The Workshop at Dawn

The morning is a cool, hollow drum, where the scent of pine shavings lingers, settling like fine dust in the creases of workbenches scarred by heavy tools.

Sunlight, a thin, gold wire, threads through the single window's cracked pane, illuminating the ghost of a table leg waiting for the touch of a rasp's teeth.

There is a music in the stillness here, the sound of iron and oak at rest, the slow, deep breath of a room gathering its strength for the first blow.

A shadow shifts along the floor, a phantom hand reaching for the grain, while the anvil stands in cold, grey silence, dreaming of the hammer's heavy ring.