Swifttail’s paws slowed as he reached the familiar bulkhead door to the engine room.
The sounds here were different than the raucous life of the deck. Quieter, but deeper. The low, contained growl of the boiler. A faint hiss where steam kissed metal. The old locomotive heart of the Hide sat just beyond, waiting.
His heart did a little skip.
It had always felt special, stepping into this space. Sacred, in its own way. But now, with the captain’s words still echoing in his ears, it felt like crossing a threshold into something more. This was not just his workplace anymore... It was his charge!
He spun the latch and shouldered the door open. Warm, coal-scented air washed over him at once, a stark difference to the chill breeze topside. The engine room lay before him, dim and empty but for the hulking shape of the repurposed planet type locomotive squatting in its bed, pipes and linkages running like veins into the hull around it, and surrounded by loaded coal bunkers, so full that the engine almost appeared buried in its own fuel.
Everybeast else was still on deck, it seemed. He grimaced a little at that.
A pressurized boiler an’ no eyes on it? Not ideal. I’ll see to it that don’t happen again.
Swift crossed the wrought iron plates in quick, practiced strides, eyes flicking up to the pressure gauges, then to the water sight glass. The needle sat comfortably in the green. Water level was a touch low, but nothing dangerous yet.
"Good girl," he murmured toward the boiler out of habit.
He cracked the appropriate valve, listening to the change in tone as feedwater eased in, watching the glass creep up to a safer mark. Then he swung a shovel into the nearest bunker, the scrape of iron on coal ringing sharp in the quiet, and sent a good hearty load into the firebox. The door clanged shut, and the engine answered with a deeper, more contented rumble.
The Hide’s iron heart was happy. For the moment.
He wiped a streak of coal dust off his pawfur, taking a breath and letting the familiarity of the routine settle his nerves. Status checks. Temperatures. A mental list of what he’d need to keep an eye on as they brought steam properly into play.
That was when the bulkhead door banged open behind him. The sudden noise made his ears snap up. Swift glanced over his shoulder, squinting a little against the contrasting light from the passageway.
A slim vixen stepped in, dust-coated and rope-burned, the sort of creature who looked more at home in the rigging than beside a boiler. Thura Trickfell. He knew that face, that voice, that sharp tongue from the topmasts all too well.
For a heartbeat, both the engine’s hum and his thoughts seemed to pause.
"Cap'n Gyles sed that I was t' report 'ere fer duty... er..." She shifted her weight, eyes flitting from the engine to him, something like shame and stubbornness wrestling in her expression. "Mr. Fairpaws, sir."
He had been called that before, of course. Back when it had been mostly said as a half-sneer some officers might use on a soft-looking landlubber learning which end of a mooring line to hold during their first voyage out to sea.
This felt different. The word sir landed like a weight on his shoulders. Power, in its tiniest, most uncomfortable shape.
He shook his head lightly, trying to ease some of the stiffness out of his posture before it turned him into one of those officers.
"At ease, Thu..." He caught himself, ears flicking. Formal. Right! "Miss Trickfell."
Awkward silence slipped between them like a smoky veil. The engine hissed softly, the only witness to the memory both of them carried: Kaii and him ordered to fix that torn sail, the mocking voices from the rigging, their tumble to the deck, and the sharp lesson that had come down on Thura and Klitch for it.
Swift cleared his throat, tail giving a minute, nervous twitch.
"We... got off on the wrong paw, last voyage," he said, words a little halting at first, then smoothing as he committed to them. "But let bygones be bygones, aye? T’is a new day an’ a new voyage. If’n we keep civil an’ friendly wit’ each other, we’ll surely be close mateys afore long."
Thura’s ears tipped back, then forward again. Some of the frost in her gaze thawed.
"Aye," she muttered, looking away toward the firebox. "That’d be nice."
That loosened something in him. His tail gave a proper wag this time.
"Right then, Miss Trickfell," he said, the corner of his muzzle curling up. "Orders from above are full steam ahead. I’ll catch ye up wit’ the Hide’s beatin’ heart as we get along, but fer now..."
He scooped up the coal shovel and held it out toward her, the gesture smart and a little theatrical, but without a shard of malice behind it.
"Bend yer back an’ get shovelin’."
There was a gleam in his eye as he said it, the playful edge in his tone making it clear this was work, not punishment.
Thura frowned at the shovel, then at him, measuring his intent. Whatever she saw there eased the set of her shoulders. She took the handle with a grunt.
"Aye aye, sir," she said, this time with no mockery in the title.
As she turned to the bunker and started her first scoop, Swift let himself glow inside. Not from the boiler’s heat this time, but from the realization that he could give orders without turning into the sort of beast he used to dread.
He turned back to the engine.
These controls had once been Rugg’s domain alone. The big badger had tolerated no paws near the reverser, no idle fingers on the throttle. Swift could still imagine the gruff lecture he’d have gotten for even slightly brushing the levers.
Now his paw moved over them with reverence.
The reverser, rarely shifted except to find the sweet spot for efficiency at speed. He rested his fingers around its handle for a moment, feeling the potential there, then left it set where Rugg had left it for departure.
His paw then slid to the throttle.
A tremor of excitement ran up his arm. This was it. The point where wind and canvas met fire and iron, where he could make the old locomotive-turned-marine engine throw its strength into the sea.
He reached up and tugged the little bell cord.
The brass bell clanged twice, the sound ringing along the pipe to the bridge and up through the bones of the ship. A signal indicating a change in the engine’s state.
"Alright, Hide," Swift murmured under his breath, paw easing the throttle open bit by bit. "Enough layin’ about. Let’s make wake!"
Steam surged. The familiar, rhythmic chuff of the engine deepened as it picked up, flywheel spinning more eagerly, pistons driving harder. Swift could feel it through his footpaws, through the deck, through the hull itself. The Hide responded like a caged creature unleashed from its containment.
The ship’s motion shifted, just slightly at first. Sail and steam together now.
"Full ahead," he called over his shoulder. "Keep her fed, Thu... Miss... ach. Thura." The name came out with a little laugh at his own fussing. "Let’s put Bully beyond the horizon."
Behind him, he heard the vixen huff, the scrape of the shovel, and then with the smallest hint of a smile in her voice.
"Aye aye, Swifttail, sir!"
