The town
blacksmith was baffled as to why I wanted a metal barrel, especially one that
was watertight. It took him weeks to get it done, and he went on to tell me
about how he had to fold the edges of sheets together and then hammer them into
a single piece as he bent the barrel around. I blacked out halfway through the
explanation, but nodded and gave the appropriate ooh and ahh to recognize the
greatness of his accomplishment. Compared to that, casting pipes of molten
copper had been simple, but he had come through for me.
I used my
cart to get everything back to my place. I started with the pipes, sealing them
together with a resin as welding and screwed fittings wouldn’t be invented
until I did it myself. Technological progress in the Fairy Tale Realms was
nonexistent. With the pipes in place, I then used a wooden crane and a
complicated pully system to lift the metal barrel up on top of my outdoor pizza
oven.
It took
many trips to the nearby stream and up a shaky ladder to fill the thing, and
then I put the lid on, lightly tapping it into place with a mallet. It wasn’t
on so tight that I couldn’t get it off, but it wouldn’t blow away, either.
And then I
waited.
I used my
hand to roughly take the temperature every couple of hours.
It was
slow, but then I didn’t want the dragon scale to boil the water, so I needed
the layer of stone between it and the barrel.
By the next
morning, I gave it a try.
I turned on
the spigot inside my house. Glorious hot water poured out and onto me. I had
set the spigot up high, just a straight shot over from the outside, but it
worked out because I had my first hot shower in months. The first one ever in
the Realms, too.
I’m going to need a shower curtain.