everything will be fine
writing!
in two parts. a beginning and an end, maybe? I'm not quite sure where it's going, though.
Title: Like Clockwork
Comment: I'm not sure if this is done at all. The beginning.
You're unaccustomed to being with someone else. Generally your time is spent in solitude, fixing clocks. That's your life; you can measure your days by the tick-tick-tick of faulty gears. You know exactly what to do with machines that don't spin properly, you can keep a city running like clockwork without a bat of an eye, and you can keep yourself going just as well. You just don't expect anyone else to think differently. They call you the Clockwork Magician and they bring you their cogs and faces and broken parts, and in two days you give them back their time. And you look after your own time.
You don't know what to do with this friendly face, this boy who's just stuck his head in your window looking for someone else. But you've got a kettle of oolong tea on the stove, and maybe he just needs an oiling before he can start ticking again.
He looks like a real magician, you think, unlike you in your old-fashioned browns and waistcoats and scarves. He's all silk and bright colours and topped with a strange hat above an enigmatic face like an actor who's wandered off the set of a whimsical fantasy movie. He doesn't fit into your concept of normality. You wouldn't be surprised if he pulled out a wand and cast a spell, or if he dropped his coat and spilled amulets all over the floor.
He expresses interest in a trinket, something you repaired and that was never reclaimed. A pocketwatch, you now remember without glancing in its direction, too ornate for your tastes and too unimportant for anyone who comes here looking for a mechanical miracle. You don't make a gesture of giving it to him, but once he's situated in your kitchen you return to your workroom for a moment to straighten out your latest project, and during this time the trinket makes its way into a pocket of the colourful overcoat draped so casually over an umbrella stand.
Title: The Pocketwatch
Comment: The end, perhaps of the beginning.
Evan knew this pocketwatch. Not particularly, of course, but he had a memory for things he repaired. Watches were only part of it, really. This one had been an easy job, just a few cogs re-attached, a rewinding and straightening of parts, and then it was ticking as well as ever. Perhaps better. He'd left it on a bookshelf and forgotten about it when no one claimed it. It was a pretty watch, with silver backing and elegant carvings on the outside, but Evan preferred things simple, unadorned. This watch was not his, and never would be.
But he knew it precisely because of this fact.
This watch had been sitting on its bookshelf, dusty and forgotten as watches become, waiting to be selected. And then, as watches often are, it was selected. A boy had walked into Evan's house and pulled all the colours of prettiness after him, and the watch had simply been his. Evan had facilitated the transportation of the watch from the bookshelf into the pocket of a vivid coat, but it had fit as if it had always resided there. The boy had never spoken of it, even though the first visit had prompted a second, and a third, and suddenly there was a great crack in Evan's comfortable sphere of existence and every colour of the rainbow was shining in and bouncing off reflective surfaces and making things happens.
The boy had been named Julian, and he was a magician. Not a magician like Evan was, but a real one. Crowd-pleasing, showy, and delighting. His wares were wonder and charm, and he brought them to the people who might want them. There was always a dove up his bright sleeve, or a quarter behind his thumb, and he nearly glittered in the right light. And his way of speaking was just the same, gaudy with that air of childlike joy and exuberance. Completely alien to Evan's slow and precise mending of clocks, comfortable within four walls and the smell of autumn that never really went away.
Theirs had been a strange friendship that often resulted in Evan getting stuck up trees or halfway across the city or at masquerade balls that he wasn't nearly rich enough to have any place even knowing about. Julian worked more kinds of magic than that of the stage, for he was somehow able to charm his reticent friend on the most bizarre adventures, through looking-glasses and secret doors and all levels of society. Never once had they stopped to check the time.
And now the pocketwatch was lying on the bookshelf as if it had never moved, but for a gleam it had gained somewhere along the way and the whiff of adventure and Julian's cologne it still carried with it. Evan wasn't a fool - he knew what this had to mean. He'd seen the train timetable on Julian's bed, and the abnormal tidiness of all his belongings. The watch was only a confirmation, but that didn't lessen the sting.
