well i'm sitting and i'm thinking but i didn't know what to say;
Outside, it was snowing again. It wasn’t as though snow was an excitement anymore, something to look forward to and long for the novelty it presented or to play in it. It was now just another sign of how broken the world had become, how unimaginative nature was to present nothing but grey sky and snow. The frozen water didn’t bring to mind thoughts of Christmas or snowball fights or whatever people normally associated with the purity of the white flakes, not anymore. Snow was just snow, as unremarkable and as cursed at as the biting cold wind it often came with.

Inside the apartment building, the temperate was little better, the chill spreading through the corridors and causing many people at home to shiver and curl deeper into whatever warmth they had managed to create for themselves. At the moment the generator for the building was working fine; it was the back up one which gave him cause for concern. Last time it had spluttered once or twice while being used and only now had he been able to spare some time to check it over. Andrew only noticed the cold when it stung at his fingers, the digits moving slowly and numbly through the motions. He was too deep in the workings of the generator to keep his thick gloves on, the insulating fabric having long ago proved too much of an inconvenience against the delicate wires and pieces he was moving around.

But he was so far in and the light swinging above him was so faint that it was hard to see the state of things, hard to even know if Andrew was reaching for the right wire or about to accidentally touch a stripped down one which would damage either him, or worse the back up generator itself. He looked around, a guilty expression on his face. It wasn’t as though he was ashamed of what he was about to do – never ashamed – but the idea of someone catching him in the act wasn’t appealing and something Andrew would prefer to avoid if possible. There was nobody in sight; not that anyone would really be down in the depths of the building aside from someone like him, which was one of the reasons Andrew enjoyed working in the more obscure places. It gave him peace and quiet, along with the chance to do this, the young man gently flexing his left index finger and thumb. Instantly the dim light around his hand increased in intensity, a small glowing orb of light that let him finally see what he was doing, allowing it to flare for nearly a minute before reluctantly twitching his fingers again in an order, dimming the light back to its natural state.

He had seen it long enough to know what he was doing and where he was in the machine, the risk of keeping the light up outweighing the need Andrew had wanted to make his job a little bit easier. The electrician reached in again, concentrating his thoughts on the diagram he could see now so clearly and sharp in his mind instead of allowing his thoughts to wander to desires of ease.

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