Silent Repairs

After finishing Last Call, my attention turned to the next genre chosen in the poll, a Fantasy. During that process, a recent character flooded back into my mind, Elara Finch. Rather than forgetting about her, something I have done far too recently, I wanted to pause and explore a quieter, more personal moment from her life as a tinker. While I intend to explore her life in more detail later, I wanted to create something more intimate for my patrons.

Some fantasy stories begin with clashing steel or spells hurled across a battlefield. This one begins elsewhere. It opens in the narrow space between noise and stillness, inside a hidden workshop where patience matters more than power and restraint carries its own weight. This is a story shaped not by conquest or spectacle, but by careful hands, measured choices, and the kind of silence that presses close when no one else remains.

At the center of this moment is Elara, a tinker whose reputation is built on taking work others refuse. Her craft is meticulous, deliberate, and deeply personal. In her world, magic is not something shouted into existence. Rather it should be threaded, guided, and coaxed into place alongside brass, gears, and stone. Every repair leaves traces behind, and each decision carries meaning, whether it is seen or not.

Silent Repairs lingers in a single space on a storm-worn night, exploring what it means to create without an audience, to work without certainty, and to confront the quiet companions we carry with us. This patron-exclusive story is written for those who enjoy an intimate fantasy, craft-driven magic, and the moments that breathe between the lines. If that sounds like your kind of story, you can unlock the full tale, and my entire back catalog, by becoming a patron for $2 a month.

Silence had been Elara’s constant companion, even as it fought the din of her workshop whenever she focused on a project. Yet now, as her fingers probed through the chest cavity of her latest creation, silence settled about her inside the workshop like a held breath. After adjusting several components, she straightened her back and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.

Ever since she’d completed her hidden workshop, silence had been her most steadfast associate throughout her work. Several times when she’d taken jobs that other tinkers had refused, its presence pressed down upon her, threatening suffocation. Yet after activating the automaton’s internal systems for the first time, that familiar companion had retreated from her presence.

It hadn’t vanished. After all, silence never went away. Instead, it diminished, while retaining its weight and texture, like pitted steel suspended just above her shoulders. As Elara stared at her damaged creation sprawled across the workbench, her oldest companion lingered nearby, watchful and patient, waiting for an opportunity to return.

She rolled her sleeves past her elbows and listened. The gears of the automaton’s secondary systems ticked away within its frame, vying against the pitter-patter of rain hammering against the workshop’s thin roof. The storm outside pressed in, eager and relentless, but the walls held.

Elara stepped forward and lifted a brass tube from beside the automaton’s shoulder. The soft lantern light glinted along its length as she turned it in her grip. After several seconds of examination, she laid it back down before studying the copper coils, braided gears, and conduits arrayed beside her creation.