It took him five months.
Not because the work itself required five months — Soran could have built it in three weeks if he'd let himself rush, which he didn't, because rushing wasn't how he worked and because this particular project had felt, from the beginning, like something that deserved the slower pace.
He'd started with the wood. Not compound lumber, not the standard stock he used for shelves and chairs and the dozen practical things people asked him for. He'd gone to the eastern boundary, to a stand of trees that had come down in a winter storm two years back, and found one specific trunk that had the grain he wanted — tight, even, the kind of wood that held detail without splintering.
He didn't tell anyone what he was making. Luna had asked, once, in December, and he'd told her —
