preference. Perfectly reasonably, too. The weight in that design is off, to my experienced mind. And I demonstrated this. Slipping the cover off the head, and then putting it through a set or practice swings. Twirling it over my wrist, hooking it round over my head, switching it from hand to hand, and from a forehand to a backhanded grip. Spinning and tossing and juggling it. And then I did the same thing with a more traditional sort. And just about decapitated a manager. Had I been less skilled, I’d never have managed to stop the swing before it had sunk into his neck.
We may have been asked to leave after that. And it had kind of put a damper on our shopping day. I reckon, we go back in a few days with an apology, and a promise to never do it again, and things will be fine, after the manager has had a chance to cool down. But Michael was a shade on the embarrassed side. And didn’t take kindly to me growling the whole way out of the store. No one had been in any danger. I don’t kill unless I intend to. I don’t maim unless I intend to. But no one listened, and so we returned. Poor Lydia. Sara abandoned her to calm Michael down. And Vixen abandoned her to hear my side of the story. And to laugh at me. To top it all off, I didn’t even manage to prove my point. I had the skill necessary to compensate for the altered balance and heft.
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