All things turn into dark green water.

Help, I'm alive...

I met Ginny when I was a kid.

Back when I was little, the city was pretty much the same, just a bit smaller and less crowded.  I remember running through the streets like a certified hooligan while Ma was at work.  We'd try to find scrap metal and other valuables to resell.  After all, when you grow up in the Drench, even when you're a kid, the stress of the next meal is on your shoulders too.

One day, Ginny caught me red handed trying to take one of her tools off the bench outside the shop.  Back then, the garage looked impossible huge to me.  The signage, with bold, cursive letters spelling out "Ginny's Repairs" in a flash crimson, hadn't broken yet.  Ginny herself had a full head of red curls, thick as the Tangles out west.  Her green eyes were warm and shrewd, and her smile did not hold anger or frustration as she looked down at me, my arm firmly clasped in her hand- just disappointment.

Since that day, Ginny had taught me everything I know about engines and cars.  She'd find odd jobs for me around the neighborhood.  As I grew older, she started giving me legit work in the shop.  She's the reason I didn't turn the path of a full on thief.  After Ma died, she even let me stay with her in the apartment above the shop for a while until our family got sorted out.  In short, I owe Ginny a great deal.

So, that's why you'll find me here most days.

The building itself hasn't changed too much in the two decades I've been here.  The sign broke a few years back, but we'd been too busy with work to notice.  The crimson plastic still has that bright sheen, courtesy of being tucked neatly away under the Plates by Fistad's left foot.  The walls themselves, though, have aged considerably.  What used to be stark white walls with a bright blue and deep black lines along the top now looks more grey.  Rust spots tickle the outside of the building.  The black has all but washed away, and the blue looks more like dingy water than the bright sky on a clear day.  The casement windows are old and worn, and some of them you can't even crank open anymore.  Because it's so dark, even faded, the formerly white walls stand out, especially with the cheery looking like peering out from the windows.

The entrance to the building is a bright red door with glass windows, next to the garages.  The two garage doors to the bays are usually closed, but today we do have a delivery truck sitting in the bay needing some maintenance work.  A massive crimson, rolling toolbox is nearby the truck in waiting.  The other garage door is closed, with a large table covering the bay below.  Atop the table is scattered a plethora broken items, from watches and clocks to dehumidifiers and small generators, all in various states of repairs.  The floors are solid concrete with a multitude of oil stains and various paint spills.  The walls are lined with spare tires, parts, and a shelving unit filled to the brim with various mechanical parts - tiny gears, springs, and other bits and bobs needed for our more diverse repairs.  At the farthest wall in the back, a spiral staircase leads to the apartment above, where Ginny lives.

Myself? I am watching the front desk while Ginny is out on lunch break.  I am thumbing through an instruction manual for one of the dehumidifiers on the table, trying to decipher the problem with the machine.  A look of concentration is on my brow, with my free hand scribbling down musings and thoughts on a spare legal pad at the desk.  The desk itself has an almost antique computer for cataloging orders and repairs and not much else.  The counter itself is white, though where the customers stand and talk with our staff, you can see a well worn spot of brown from the wood showing through.  A sign at the front of the desk reads in large, black letters:  "Payment due before your item(s) will be returned."

The bell atop the door rings, dragging my attention out of the manual.  My dark eyes look up to see a familiar face.  "Cian!" I call to him with a smile growing across my face.  "What brings you to the shop?"

Iara

My heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender

@Cian

Pick yourself up, up off the floor
Wipe the tears from off your face, because the cops are knocking on the door

It is one of those days again, where he is just drifting around aimlessly. He had done what work he needed to do for the day; just some simple tasks for the person he is currently renting a room from and is left with nothing more on the schedule. What is different, is that he feels oddly alright for once. If you exclude him being affected by that odd algae that seems to make most people ill one way or the other. A scarf is covering the red rashes on his neck, fingerless gloves covering his hands. A simple shirt, denim jacket and worn jeans cover up the rest of the rashes spread out here and there across the rest his body. Apart from the slight itching, he feels like he is constantly about to get a cold.

