Hector hit the dirt head first. He tumbled over himself and landed just perfectly enough to see the bike sailing toward him. In the split second he had to react, he decided to embrace the madness and put his arms out wide to catch the bike. The rear tire crushed his ribcage, but his hands grasped the metal frame and held on.
Eyes wide, he set the bike down. He looked down at his caved-in chest and tasted a mouthful of blood. ‘It doesn’t hurt...’
‘I got to you just in time,’ said Garovel. ‘You’re welcome by the way. And nice catch.’
Practice resumed. By the time daylight began to wane, Hector had crashed several more times, though none so bad as before. When Hector finally felt as if he had acquired a passable degree of competence, the bike was hardly recognizable anymore with all its new dents and scratches.
As the engine began to make a fresh clanging noise, Hector slowed to a stop. ‘That can’t be a good sound...’
‘Yeah. But it’s fine. We don’t need the bike to last that long. It’ll probably get destroyed one way or another, anyhow.’
‘Really? It’s starting to grow on me, though...’
‘Don’t get too attached. I’ll be shocked if it’s not a smoldering pile of scrap in a couple weeks.’
‘Aww...’
-+-+-+-+-
“I h-have someone here who wants to meet you...” Swank squirmed under Geoffrey’s gaze.
“Oh? Show them in, then.”
Swank exited the room briefly and returned with the person in question.
“You are the man in charge?” said the stranger, smiling in a groomed, confident way. “You’re much younger than I anticipated.”
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.