Elara stood by the irrigation manifold in Sector 7. She didn’t need to look at the pressure gauges to know something was wrong; she could feel it in the floorboards. The secondary pump was vibrating at a frequency that suggested a misalignment in the coupling.
To her left, two interns—a frantic young man named Dax and a quiet girl named Sola—were panicking.
“It’s the pressure valve,” Dax insisted, reaching for a heavy wrench. “We need to crank it down before the alarm trips.”
Elara’s hand twitched. Her muscles fired. He’s wrong. If he cranks that valve while the pump is misaligned, he’ll shear the bolt. Then the whole sector floods.
The “Vanguard” surged in her blood. The script was written: Step in. Take the wrench. Align the pump with a precise kick and a three-quarter turn. Save the day. Be the hero.
It would take ten seconds. It would silence the noise. It would fix everything.
But she remembered the Caelum Lily. She remembered the cost of being the only one who could keep the sky from falling.
She clasped her hands firmly behind her back—a physical lock against the urge to intervene.
“Dax, put the wrench down,” Elara said. Her voice wasn’t a command; it was a calm observation.
Dax froze, looking at her with wide eyes. “But the pressure is rising, Ma’am. We have to—”
“You’re reacting to the symptom, not the source,” Elara said, stepping closer but not crossing the line into their workspace. “Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Close them. Tell me where the vibration is coming from. Is it the valve, or is it the floor?”
Dax hesitated, then closed his eyes. Sola did the same. The pump whined. The floor hummed.
“The floor,” Sola whispered first. “It’s… it’s shaking the soles of my boots.”
“Good,” Elara said. “If the valve was the problem, the pipe would be shaking. If the floor is shaking, what does that tell you about the pump?”
Dax opened his eyes, the panic replaced by a flicker of understanding. “It’s off-balance. The mounting is loose.”
“Exactly,” Elara said. “So if you tighten the valve on a loose pump…?”
“I’d snap the line,” Dax realized, horrified.
“And then we’d all be swimming,” Elara said with a faint smile. “So. How do we fix the balance?”
She watched them work. It was painful. They were slow. They fumbled the shims. Dax dropped a bolt. Elara had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from snatching the tools and doing it with the blind efficiency of a veteran.
But she waited.
She watched Sola gently slide the shim into place, her movements careful and reverent, treating the massive pump like it was a living thing. Sola wasn’t fighting the machine; she was listening to it.
Elara realized that for twenty years, she had treated repairs as combat. She attacked problems. Sola was healing the problem.
When the pump finally settled into a smooth, rhythmic hum, the silence that followed wasn’t just the absence of noise. It was the presence of peace.
Dax wiped sweat from his forehead. “We did it. Sorry it took so long, Elara.”
“Don’t apologize,” Elara said. She looked at the pump, then at the interns. “You found the truth of the machine. Fast is usually just panic in disguise. You two were steady.”
Sola beamed.
Elara walked away, her hands still clean. She hadn’t turned a single bolt. She hadn’t saved the sector. But as she listened to the hum of the pump fading behind her, she realized she had done something far more permanent than a repair.
She had replicated herself. And in watching Sola’s gentle hands, she had learned that maybe, just maybe, the machines didn’t always need a soldier. sometimes, they just needed a nurse.
WE&P by:EZorrillaMc&Co.
Travel in Life 