Mentally, however. There is where he is feeling oddly alright. Despite the illness spreading through the city, he feels little of the usual anxiety that has been plaguing him since he got stuck in the lockdown. He has fallen into some sort of routine finally and has somehow managed to make himself just accept the situation in a way where he can more go with the flow. Take one day at the time and do what he can to keep things organised.

His stroll is as said aimless and he didn't plan on ending up by this very workshop. The red sign is what makes him stop and look, to dig through his memory until he figures out why it makes him so curious. It must be the sign Iara had talked about. The one by the shop she told him to come by if he wanted to. So he drifts closer, looking the front of the building over as he draws near, but does hesitate a moment before stepping through the red door.

He is surprised to see her at the desk. Perhaps he had subconsciously assumed someone else would be there and he would have to do some awkward explaining on why he is there. Her smile brings one to his own face, a friendly and a bit nervous one as he slowly walks towards the desk.

"Was out for a stroll and saw the sign, and remembered you had said I could come by. So I thought Why not come in and say Hi." He responds with a soft chuckle and stops to lean with his arms crossed on top of the counter.

CIAN

Help, I'm alive...

I think he looks a bit lighter than the last time I saw him, which is a good thing.  I wonder if he found a way to let go of whatever was plaguing him so badly last time we were at the Slog.  Whatever the case, I'm glad at least he seems to be getting along well.  I wouldn't classify Cian as a friend, but I'm pretty quick to jump on the side of anyone down on their luck.  He certainly seemed it last time.

"It's good to see you," I say quite honestly, trying to ease some of the nerves I see written across his face.  I guess my mood probably had seemed a bit off when we parted last time.

I look down at the booklet in my hand, which is open to a page with some schematics of the dehumidifier.  I quickly flip the booklet around toward Cian, taking the pen in my other hand to point at the refrigerating coils located inside the machine.  "What do you think of this thing?"  I say, my face openly hopeful and expectant.  "The machine was made in a factory in Garanenz, so I thought maybe you might be more familiar with it."

"The damn thing doesn't seem to be cooling down the air enough to get the water to condense," I saw thoughtfully, glancing back over at my notes, while lightly flopping the manual, as if to signal to Cian to take it.  "It had coolant still, so I'm not sure what the issue is."

Iara

My heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender

Pick yourself up, up off the floor
Wipe the tears from off your face, because the cops are knocking on the door

Her observation is correct that he is a bit lighter and his smile brightens when she states it's good to see him, happy that there are indeed no hard feelings around after their first meeting where he accidentally disturbed her hunting. His expression changes to a more curious one when she turns the manual around for him to have a look, and he leans closer to it with narrowed eyes.

"Hm..." He hums quietly and looks the page over while listening to her explanation of the problem, then takes the manual to look things over more closely. "Not sure I've poked around with this model, but they can't be that different. I assume it's been cleaned out properly so there is no blockage anywhere and no filters being clogged?" He glances up at her over the edge of the page. What he asks might be a very obvious thing to do as one of the first things when checking for the issue, but he asks it anyway mostly out of habit of going through all the steps.

He looks through some pages in the manual with a thoughtful look. "Problem with some fans, perhaps? If you're unlucky, there could be some electrical issue messing with some signals." He muses, but so far they are all guesses until they have had a chance to go through all the possible steps.

CIAN

Help, I'm alive...

Starting with the obvious issues is the way any mechanic tries to solve a problem.  After all, when you hear hoofbeats, you should think of horses instead of zebras.  I'd already ruled out the most common issues for the machines - the ones that often land them in our shop.  "No blockages, no rust spots on the coils or hardware that I can find," I answer his questions without a fuss, trying my best to get him up to speed so he can properly assess the issue.

I watch intently as he pours over the manual with more expert eyes.  There is excitement in my eyes because, as any mechanic will tell you, problem solving is the most fun part of the job.  I sit, like a child waiting for a gift on their birthday, as he thumbs through the pages.

