Nib's Smithy

Sparks fly here from before dawn to well past supper, and the whole street can tell Nib's mood by the color of them. This is where the town's tools come to be reborn — usually with 'improvements' nobody asked for. Kiko is the biggest customer and the biggest sigh: half his shop runs on Nib's contraptions, the other half he's afraid to plug in. Fig the carpenter drifts by most afternoons, leans in the doorway, and frowns at whatever's clamped in the vise — a frown that says 'it worked fine before you touched it,' though he never quite says it out loud. They've been bickering like this for years; it's practically a duet. Ask Nib about the well pump he fixed for the square and he'll grin: every seventh bucket, it plays a little tune, and no, he cannot turn it off, and no, he does not intend to try.