Lesson’s End

Dearston listened to the slowing clicks as the laboratory’s gears wound down. He glanced at the window. Night has stolen the last light already. Midwinter had come far too soon, he decided.

After nearly twenty years teaching, he should have been more accustomed to the hours. That he’d keep a better eye on the time, but he’d lost himself grading the latest projects. Twenty years of young men and women who’d given all to the devices invented here, click-clacking and whistling into existence and motion.

Twenty years hadn’t been enough.

Though now, he’d seen something truly ingenious. Dearston picked up Trinity’s small mechanical from the desk, turning it in his hands. The leather straps would bind easily to his wrist. How the clicking gears propelled a trickle of light into a concentrated beam, he couldn’t say. But they would.

Dearston raised his head as something scratched at the window. Dark, indecipherable shapes moved beyond, mushing with the night.

Dearston knew he should stay the night in the lab. He had a cot for such nights. Nights where if he walked the streets, he’d risk his life with the wraiths twisting through the darkness.

Tonight, their town stood at the apex of activity.

Dearston strapped his student’s invention on his wrist. Trinity was a mechanical genius. He couldn’t decipher her design, but, tonight, he could prove it worked.

Standing, Dearston headed for the door. If not, she’d have the data to refine further. He hoped that wouldn’t be his last lesson.