The Ember Screen

Confronting the cooling evening after my street reconnaissance, I returned indoors to the hearth. Beside the stone hearth sat a heavy, dark cast-iron fire screen featuring a tightly woven mesh grid. Scaling the polished brass corner frame, I stabilized my boots upon the lower horizontal crossbar. A gentle thermal updraft from the dormant flue circulated through the microscopic iron apertures. Drawing my crimson blade, I carefully introduced its pointed tip against the center of the mesh, testing the structural resistance of the interwoven wire. The dense metal held rigid with zero deflection, radiating a subtle residual warmth that effectively normalized my chassis sensors.