The Things We Repair
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 7: Shared Weight
The sliding gate between the winter cattle shelter and the feed yard jammed before sunrise.
Daniel found it tilted in its track, one lower roller buried in frozen mud and the upper frame twisted where the previous night’s wind had caught the sheet metal. Six curious cattle stood behind it, breathing steam and waiting for breakfast with the unwavering conviction that Daniel had personally delayed it.
Neris joined him carrying a coil of cable, a pry bar, and the communicator linked to Takuhai.
“ER says Takuhai can operate without me for four hours.”
“ER agreed to that?”
“He described it as an inefficient allocation of courier personnel.”
“Sounds more like him.”
She wore the borrowed canvas jacket Daniel had altered to leave room for her tail. He had cut and reinforced the opening the previous evening without comment. The stitching was uneven but strong.
“You repaired the garment,” she said.
“It needed it.”
“You modified it for me.”
“Also needed it.”
He turned toward the gate before she could examine the answer too closely. Her eyes softened anyway.
Daniel wanted to lift the frame, clear the roller, and allow enough play for frost heave during winter. Neris studied the distortion and proposed bracing the upper track until it could no longer move.
“If you make it rigid, the ground will move and the frame won’t,” Daniel said. “Then something else breaks.”
“Movement caused the current failure.”
“Wrong kind of movement.”
“That distinction is convenient.”
“It’s also what the ground does up here.”
ER spoke through the communicator at Neris’s collar. “Daniel’s explanation is imprecise but consistent with available thermal-expansion and soil-freezing data.”
Daniel looked at the device. “I heard the first half.”
They tried the jammed gate once before feeding. The loader lifted the lower edge, but the upper frame twisted and dropped hard enough to make the waiting cattle surge backward. Daniel lowered it immediately.
“We stop,” he said.
Neris had already begun calculating a second lift. “The angle can be corrected.”
“Not with animals behind it.”
She looked through the rails at the herd and understood the rule beneath his tone: machinery could be risked; living bodies could not.
They fed the cattle through the smaller side gate before starting. Neris stood safely outside the pen while Daniel spread hay along the feed line with the loader. The animals watched her from a distance, large heads aligned over the rail.
“They are evaluating me,” she said.
“They’re evaluating whether you brought food.”
One cow extended her nose toward Neris’s sleeve.
Neris held still while the animal inhaled the unfamiliar spicy scent of her fur and the faint citrus-chocolate trace of grooming oil beneath it. The cow’s tongue emerged without warning and dragged across the canvas cuff.
Neris recoiled. “It tasted me.”
Daniel caught the bucket before her tail struck it. “She was checking for salt.”
“Your livestock evaluates visitors by licking them?”
“Not officially.”
The cow lost interest and returned to the hay.
“I have been rejected.”
“You didn’t bring food.”
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