The first rays of sunlight that hit Meteor are dusty, dry, and bring in a powerful stench of burning or rotting deep within the city, forgotten by all under the rising sun. No matter when you came to the city, there always hangs the sting of ash, the padded brown of dried blood mingled with the sand, and the long, looming shadows of bodies or heads through tall, crude pikes. Still, there is life. There are the strays that fight for food and the orphans that do the same, the ravens that peck and prod at anything shiny or dying, and the weeds that continue to stubbornly endure the harsh sun and radiation. Meteor changes and grows everyday, but somehow, its essence never changes.

Shalnark is hit with this same air everyday, and that day was no different.

He woke much before the sun did, he questioned whether he had actually slept. He couldn't see the the sky from where he set up his work space, but the color and saturation of the light that peeked through the cracks in the walls onto his moving hands told him enough. It was dark at first, but it soon melted into a deep purplish light and gave his skin a glow as he tinkered away. The strip of light on his desk was glowing red when Senja got up and slung her large, leather pack over her shoulder.

Her leathered feet tried to slip quietly through the exit before she realized her nephew was already awake, immersed in his fantasies of mechanics and tech. Sighing, she let all the caution drop from her body. "How long were you awake?"

"Just a bit," he answered, trying not to let his voice slur from exhaustion. Setting the finished product in front of himself again, he tested it first before taking up the screwdriver once more. "You heading off?"

"Mafia calls. I have to find leads on who the snitch is in the drug trade."

"That's nice," he commented, cracking the case of the phone he stole wide open again. It was when he saw the glistening board glint in the dawn light that he realized this was supposed to be a secret from Senja. Hurriedly, in a way that seemed fluid, he tucked the phone into his collar and swept in the gas burner from the corner of his desk. The case of the phone was warm against his skin, but the motherboard made goosebumps crawl all over him.

Turned out this stealth wasn't even necessary as Senja wasn't even paying attention to him.

Shalnark's cheeks puffed out in a huff and he was going to complain, but something in her posture was off. She was hunched as she pressed lightly against the rotting wood she called walls, careful as she peeked around outside, and her fingers were tense. It was smart to be careful in an illegal community of outcasts, but this? His eyes narrowed as he took in her cautious gaze and bent knees, as if ready to leap back at any sign of danger. Something was up.

He took the opportunity to properly conceal the stolen phone bits before saying, "Senja." She jumped, and his lips twisted into a frown. "What are you looking at?"

She pulled her hand back from the wall, letting it hang loose by her side. "Nothing." She smiled, but the tightness in her voice was there. "I just thought I saw one of the dogs. They better not dig up the food supply again."

"Right." He supposed he'd have to scout out the area when he had time. Pulling out a crate with a kick, he tried to sit down when Senja grasped his arm, staring intently at him.

"Hold up. Stand still," she ordered, forcefully grabbing his face and prying his eyelids open. At his popping red veins and hanging dark circles under his eyes, she clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "Young man," she started to chide.

Shalnark rolled his eyes and pried her hold off his already aching cheekbones. "I just was up for a little bit, okay? I wanted to work on some stuff."

"Sleep is important, especially at your age! I understand you like tinkering but you need a break sometimes."

Shalnark pulled off of her. "It's not play. It's getting us food and medicine, so what's the big deal?" His scowl deepened even further and he could feel his own chest heaving. He hated the way how he wanted to childishly stomp his foot. "I can get us all we need, okay? You don't need to work for them anymore. You don't have to."

Senja's eyes widened in understanding. "Is this what this is about? The mafia?" She reached out, but he held the screwdriver in front of himself threateningly.

"No one likes them. And if my observations serve me right, you don't either."

Her hands dropped. "Shalnark, we just talked about this."

Crossing his arms, he turned his head away. He knew it looked silly and childish, but it felt good. The fact that Senja worked with the mafia helped them a lot in scraping by, but it didn't sit well with him at all. Many hated the mafia for being outsiders and trying to force others to be the same, and he was no different. Senja would have gotten over whatever her life was like from the outside if they hadn't interfered.

