The Clockmaker tinkers away in his little shed tucked away in one of the vast cloud forests on the Ninth Isle of Placinthe.
He is too engrossed in the matching and fixing of minuscule cogs and gears to look up. He is making a tiny, a very tiny pocket watch- about the size of a sparrow’s egg- and it is a very fine, detailed, intricate work. It must be done with the utmost attention and care. Dust motes dance and spin in the musty air around him, some of them catching the watery winter sunlight coming through a round window at the top of the shack. The light from that window illuminates the Clockmaker’s working desk, where he is currently sitting- stooping, rather- over his half-made contraption and craning his neck in the most awkward angle, scrutinizing every little surface on the joint mass of dials and gears for some kind of mistake.
The Clockmaker rarely makes mistakes. He is too precise to do something as unsophisticated as making mistakes! Pah! Who ever thought that one learns from their mistakes! Rather, one should be so careful that one does not even risk making them. The Clockmaker scoffs in accordance with his thoughts, all the while looking for that mistake he made. Even the word ‘mistake’ leaves a bad taste on his tongue; he makes a very funny face that is a mixture of a grimace and a scowl. He continues to place the odd-looking assemblage of joint screws and gears and springs under abject perusal.
A few hours pass and he is still sitting like that. There is no longer sunlight coming through the window. It has long since travelled upwards- higher than the gewgaw-lined desk, onto the wooden wall next to it and has left the cabin of the Clockmaker. That sunlight is now somewhere else, zooming and whizzing past madly spinning planets and lost moons, bursting into a different forever. In its place is starlight. The cold and distant (and distinctly insufficient for clockmaking) light from the sky. Though the starlight is not enough for his minute work, he decides not to switch on the bulbs.
‘The bulbs’ is a reference to the vintage style lightbulbs made by the Clockmaker that are arranged in strings and strings of fairy lights- a tangle of which covers the ceiling. Some bulbs drop down low and some are high up; some are even attached to the roof. They all give off a warm orange glow, lighting up the whole room in the softest undertones of sunset. (They are quite hot to the touch, though).
The Clockmaker suddenly lets out quite a victorious, quite a triumphant sound. A short bark of laughter escapes his mouth as he runs his hand through his messy hair, worsening its state of dishevel. He swiftly hunts through his instruments- the only things kept in an orderly manner in the whole hut- foraging for a magnifying glass. It is lying at the end of a row of other instruments used for detail. Grabbing it, he brings the infant insides of the pocket watch close to his eye and peers at them through the glass. After the passing of a few tense moments of rigorous inspection, he comes to the conclusion that there was no mistake- it was all only a delusion. He is satisfied with his work and lets out a contented sigh, looking at the yet-to-be pocket watch with all the warmth and affection with which one would look at a child just beginning to take its first steps.
He slowly begins to stand up straight and lets out a sharp grunt. He is growing old. He has been growing old for three centuries now. The shock of hair amassing on his head- black, with streaks of light gray and white- begins to look even more unbecoming. His chin is covered in prickly, itchy patches of stubble. He wears his work clothes- a wrinkly shirt, tattered and frayed at the sleeves and lower edges, along with a pair of comically baggy pants with a patch or two, whose dust coloured fabric once used to be an embarrassingly bright yellow. The leather of his shoes is soft and worn out, with bits of colour flaking off the tips. It has been half a century since he bought these very shoes from a seller of wares residing in the crossroads on the path from the Isles to Pandoria. The sole of one of the shoes had become detached from the bottom of the shoe itself and now it hangs limply and flops about whenever he takes a step.
He passes his rough hands over his face in an effort to expel some of his exhaustion. He takes a deep breath but ends up hacking and wheezing. He loves his little cabin, but sometimes it's closed walls and permanent odor of grease and metal become too much for him to bear. He arches his back in a deliberate motion, hands grasping his sides as he does so. Now he truly feels like an old man.
He makes his way to the door through the clutter of tools and cans of paint and grease. He completes his mission of crossing the obstacle course his workstuff makes on the floor and stands at the door, back facing the outside, gazing at the darkened room and squinting as he makes out the various shapes of his beloved clocks that cover the walls. The faint starlight makes everything look like a grainy, low definition photograph. The clocks dangle precariously over one another, leaving hardly any space for the wall behind them to be seen. They seem as though a single strong gust of wind will send them tumbling and crashing and clattering down onto the floor. A few stray nails litter the edges of the floor, where it meets the walls. They are to hang the clocks he is still yet to make. The Clockmaker closes his eyes and sighs as he hears the one sound he has devoted his life to hearing- the steady tick tick tick of his clocks.
He puts his hands into the absurdly oversized pockets of his pants. With a little bit of peace of mind as his only agenda, the Clockmaker turns and heads out into the mist for a walk beneath the stars.
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