The pocketwatch had been a gift.
in two parts. a beginning and an end, maybe? I'm not quite sure where it's going, though.
Title: Like Clockwork
Comment: I'm not sure if this is done at all. The beginning.
You're unaccustomed to being with someone else. Generally your time is spent in solitude, fixing clocks. That's your life; you can measure your days by the tick-tick-tick of faulty gears. You know exactly what to do with machines that don't spin properly, you can keep a city running like clockwork without a bat of an eye, and you can keep yourself going just as well. You just don't expect anyone else to think differently. They call you the Clockwork Magician and they bring you their cogs and faces and broken parts, and in two days you give them back their time. And you look after your own time.
You don't know what to do with this friendly face, this boy who's just stuck his head in your window looking for someone else. But you've got a kettle of oolong tea on the stove, and maybe he just needs an oiling before he can start ticking again.
He looks like a real magician, you think, unlike you in your old-fashioned browns and waistcoats and scarves. He's all silk and bright colours and topped with a strange hat above an enigmatic face like an actor who's wandered off the set of a whimsical fantasy movie. He doesn't fit into your concept of normality. You wouldn't be surprised if he pulled out a wand and cast a spell, or if he dropped his coat and spilled amulets all over the floor.
He expresses interest in a trinket, something you repaired and that was never reclaimed. A pocketwatch, you now remember without glancing in its direction, too ornate for your tastes and too unimportant for anyone who comes here looking for a mechanical miracle. You don't make a gesture of giving it to him, but once he's situated in your kitchen you return to your workroom for a moment to straighten out your latest project, and during this time the trinket makes its way into a pocket of the colourful overcoat draped so casually over an umbrella stand.
Title: The Pocketwatch
Comment: The end, perhaps of the beginning.
Evan knew this pocketwatch. Not particularly, of course, but he had a memory for things he repaired. Watches were only part of it, really. This one had been an easy job, just a few cogs re-attached, a rewinding and straightening of parts, and then it was ticking as well as ever. Perhaps better. He'd left it on a bookshelf and forgotten about it when no one claimed it. It was a pretty watch, with silver backing and elegant carvings on the outside, but Evan preferred things simple, unadorned. This watch was not his, and never would be.
But he knew it precisely because of this fact.
This watch had been sitting on its bookshelf, dusty and forgotten as watches become, waiting to be selected. And then, as watches often are, it was selected. A boy had walked into Evan's house and pulled all the colours of prettiness after him, and the watch had simply been his. Evan had facilitated the transportation of the watch from the bookshelf into the pocket of a vivid coat, but it had fit as if it had always resided there. The boy had never spoken of it, even though the first visit had prompted a second, and a third, and suddenly there was a great crack in Evan's comfortable sphere of existence and every colour of the rainbow was shining in and bouncing off reflective surfaces and making things happens.
The boy had been named Julian, and he was a magician. Not a magician like Evan was, but a real one. Crowd-pleasing, showy, and delighting. His wares were wonder and charm, and he brought them to the people who might want them. There was always a dove up his bright sleeve, or a quarter behind his thumb, and he nearly glittered in the right light. And his way of speaking was just the same, gaudy with that air of childlike joy and exuberance. Completely alien to Evan's slow and precise mending of clocks, comfortable within four walls and the smell of autumn that never really went away.
Theirs had been a strange friendship that often resulted in Evan getting stuck up trees or halfway across the city or at masquerade balls that he wasn't nearly rich enough to have any place even knowing about. Julian worked more kinds of magic than that of the stage, for he was somehow able to charm his reticent friend on the most bizarre adventures, through looking-glasses and secret doors and all levels of society. Never once had they stopped to check the time.
And now the pocketwatch was lying on the bookshelf as if it had never moved, but for a gleam it had gained somewhere along the way and the whiff of adventure and Julian's cologne it still carried with it. Evan wasn't a fool - he knew what this had to mean. He'd seen the train timetable on Julian's bed, and the abnormal tidiness of all his belongings. The watch was only a confirmation, but that didn't lessen the sting.
The pocketwatch had been a gift.