"Shalnark," she said slowly, taking his face in her rough palms. Gently, she eased his small face forward so she could see his green eyes, and used the tips of her thumbs to push up the corners of his mouth. "You always frown. Smile, okay?" Senja asked. "You do what you have to do, and I do what I have to. It's worked so far. We got this."

Her hands were squishing his cheeks up into his eyes and her fingers were pulling his lips back into a strange, warped smile. Unwillingly, the forced grin turned into a real one, even when it was visibly clear he was trying to stop it.

It was after she left that he realized she never gave him the answers he wanted. Ever.

He darted to the wall and tried to peer out through the cracks at whatever danger was lurking, but he didn't detect anything. The wind was as hot and blowing sand into his eyes as harshly as ever, without any anomaly. So why had she been so uneasy?

* * *

Over and over, Shalnark had commenced a dissection of the phone he'd stolen yesterday. He had pulled it apart and put it back together, each little piece, taking more out as he went on and memorizing it all. If he was ever going to make a phone of his own one day—one that worked—he would have to know all the workings. He was proud to report he'd gone through every single individual piece through the night. Sleep was a small price to pay for the knowledge. No matter what Senja said, staying up had been worth it since it meant he had gotten through putting the entire phone back together.

But it was day, and he had to work. While he didn't regret how he had neglected rest, the pain clinging to the bags under his eyes was starting to hit the rest of his body. He let out some of it with a tired groan as he took a broken part of the gas burner and tucked it into his pocket.

He still tried to be alert lest the danger that had placed Senja on edge reappeared, but it was difficult when his feet insisted he drag and slouch.

To think he would have to sacrifice so many hours to practice that long, tedious way in order to even be a step closer to his goal...his fatigue was intensifying already.

But he had business to take care of, specifically the metals he needed to mend Kat's gas burner. If it was just getting any metal, he would be able to get this over with quickly. Those who were ahead of the starvation and poverty in the city often set up small ways to earn themselves a living, such as Shalnark did with his handyman job. It raked in luxuries that would otherwise be near impossible to get. People who did these odd little jobs that were needed in the city fared the best, and most of them took the form of merchants. Sellers often lined the less cramped streets with their mismatched tents and stalls, trading in the things they needed for the goods they held. Different merchants had books, ravens, drugs, wood, and those were just a few. Shalnark was grateful that the merchants who sold scrap metal were many. Yes, to the untrained eye, finding what he needed would have been easy.

Except metal is an inconvenience when you're in a hurry, in a location without the basic means to do the measurements you need, and in a situation where if you get one thing wrong, you're as good as done. Shalnark was in all three of these pinches.

Metal is not easy. There are ninety one metals in the periodic table, and that's the number you get excluding the metals that are two materials melted together (alloys). And in Meteor, there were very, very, little ways to tell which metal was which.

This caused problems.

Now, Shalnark was a child. He liked the idea of things catching fire and blowing up; a lot. But if he witnessed one as a product of himself, that wasn't a good sign. No matter how much Shalnark wanted to witness an explosion, he had to prevent it at all costs.

Shalnark darted past buildings stacked up on top of each other, open at first but becoming more cramped and patched together with all sorts of materials, from hide to cloth to things he didn't even want to know about. They were all pushed up together in a mish-mash of structures that cast broken shadows on the dirt.

There were people living in those buildings, Shalnark knew, but he'd never seen them. The ones unseen were to be careful of, and he avoided this part of the city if he had time to. The mafia, the major drug makers, they all had guards and were loaded with all sorts of weapons he didn't know the mechanics to. They were flashy, and they carried out punishment slow and showy, as if to brag. They made their name and reputation known so no one would mess with them, so of course, Shalnark stayed away from these loud people. But what about the quiet ones? While the quiet could be weak and powerless, they could also be the extreme opposites. Silent killers who left nobody to relay and spread rumors of their deeds were by far the most deadly.

Of course, this was all just Shalnark's own speculation. If anyone heard his reasoning, they would think him crazy, though he doubted anyone would listen if he even had something to say.

