NeverSeen

Half the other kids were almost asleep by the time he let us tour the workshop. He led us through a pair of massive metal doors and down into a huge room where tons of people were grinding, sawing, and melting things into usable items. To minimize danger and hearing loss, each machine was encased in a special glass that stopped noise and couldn’t be broken unless a troll sat on it. Or a dragon. But those weren’t real.

We paused by one in particular when a tall boy with long black hair asked what the worker was doing. Mr. I. Dunno started elaborately explaining what type of metal the worker was using and that it was a tube for a sink drain, but I soon lost track of the conversation. Something in the back of my mind was pulsing.

I couldn’t stop staring at the sparks flying where the man was cutting it. They rose up like a shower, just inches from the man’s face. He took the piece of metal and thrust it into an oven, blinding white, where it turned to liquid and oozed. The light radiated to a foreign beat, like the one in my head. The worker contorted the piping hot sheet into halfof a pipe, then a whole pipe. Again he cut it, sparks and heat and melting and more sparks.