Night invited the city to tell smaller truths. Thomas liked those better.
Christian closed the workshop early—"metal gets ideas after dark," he said. Patricia sang through the washing-up with her sleeves rolled; the soft armor of someone who had made peace with every water stain in the house. Thibault stacked plates into reckless towers and steadied them like a tightrope walker who'd learned humility.
Thomas waited for the household to set its tempo: kettle hiss, chair scrape, two beats of nothing, heart. He stepped into the spaces between.
The rug thinned the sound of his feet. The traitor board remembered it had been forgiven. The lamp flame made a tiny stutter—a wick learning to be certain—and then held.
A cork had rolled under the workbench earlier, defecting from duty. He coaxed it out and set it on the table's edge where it could reconsider existence. Then he practiced Authority, not with hands but with intent: a quiet stay pressed into the air around the cork. Not a command—just a vote added to a council that already leaned toward order.
The cork did nothing, which was exactly what he'd asked.
[SEQ] Authority (I) — Progress (2/3)
[SEQ] Tip: Pressure follows patience.
He didn't grin—grins make noise inside a person and noise leaks. Patricia would hear it like a spoon tapping. He liked when she knew he was content; he didn't like when the river heard it first.
"Pass me that lamp," Christian said, not looking up. Thomas slid it along the bench; the base rasped, metal telling a small truth. Christian nodded to himself, then to Thomas. "You listen to rooms. Rooms are often smarter than people."
People built them, Thomas thought. People get tired. He filed it under Christian: right in ways that don't know they're right.
Thibault cracked the window to taste the night. A couple argued in the language of gloves. A cart moved quietly out of politeness to doors. A cat auditioned for tragedy and got comedy.
"Drills?" Thibault asked.
Thomas nodded. Drills were arithmetic you could wear.
"Three crossings," Thibault said. "Each with a different cover."
First run: timed noise. Thibault set the house's metronome—teaspoon against cup (two taps), the lift and settle of a chair, the window nudged just enough for the hinge to consider squeaking and decide otherwise. Thomas moved when the spoon touched china, when the window breathed, when the chair sighed. The floor accepted him as another noise, not as an intrusion.
Second run: company. Thibault held a quiet conversation with his reflection—"The moon owes me money." "The moon doesn't keep receipts."—and Thomas walked in the shadow of his brother's voice. Words, it turned out, were good camouflage.
Third run: nothing. The hardest. Thomas reduced himself to calculation: weight across the metatarsals; heel kissing the floor but not insisting; knees learning the room's grammar; breath a rumor. He crossed and returned and felt the room accept him the way a ledger accepts neat columns.
He set the cork back where it belonged. The cork behaved, which was the point.
[SEQ] Daily (Optional) — Three silent crossings completed.
[SEQ] Reward: +5 XP.
"Rule for alleys," Thibault murmured from the window. "Walk like someone at the other end wants you to arrive."
"Even if no one wants me?"
"Especially then. Alleyways like confidence."
Patricia's voice drifted from the bedroom. "Thibault, let the child sleep."
"He's practicing being dull," Thibault replied. "It's exhausting."
"C'est vrai," Patricia said, already laughing, already a little asleep.
They doused the lamps until the room became contour and courtesy. Thomas lay on his pallet and held still until the house forgot his shape. He tried Authority once more, just a fingertip of settle pressed into the lamp's faint sway. The glass agreed as if it had decided to behave on its own. He liked it better when the world took credit.
He slept, and small things remembered their jobs.
—
The city practiced being shadow before the bells. Chimneys arranged themselves into new sentences. Thomas counted them like commas, not because he needed them but because they liked being counted.
Christian found him awake and conscripted him to common sense. A delivery crate sulked at the door. Its lid wanted to prove it was braver than its nails.
"If I pull here, it bites," Christian mused. "If I push there, it pretends not to know me."
Thomas set his palm to the board—be helpful, not proud. The grain remembered flexibility. The lid accepted the pry bar with dignity instead of splinters.
"Voilà," Christian said. "You're good at convincing inanimate objects to like their jobs."
"I'm practicing on animate ones," Thomas said, which came out mostly as humor.
The building woke. A neighbor thumped carpets with the conviction of a judge; upstairs, scales rehearsed until the idea of tune begged for a union; a boy in the courtyard negotiated a truce with gravity halfway through a handstand.
Patricia spread linen on the table and taught stitches names. "Backstitch knows regret and corrects for it. Running stitch is honest but too optimistic. Use it when you have help."
Thomas watched hands become sentences and matched breath to needle, needle to thread, thread to cloth. A pane wanted to award him something for patience; he pretended not to notice. Not all learning needs receipts.
He practiced a different kind of drill: negative space. He stood where people didn't step and learned how not to be in lines of travel. He moved a stool two fingers to the left and watched the room become more itself.
[SEQ] Daily (Optional) — Match three household rhythms.
[SEQ] Reward: +5 XP; Ledger: +Credit (minor).
He filed the credit under good manners that pay.
(…to be continued)