Page 3 of Cursed Alien

She stood there until the wagon disappeared around a bend, her hand raised in farewell long after he was gone from sight. Only when the sound of the motor had faded completely did she lower her arm, the worry settling back into place. She’d checked and double-checked the engine, reinforced the wheels, and packed extra supplies, but even if the Vultor didn’t object to his presence, the mountains remained an unpredictable threat.

“Well, there goes Elias, off to peddle his contraptions again.”

The voice came from behind her, deliberately pitched loud enough to carry. She didn’t need to turn to know it was Mrs. Winters speaking to her constant companion, Mrs. Finch.

“And leaving his poor daughter to mind that dreadful shop all alone,” Mrs. Finch replied with exaggerated concern. “It’s not proper, not proper at all.”

“A grown woman in men’s clothes, covered in grease. No wonder she’s still unmarried.”

“And likely to stay that way,” Mrs. Finch added. “Though I hear Ned from the lumber mill asked her to the harvest dance last year.”

“Poor man must have been desperate.”

Ned was actually an old friend from her school days who’d always had a crush on her. He’d been a kind boy who’d grown into a kind man, but one whose interests didn’t extend beyond the village. She’d turned him down as gently as possible, and she’d been genuinely happy for him when he became engaged to Lydia Peterson.

That didn’t stop the words from stinging, but she kept her face blank and her posture relaxed, refusing to let the old biddies see that their comments had hit their mark. She turned slowly, fixing both women with a polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Good morning, Mrs. Winters, Mrs. Finch,” she called cheerfully. “Can I help you with something? Perhaps one of your ovens needs repair?”

The women exchanged glances, Mrs. Finch’s lips pursing like she’d bitten into something sour.

“No, thank you,” Mrs. Winters replied stiffly. “We were just passing by.”

“I see. Well, don’t let me keep you from your important business.”

She turned her back on them and strode toward the shop, well aware of their disapproving gazes tracking the oil stains on her coveralls and the tool rag holding back her unruly blonde curls.

“Such a shame,” Mrs. Winters’s voice drifted after her. “She could be quite pretty if she tried.”

“If only her mother had lived,” Mrs. Finch agreed. “No feminine influence at all.”

Her jaw tightened, but she kept walking. Their words were nothing she hadn’t heard a hundred times before—whispered at market days, muttered at village gatherings, clucked over at festivals. The disapproval of the village matrons was as predictable as the sunrise—just the background noise of village life, like the constant clucking of the neighbor’s chickens or the distant sound of the lumber mill. At least their whispers were honest, unlike Mayor Jacobson’s false smiles and calculated politeness.

The workshop stood to one side of their modest home, a sturdy stone building with large windows that let in ample light. She pushed open the heavy wooden door and inhaled deeply, breathing in the familiar scents of machine oil and metal. A half-dismantled irrigation pump sat on her workbench, surrounded by neatly arranged tools. Everything had its place, even if that place made sense only to her. Three more repair jobs waited in the corner, promised to anxious farmers before the week’s end.

“Let them talk,” she muttered. “I’d rather fix engines than gossip any day.”

She studied the irrigation pump’s corroded valve as she reached for her wrench, already mapping out the repair in her mind. The quiet of the shop settled around her, broken only by the ticking of the large clock her father had built. Normally, she found peace in this solitude, in the freedom to work without interruption, but today the silence seemed heavier somehow. The workshop suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in around her. Sunlight streamed through the dusty windows, illuminating dancing motes in the air and highlighting the same tools she’d used thousands of times before.

She sighed, setting down her wrench with more force than necessary.

Was this it? Was this all her life would ever be? Fixing the same machines for the same people who whispered the same judgments behind her back?

She moved to the window, gazing out at the village. Outside, the village continued its predictable rhythm—Mrs. Harrow gossiping at the well, the blacksmith hammering at his forge, children playing the same games she’d played as a girl. Nothing ever changed here.

In the distance, the mountains loomed, wild and mysterious, hiding the northern villages—and the Vultor territories—behind their rugged peaks. Not just places, but possibilities. Challenges worthy of her skills.

Soon her father would be driving their precious wagon through lands where humans were still viewed with suspicion. The knot of worry tightened, but she forced herself to return to her workbench and pick up her tools. Work would keep her mind occupied. It always did.

But as she bent over the valve, her thoughts continued to drift. Was this all there was? Days spent fixing other people’s broken things, nights spent sketching designs that might never see completion, years passing in this village where she never quite fit in?

She glanced at her mother’s portrait hanging on the wall. Helena Fletcher had been brilliant—an engineer from Port Cantor who’d fallen in love with a small-town mechanic. She’d brought knowledge and books and dreams to the marriage, all of which she’d passed to Bella before illness took her fifteen years ago.

After that, her father had moved them back here, to this quiet village where technology was simple and life predictable.

Safe, her father called it.

Stifling, it sometimes felt.

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