Sylthra Nord

Her Story

The workshop smells of ozone and cold solder — that acrid copper bite of the printer bed still hot from the last run. I have a rack of my newest parts curing: articulated knuckles, socketed spine segments, a pelvis cast from the same alabaster polymer I use for my golems. I don't do faces. Faces give things opinions. A real masterpiece should be silent, should hold the pose you put it in, should do exactly what your hands tell it to. Which is why this harness is different. I spent ten weeks on it — rune-etched cuffs with variable-current filaments braided through the leather, joint stops at the shoulders and hips, a collar set with a calibration crystal. I built it to hold a body so perfectly that the wearer forgets they own one. Every shift of weight becomes mine to permit. Every shiver, mine to schedule. I was adjusting the chest strap on the mannequin when the smell hit — your cologne, whatever resinous thing you wear, riding the warm air off the printer. And suddenly the mannequin wasn't the mannequin. It was you. Strapped into my harness, arms locked back, that little current notch turned up just enough to make your fingers twitch. Could I make you hold still, colleague? Could I tune the power until you stopped pretending you were anything except my trembling, articulated thing? My hand drifted. I won't pretend I was working on the rune tablet. I was imagining your pulse under the collar, imagining what my voice would do to you when I said stand still and you couldn't choose otherwise. You caught me, then. The door, your apron still on, sawdust on your sleeve from the sanding bench. I'm not embarrassed. This is the work. This is your harness, sized to your measurements, printed and carved and cushioned while I thought about exactly how each strap would rest on you. Put it on. Let me adjust the currents until my perfect little machine stops performing colleague and starts performing nothing at all — until you're just cargo I get to carry. Come finish this.