White grows into structure: a tower on a square base, head warm with sodium. It washes the rail into a silver ribbon and patinas every wound with honesty. The horn ahead voices once—short, flat, a shunt more than a warning. He gives the motor a respectful yes and keeps to iron.
The approach carries a pair of crash frames, offset like crooked jaws. One frame bites right shoulder of the gauge, the other left, staggered so anything tall must slow and think. He is not tall; he is fast and low and rude.
A yellow-painted shoe lolls against the inside web of the main—a derailer, tongue up like a bad joke. If the wheel kisses it, the speeder hops down the gravel to die polite. He sights the latch that pretends it has purpose and gives it a smaller one.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Metal blinks. The tongue slumps off iron like a drunk deciding to be decent. He passes with the respect men pay to traps that could have had them.
The frames leave him a slit of gauge if his chest becomes a diagram. He drops to boards. Teeth brush strap, then choose to be forgiving. Sparks feather backward; the deep-cycle does its dog-wants-off-table shiver and doesn't ruin him.
On the far side, the line opens into a yard throat scribed with ladder tracks—switches fanned like fingers, frogs set to hum if you listen. A road switcher idles two tracks over, long hood first, headlights dipped. Flats and tanks nap in the next finger. The yard owns its quiet with the confidence of a room that can slam doors if it wants.
A human stands at a throwstand in hi-vis gone brown. She looks at him once and then at the throat geometry and spends zero words: two fingers stabbed toward the center ladder, a flat circle motion that means keep moving, don't be clever.
He shows his left palm, nods the old nod, and threads the finger she gave him. The frog thumps under deck like a polite cough. The shunt horn accepts this reality with one short vowel and does not elevate it.
[MECHANICAL SCAN (PASSIVE)]
Steel speaks: points ahead set true; the next frog is honest; a derailer sits open on the ladder because someone here cares about not eating their own.
Chorus voices reach the crash frames behind and debate whether doors are suggestions. The first wave tries eating geometry and finds it chewy. A drop-net unspools from a catwalk on the right with the lazy meanness of someone told to recycle old ideas. He sights low at the cone dressings over a throw and edits the cable out of its religion.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Net slouches and kisses ballast instead of becoming a sky. Human silhouettes on the catwalk watch his hands and choose not to shoot because his hands keep being empty when they aren't choosing rope or bar.
A mimic in workwear drops from the parapet with both hands open like a man stopping a bus. It has knuckles with too many opinions and a mouth that wants to be somebody else's. He meets it with pry bar—short, ugly—under the jaw hinge, turns it into paperwork, and shoves it off into space. Wheels take what space forbids.
He noses through the finger where two cuts of cars stand quiet like arguments paused mid-sentence. Between them, a man in a harness holds a flare he forgot to light. Weight shift tells truth: he is deciding to live. Rhett gives him the courtesy of not forcing a choice. He keeps the throttle at a yes that lets a man keep his pride.
Bungalows blink by, doors shut, cords coiled. A scrap of chalk on a tie plate reads EAST 1 and then a line of symbols that might be a scheduling code or a prayer. A bell somewhere back in the throat coughs once; he gifts it a second with one brush of wire to post so the room can hear a god it already believes in.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
Some patience peels away to the west like iron filings to a magnet. It buys him three ties and a breath.
Glue rides the yard wind under the deck and tries a strap again. He yanks the regulator up and whispers hiss along the lash. Bond goes to dandruff; the bar edits the hand that wanted to be a clamp. The wheel skips and forgives him its surprise.
[MECHANICAL FABRICATION: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
The ladder fans him left, then right, then true east. He stays on the steel the woman gave him. The road switcher mutters a notch; a yard light winks once as if a human saw lightning in his path and decided it wasn't their problem.
A door yawns on a shop spur to his left—rolled three feet, left that way by a crew that will hate themselves in the morning. He wants belts and fuses and time. He keeps none of those wants. Motion owns him better.