The fans.  I lean back, looking again at the scribbled notes I had taken while evaluating the machine earlier.  I did write something about the fans.  "The fans..." I muse to myself as I look at the legal pad.  "Ah!"

"They were running, but not great.  I added some grease and scraped off some rust and gunk," I look back up at him from the pad.  "But they still ran like shit.  Motor for the fans was working fine."

Then, I think back to how he said it would unlucky if it turned out to be an electrical issue.  Doom settles in as I realize that if the mechanical parts are more or less sound, it's a wiring issue.  "Ack," I exhale with resignation, my nose pinching up in annoyance at the thought of rewiring the machine.  "It's probably the connecting wires to the fan, then, or something wrong with the power supply cables."

Iara

My heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender

Pick yourself up, up off the floor
Wipe the tears from off your face, because the cops are knocking on the door

He nods along while she goes over what she has checked and done already, secretly relieved she is just kindly answering his questions. He has met people before that got all offended by such questions, even if he never asked them in any accusatory way, but sometimes it could be the most simples thing being overlooked. Like when you think everything is connected, but there is power plug not being pushed in all the way.

She reacts when he mentions the fans and Cian looks up from the manual again to watch her check her notes. His head tilts curiously to the side and he hopes that this might be the issue then. If only for them to know what is wrong. "The fans themselves might need to be replaced anyway, even if they have been cleaned." He taps his fingers softly against the page and nods slowly with a small frown while listening.

A hint of a grimace appears when she mentions the wires and he gives her a more consoling look at her expression. "Might normally not be too difficult, but I've come to understand that new things of... Anything are in very low supply nowadays and there might be little point in replacing the wires with other old ones." If one was even more unlucky, all that work would be for nothing if the second-hand cables were not in a good state either.

"If they need replacing, it would only be proper to get all new ones right away. But, maybe there's something else wrong. Perhaps the compressor gets overworked and can't circulate the coolant as it should? Though you often see frost on the coils if that happens, and the whole thing shuts off as a fail-safe to not overheat." He continues, looking through the manual some more while talking.

CIAN

Help, I'm alive...

He mentions replacing the fans, which I jot down on the legal pad, under a heading titled "next steps to check".  I was not yet completely resigned to the idea of replacing the wires.  It was difficult, finicky work before you even considered the fact that finding that much copper wire that hasn't already been torn out of cars and buildings is pretty impossible these days.

"You're telling me..." I say with a sigh as he mentions the low supplies.  I do write in comically small lettering underneath the idea of the fans to check wire supplies and consider rewiring.  Avoidance is a tactic that I am quite fond of, even if it has no practical results to speak about.

Cian continues to ramble possible on about the compressor, but mentions frost on the coils.  I pause my writing to flip pages back to my notes about the coils, looking for any sign of frost.  Disappointment is written across my face as the answer, though.  No mention of frost.  No sudden shut offs.

Although...

"Maybe I didn't run it long enough," I say with a thoughtful expression.  At the top of the list for next steps I add 'run the machine for a while' with a smaller note about the compressor nearby, so that my scatterbrain maintained it's thought process.

I tap on the top of the counter before standing up, waving for Cian to follow me with a hand tightly clutching my notepad toward the opposite end of the shop where the offending lump of metal sits uselessly on top of a table next to an extension cord, side paneling pulled off to reveal the inner workings.  Also scattered nearby on the table is a few broken clocks, a generator, and other various appliances in various states of repair.  I plug in the machine and flip the switch.  A couple of fans pathetically stutter to life and the coils begin to shudder and hum.

I start to head toward the back wall, planning to rifle through the various drawers in search of wires or replacement fans.  "Let me know if you see anything unusual," I call back to him as I make my way with purpose toward the shelves.

