The Things We Repair
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 10: The Spaces Between Words
The north wall of the cattle shelter began to rattle whenever the wind crossed the feed field.
Daniel tolerated the noise for two days.
On the third morning, after hearing it through breakfast and again while he opened the feed alley, he set down his coffee and said, “Either that panel comes off today or I do.”
Neris looked up from the communication diagram spread across the kitchen table. “You intend to leave the farm because of a sound?”
“No. I intend to remove the sound before it drives me into the bush.”
Her ears angled forward. “This appears disproportionate.”
“You’ve been hearing it for three days too.”
“I assumed it belonged to a machine you understood.”
Daniel put on his coat. “That’s insulting in at least two ways.”
The sky over Moose River was the colour of unpolished steel. A hard northwest wind moved across the cut hay fields, gathering speed where the land opened before striking the shelter wall. Behind the sheet metal, the cattle stood deep in fresh bedding, their breath rising through the open ridge vent. The older cows ignored the noise. Two younger animals flinched every time the panel snapped against its support.
Daniel had already laid out cedar bracing, galvanized bolts, washers, and a strip of rubber cut from a damaged conveyor belt. Neris carried the impact driver, a sensor wand, and the communicator linked to Takuhai.
ER’s core remained in the ship beyond the trees. His voice reached them only because the encrypted communicator could maintain a narrow relay across the farm.
“Wind velocity at the shelter face is thirty-nine kilometres per hour with gusts above fifty,” he reported.
Daniel looked at the grey sky. “I can feel it.”
“Quantification remains useful even when discomfort is obvious.”
After his first deliberate attempts at humour in town, ER had begun collecting English idioms with the determination of a scientist studying unstable compounds. He now treated ordinary farm conversation as a live test environment.
Daniel removed a warped fastener. “Hand me the impact driver.”
Neris passed it before he finished speaking.
“Thanks.”
She braced the replacement timber while he tightened the bolt. Their shoulders touched beneath the shelter overhang. This time Daniel adjusted only enough to give her room to work.
“You have become accustomed to working with me,” she said.
“Seems so.”
“You no longer explain every action.”
“You don’t need me to.”
One ear turned toward him. “That is trust.”
Daniel looked at her over the timber. “Yeah. I suppose it is.”
The statement sat more directly between them than either expected. Daniel returned to the fastener. Neris checked the brace twice though the first reading had been sufficient.
They fitted the rubber strip behind the lower edge and tightened the new support.
The wall remained quiet through one gust.
Then it rattled again, higher and harder than before.
Daniel closed his eyes.
Neris’s muzzle softened. “You appear disappointed.”
“Thank you for the analysis.”
She walked the length of the wall, listening. Her ears moved independently, one following the broad vibration of the panel while the other tracked sharper impacts beneath it.
“The lower fastener was not the primary source.”
“You could’ve mentioned that before we replaced it.”
“You stated that it was the problem.”
“And you believed me?”
“At the time, my trust was apparently excessive.”
Daniel laughed hard enough to fog his glasses.
They removed a second section of siding. A hidden horizontal support had split near a knot. Each gust flexed the crack, transferring vibration into the metal skin.
Daniel examined the break. “I don’t have another cedar length this size dry enough to use.”
“The shorter offcuts could be joined.”
“Not in a place that takes this much wind.”
“Takuhai can print a connector.”
“From the feedstock you’re saving for your dimensional systems? No.”
Neris’s ears shifted back. “The required volume would be small.”
“Small isn’t the same as replaceable.”
The answer surprised her. Daniel had accepted every boundary she set around advanced technology. Now he was defending Takuhai’s resources from her own impatience.
“Then what do you propose?”
Daniel looked toward the machinery shed. “There’s an old ash tongue from the hay wagon.”
“A tongue?”
“The beam that connected the wagon to the tractor.”
“Your language assigns anatomy to equipment at an alarming rate.”
“Wait until we get to universal joints.”
They crossed the yard to the shed. The old wagon tongue lay behind stacked mineral tubs and a retired silage blower. It was heavy, weathered, and straight through most of its length. Daniel cut away the cracked end while Neris inspected the grain.
“The material contains several old stress lines,” she said.
“Which is why we use the sound part.”
“You preserve damaged objects because portions may remain useful.”
“You say that like it’s strange.”
“On many worlds, material recovery is centralized.”
“Around here, central recovery is forty kilometres away and closes before chores are done.”
The road-accessible Moose River district was not completely isolated, but distance shaped every decision. The nearest cooperative carried feed supplements, fencing materials, fuel, and common machinery parts. Anything specialized required a longer drive south, good weather, and the confidence that the cattle would not choose that exact day to break something important.
Daniel cut the ash beam to length. Neris proposed a scarf joint. He proposed doubling the support with steel plates. They combined both methods: a long timber joint to distribute the load, farm steel outside it, and rubber isolation between wood and siding.
The first plate hole landed over an old nail buried inside the beam.
The drill bit snapped.
Daniel stared at the broken end.
“The object has failed,” Neris said.
“I had noticed.”
“I was not criticizing.”
“You’re improving.”
They extracted the bit, shifted the pattern, and drilled again. By midday the wall stood quiet even when the next gust flattened the grass across the feed field.
The younger cattle stopped flinching.
Daniel and Neris sat on the truck tailgate with coffee, tea, and sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. The shelter blocked most of the wind. The remaining cold sharpened every smell: hay, cedar, cattle, coffee, the faint spice of Neris’s fur, and diesel cooling in the loader.
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