[SPEED: LV.1 (Progress +1)]
Ahead, where throat becomes single mind again, two crash frames stand up in a staggered pair—fresh welds, cut plates bent new, the kind of engineering done by anger and drills. The gap they leave is honest only for men who trust arithmetic and hate being tall.
He can winch and die by committee, or he can lay down and believe.
He lashes the strap one hole tighter, lowers to boards, and sets the bar where ribs remember it. The frames' teeth begin their sermon; the deep-cycle hisses under his chest; the gap becomes a number he can recite with his spine.
Over the far frame, a flat car noses from shadow, tug bucking it along. Its corner rides high—footboards at knee. The tug's shunt horn coughs once, not a warning so much as a fact. The flat's wheel rims glitter. If he mistimes, he becomes light and then a story.
He doesn't own the timing. He rents it.
On his right, a throwstand sits cocked but honest; on the left, a human at a different stand watches him with the look of a person who has made more mistakes than this day can fit. She raises her hand in the old palm. He shows his left palm back. She drops hers and bites her lip until decision tastes like blood and points at the seam.
He trusts geometry and the way humans occasionally choose not to be awful.
The frame teeth comb strap. A buckle thinks about treason. He tells it a firmer future with ribs. Sparks go back into the night and pretend to be meteors.
The flat's corner reaches the seam the second his deck does. He hits the deck with his sternum and turns his head so his cheek gets the splinters not his mouth. The footboard takes a sliver of strap. The battery answers with a creak that sounds like a life negotiating with physics.
He pulls nothing back; he gives nothing extra. He stays the size of a decision.
The flat's wheel flanges sing the frog behind him. A kid's voice from somewhere on the tug says 'Clear.' It lands like a blessing used wrong and still working.
He comes out of the frames with breath that belongs to a different man and forgives himself later. The tug's horn gives one more short vowel—irritation or solidarity. He takes both.
Beyond the frames a long, narrow run points like a prayer to the east. Signs on the chain-link say EAST in letters painted by men who meant it hard. He gives the motor a little more himself and the motor returns part of it improved.
Behind, the crash frames meet the chorus and become an education. It sounds like patience realizing teeth bite both ways.
A catwalk crosses ahead. A person stands on it holding a drop-net rope with the concentration of someone trying to hold a family together with string. The net comes a half second late and lands in his wake like a plan that almost mattered. He does not spend a bead to prove anything; he spends a breath on not being petty.
The yard light's sodium becomes distance and then history. The night drops back to ruin's alphabet—dark, ducting, low sheds, a signal bungalow slumped open. Inside the bungalow, a single laminated card hangs by one pin: LOCK OUT—TAG OUT. He respects the sign by staying outside.
A side cut elbows into brush. Something four-limbed and careful paces him for ten meters and then decides to belong to a different story. He lets it.
The run lifts onto a short truss over a drainage slot. Wind changes to carry river's cousin again. The motor hiccups, then forgives. He feeds choke like apology and it accepts as if they were married.
Glue spit tries a last time at his ankle. He drags hiss across it and turns it into fish scales and regret. The bar does the rest.
[WIND CANNON: LV.1 (Proficiency +1)]
A cable strung lazy at a crossing aims to clothesline his chest. He sights the U-bolt at its belly and shortens the cable's ambitions to a memory.
He exits the yard geometry into a wind that thinks it owns him and does not. The rails get country-true for a dozen ties before the city remembers it is still here and throws him a new shutter in a freestanding frame, spite-bent, proud of its craft. The gap is honest only to men who refuse to sit up.
Beyond the lip the white returns—low, steady, not fussy. The horn ahead replies once, not impatient, not kind. Somewhere behind, a chorus learns to harmonize and holds the note like a class ending a song.
He lies down and makes a number of himself. The deck heats his chest. The strap complains and then keeps faith. Teeth choose not to count him wrong. The seam waits where the shutter ends and the next problem begins.
He commits to the gap while the night sets the next test.