wayfarers_lodge | {Changeling} My Grandfather's Clock

OOC I know I said this last time, but I can't play this character. I may want to, but I'd never get the approvals through.

That being said, doesn't mean I can't write for them.

This is GC a whole lot more vocal and able to talk than after it got out.

IC
My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more...

Did you, as a child, ever look into the dark of the hall, and think you saw an old man standing, tall and silent, in a moment of sudden horror? Did you laugh, a little uncertainly, when you realised it was just the old longcase clock that your grandfather had insisted that the family keep? That was nothing to be scared of, right? Right?

I thought so, too.

It was caught on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopped short, never to go again,
When the Old Man died...

I was young... well, not really. I was becoming... something. A man or a woman. I don't remember. I came out of the hallway half asleep and started at the dark shape, as I had done so many times before. I laughed as I walked past the old, dark shape, a laugh that turned into a scream as it grabbed me and the darkness lurched.

Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock, tick tock...

He was Grandfather Clockwork. He had just been rewound, and needed a new thing to mark his time. He took out my heart, and replaced it with swinging brass. He took out my blood and my nerves, and replaced them with gears and steam. He took my body and made the insides whirl and grind, sealing it with something that might have been a promise of Iron. In the end, my legs, my arms, my chest, my sex, they were all gone- only my face and my hands remained.

Life seconds numbering, tick tock, tick tock...

He set me in his hall, amongst the wreckage of hundreds of others like me, with no shelter but the swirling sky. He walked past me all the time, checking his many pocket watches against my unfailing hands. I marked the time against the movement of the heavens, ticking off moments as the planets swung around. In the silence but for the beating of my heart, I came to know them all by name, and could trace all of their paths with the gears behind my glass eyes.

But it stopped short, never to go again, when the Old Man died...

His servants would not, could not speak to me- I may have been the most valued piece of furniture, but I was still a thing, rather than a person. But they spoke around me- explained to each other that every ninety years, to the second, Grandfather Clockwork wound down and stopped. His clock stopped too, as he was tied to it, as it was tied to him.

He had servants to wind the huge key at his back.

The clock, however, did not, and every time he was reborn, he needed a new one to mark the time.

My Grandfather said that of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time and had but one desire-
At the close of each week to be wound...

The servants performed the little maintenances- polished my wood, ensured my brass shone like the sun, wound the small keys below my heart. They knew that I was like them, but could do nothing as every day, I watched him grow a little slower, and behind my porcelain face, I started to panic.

And it kept in its place, not a frown upon its face,
And its hand never hung by its side.
But it stopped short, never to go again,
When the Old Man died...

Then something changed.

I doubt I will ever know what happened amongst them, but one day they came with an axe made of stone, and gave me back my legs.

I could barely remember how, but I ran. I held the image of the hallway where I had walked as a child in my mind and I ran, counting the seconds under my breath as I moved.

It rang an alarm in the dead of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight,
That his hour of departure had come...

And in short, I am free. I can speak, and I can walk. I have my own body, my legs, my arms. Yet still I feel his heart ticking in time with mine. It is part of his nature that he wind down, that he kill another clock like me every time, that he may be renewed.

Now I am gone, he cannot. And so he seeks me, that he may kill me and die.

Still the clock kept the time with a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side.
But it stopped short, never to go again,
When the old man died.

Not bloody likely.