Still, he didn't stop running until he'd reached the market street. His fingers ran over the small bottle of pills in his pocket along with the fragment of the gas burner to see if they were both still there, but not enough for passers by to tell he had anything of value. He didn't want to be mugged for them, he didn't have the time.

He browsed through the stalls, observing each scrap of metal once before going back and selecting five different scrap metals and trading with each sour merchant for a single pill. They all seemed similar to the sample he had. He hoped the ones he'd gotten would suffice. He had always been an excellent guesser, so he hoped at least one of them would match.

Taking up the five he'd gotten his hands on, he made his way back to their lean-to of a shed-like house. Even though that place was where he'd lived for his entire life, he was still unsure of how to refer to it. Senja insisted he call it 'home', and he complied to a degree. But it wasn't in his heart. What would he call the place that had sheltered him from the burning desert sun? Abode, accommodation, house, residence, quarters; None of the synonyms from Senja's ridiculously large dictionary seemed to fit perfectly. 

He supposed if he read it over again, he would eventually find a word that fit. There had to be one. He'd only skimmed the entire book last summer. When he had the chance, he would read the entire thing cover to cover.

More synonyms scampered through his mind as he ran, clutching what he'd gotten at the market close to his chest. He made sure to cover up the good parts and only leave the rusted sections out in the open. No one would try to take them now.

It still stood that he had guessed when collecting the materials, and he still didn't know which was what. He couldn't afford to mess up. There was one way that Shalnark could clamp down on the metal predicament, and that was with density. If Senja's old schoolbooks were anything to go off of, different things had different densities. So he could solve this easily, right?

Haha. No.

Density is a derived unit, meaning you need two things—mass (basically weight) and volume (how much)—to solve for it. Now for the mass, Shalnark could do rough estimates from Senja's old kits she never bothered to throw away, but what about volume? With these warped, twisted sheets of metal, measuring them seemed near impossible. So the only other method he could use was by water displacement. But water displacement needs a certain, itty bitty little thing to work. The water part.

And as it so happened, Meteor did not have much water. There always seemed to be just enough in the tins he left laying around, brown sludge sufficing every time he came to collect for drinking water. It didn't rain much in the dump city, he couldn't use water for this! Water was a precious source and a necessity for human survival! (He stifled a moan at how he was starting to sound exactly like Senja.)

But there was one thing Meteor held an abundance of, and that was sand. As long as he was meticulous in the process, it would work just as well.

Yes. He, Shalnark, the father of sand displacement. If his name ever made it out of this hell-stricken city, that title would be sure to go along with it.

He reached his lodging/shelter/chambers/etc. (synonyms were so unnecessary but truly a wonder), and cracked open the entrance. "Senja, I'm home!" he called just in case she was there, per procedure. As long as what he did made her content, even if those actions were forced, she wouldn't hound him. Calling the place such a thing—'home', that is—was a method of survival, in its own way. Survival against an odd, obsessed, caretaker.

*     *     *

Shalnark took the measurements he needed and did the calculation quickly. His keen eye had not failed him; three of the five metals he had gotten matched Kat's gas burner base sample. With this, he could proceed.

He gently set aside the weights and the beaker from Senja's old science kit, placing them carefully back into the box they'd come from. While he didn't like the fact she was still desperately clinging onto her past as if she'd get lost and drown without it, her outsider tools certainly came in handy, especially for his job. They fascinated him as well. Man could create such things, even things that seemed simple took immense amounts of time and effort to make, as outlined by her books.

Shalnark gently clicked the latch of the box shut and set it back into its place in the ground. Getting down on his knees, he started to shoved the dirt back over it and pat it into place. The realm of science was an amaz—

His eyes flew to the cracks in the wall. Swiftly, his hands grabbed the screwdriver from his waistband and twirled it expertly into his grip, the sharper end protruding. His heart pounded as he approached the wall and and tried to see outside. He scanned the area once more, eyes darting around for anything out of place. Someone was watching him, and that someone was awfully near.

And closing in, fast.

I AM NOT A SCIENCE EXPERT
*cue eternal screaming*

I just procrastinated a lot on the science part, so :P sorry. Also sorry if this was boring nothing much happened except nerdiness and setting up

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