Iara

My heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender

Pick yourself up, up off the floor
Wipe the tears from off your face, because the cops are knocking on the door

Cian turns pages back and forth through the manual in search of more ideas, but there could be so many things and still the more possible ones had already been mentioned. It doesn't help with thinking when he's not feeling completely well either, with all the rashes and the feeling of more or less having a cold.

He watches Iara make notes as he goes on about a few more possible faults, checking the manual yet again to make sure he has not forgotten something obvious. He might have, but if so, it doesn't become apparent to him at this very moment. So when she stands and waves for him to follow, he closes the manual and sticks it under one arm while following along through the shop.

Looking around, a small smile tugs at his lips. "This reminds me of home." He mumbles quietly. This shop isn't as cramped as his parents' one, but the sight of the table with all the broken things scattered about is all too familiar.

The sound of the fans receives a disapproving look from him and he makes a bit of a face. He puts the manual aside and leans on the table to stare closely at the dehumidifier, as if he's watching a mischievous child and just waiting to be able to catch them in the act of doing something they shouldn't. "Will do." He responds without taking his eyes away from the machine. "The fans do sound unhappy, though. They spin alright enough right now, but perhaps they fail when they need to work harder."

CIAN

Help, I'm alive...

My mind is too focused on the task at hand to pick up on Cian's muttering to himself.

I'd probably relate pretty well, though.  I'm not sure when it happened, but now if someone asked me to describe home, I sure as shit wouldn't be describing the shoebox of an apartment I live in.  I wouldn't even describe my childhood home, though that'd be more likely.  Nah, I'd almost certainly describe the shop in loving detail, down to Ginny's knowing grin as she oversees everything.

I make my way to the wall and I hear Cian's voice.  I listen carefully, even as my hands make quick work sliding drawers open and shuffling through obscene amounts of stuff that had been collected over the years.  "Hmm," I think about his statement about working harder.  The machine itself had two settings:  on and off.  Right now, it was hardly capable of being 'on', considering it couldn't do its job.  That would point to another reason for the struggle - more support for the wiring or compressor theory.

I slam a final drawer closed and make my way over, a couple of small fans, a small compressor, and a bundle of wire balanced on my legal pad.  I slap them down on the table next to the dehumidifier and lean over, squinting at the coils.  "Come on," I mutter to myself, willing frost into existence.  "Come on, you son of a bitch."  I whisper in a sweet, low voice to the coils.

Then, at the edges of the coils, a crystalline shape begins to take shape.  It starts off small, but begins to grow at near the joint of the coil.  Standing up straight, I begin to laugh with my whole chest, a golden sound, and then I twirl about, scotting around on my tip-toes for a second as I dance for joy for a brief moment.

"Alright!" I say, my voice bright and cheerful.  I turn towards Cian with a large smile and glimmering eyes.  "Nice work for a dipund."  I let loose another laugh before flicking off the machine.

Iara

My heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender

Pick yourself up, up off the floor
Wipe the tears from off your face, because the cops are knocking on the door

The dehumidifier continues to be stared at intently by Cian while he half listens to the noises it makes, half to the sounds of Iara searching around in the drawers. At least nothing dramatic is happening. No sparks flying, no smoke rising. Apart from not working the way it really should, the machine is behaving decently under his watchful gaze.

When Iara comes back, he pushes away from the table and takes a step aside to make room for her to have a look herself. He observes her and her muttering makes a hint of a smile tug at a corner of his mouth. Had it been him staring and muttering like that, with the thought of frost in mind, he would suspect he made it appear by magical accident if it did indeed appear.

To his surprise, frost does appear all by its own and he huffs a short laugh at both it and her joyful reaction, but he feels happy too over the problem showing itself. It really is quite amusing, how one can have such happy reaction, but it's more about actually discovering what might be wrong than being happy over the machine being broken at all.

The dipund comment causes him to laugh again and he shakes his head with a smile. "Well, I'm a bit better with this than sneaking through the wilderness." He responds with a grin and gives the dehumidifier a gentle pat. "Hopefully this is the only thing wrong with it. Or at the very least, we've located some of the issues."

CIAN