Free Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) by Pam Uphoff

the metal.
    "How many of those are you going to make?"
    She looked up, startled. "Dad!" she scrambled up and hugged him. "What are you doing here? Checking up on me?"
    "That, plus Havi said you needed this." He walked around his horse and unslung a wagon wheel.
    "Excellent. He promised to get all the wheels the same size, so if I make a rim that will fit this one, it'll fit all of them."
    Dydit crossed his arms and frowned down at her. "And you need to be more alert. I rode right up to camp without you noticing."
    "I can't meditate and work metal while paranoid."
    "Heh. Don't ever let Nil hear you say that."
    She rolled her eyes.
    "And your brother is taking advantage of you. You should be at home being coddled, not living out here like a savage."
    "If I was at home, I'd still be washing diapers and cooking. Probably spinning wool for Mother and keeping an eye on Topaz while minding the baby." She shook her head at her father. "That may be more 'ladylike' than magically purifying and forming iron, but it isn't less work, and I prefer this."
    "Rustle . . . I thought you'd get sick and tired of this, quickly. I thought you'd come back home."
    " Sorry, Dad. But, if you want to ease my burden, take the Terrible Twins home, so my grass lasts longer."
    "But then you'll be stuck here," he protested.
    "No, the wagon will be stuck here. I can always hop on Junk and be home in two days. Well, three, maybe."
    H e grumbled, and produced dinner; fresh bread and a good sized ham, tubers that she roasted in the coals of her fire, and fresh fruit. "Your mother said she'd bet you left without any fruit at all."
    He admired Phantom, played with Xen when he woke, and in the morning took the Twins and her bearings away.
    She started on wheel rims, and used the smaller leftover iron for harness rings and buckles.
    The days got longer, and Xen grew steadily and started crawling. Which added mobility to the challenges he already presented.
    The Auld Wulf was her second visitor, and he came on a bad day, when a fussy baby had kept her up all night and the wash wasn't even started.
    He simply held out his hands for the baby. "Sleep. Washing diapers will be good for my soul."
    She slept most of the day, and rousted herself out only because she felt so hungry.
    How he washed the diapers she couldn't imagine. They were brilliantly clean, fluffy and smelled of some odd perfume. He'd washed everything and produced dinner and a relaxed and happy baby. "Look, a tooth."
    "Ah, is that what the problem was?" She was relieved. "I thought I was doing something wrong. Besides having a son, instead of a daughter."
    "No you're doing everything right. I'm afraid teeth happen." He smiled down at the boy. "It's just a matter of fooling with a witch's immune system, to let her have sons. I really wouldn't have done this to you, if I'd been alert enough to be thinking . But I was half dreaming and making a baby god with you seemed a wonderful idea."
    "How many babies have you raised?"
    "Oh, none of my own. For a man who's over a thousand years old, I've remarkably few children. But anyone who spends any time around Harry pretty much has to learn."
    "Most likely. " She studied him. "A thousand years?"
    " Fourteen hundred, give or take a decade. I suspect I skipped a great deal of it. You get to where there's just been too many people who . . . aren't there any more, too many years, too many odd expectations pulling you apart. You just stop keeping track of time, go hide in the wilderness."
    "Is that how you dealt with the dark ages after the comet?"
    " When the comet fell . . . there was so little warning, we charted its course, we knew it would be close, that the Moon might affect it, but that we couldn't calculate, and we had so little time. We tried to move it, you see, but it was too far away for us to touch it, and then it came so fast we didn't have time. We shoved the pieces as far north as we could, we thought since it was aimed north of the equator and with the