50th Tick: Stories
1005 Words
“Where did you go?” Rose asked when Thomas returned.
“Outside?” Thomas replied, putting down a few supplies. “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
“There’s no bed.” Rose commented.
“Welcome to my life.” Thomas muttered. “At least you can sleep.”
“So where did you go?”
Thomas picked up a roll of bandages, and some water. He then checked some of the medicine he had ‘borrowed’, read stolen. He opened the bottle and sniffed it, gagging at the slimy paste before closing the bottle. He sighed and put it down, looking at what else he had gotten.
“Are you really ignoring me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Thomas replied sarcastically, approaching Rose.
He helped her to sit upright, letting her extend her left arm, where the worst of her injuries was. She winced as Thomas poured water over it, washing away the small pebbles and dirt in the wound. He sighed as the ground was stained slightly red as the wound reopened. He ignored it, the water would disappear eventually in The World Clock. He dabbed the wound with a cloth, drying it before he opened the bottle of foul smelling paste. The substance was dark green, not a promising colour. Rose leaned back, but Thomas held her arm, using his other hand to spread the paste over the wound.
“It stings.” Rose said.
“What do you expect? It’s medicine.” He sighed. “What did you even do to get this injured?”
“Yes.”
“Very informative.”
When he was done, he wrapped the bandages around her arm, hoping the wound would not reopen. He repeated the process for her other injuries before setting her back down on the ground to sleep. He sat some distance away, dangling his feet off the platform they were on, below him an endless expense of gears and clocks. Rose was unable to sleep, she was thinking too much.
“Aren’t you going to sleep too?” Rose asked.
“I don’t need to.” Thomas told her.
“But when you were a child, you slept quite a lot.” Rose recounted.
“I was an idiotic child, what did you expect?”
“Kinda cute too.”
“You’re not going to deny the idiotic part?”
“Is there a change?”
“Of course.” He said. “I’m the ClockKeeper now, aren’t I?”
There was a pause of silence as Rose looked up, into the gears above. It was oddly silent for a place with as many clocks and gears. She turned around painfully, looking at Thomas. “Can you tell me a story?”
Thomas turned around and gave Rose a look. “What are you? Five?”
“Hey, I took care of you, it’s your turn now.”
“Fine.” Thomas sighed and walked up to her.
He noticed her swollen ankle and sighed, “How did you sprain your ankle?”
“Kicked a statue.” She replied frankly.
Thomas picked up the bandages and started wrapping her ankle tightly to prevent movement. She waited for him to be done with it, but Thomas asked, “So, what kind of story do you want to hear?”
He was still wrapping her ankle.
“Um...” Rose thought about it, but only one real question popped up. “How did you get that pocket watch? Was it part of you being the ClockKeeper and all?”
Thomas finished the wrapping and sat down, tapping his wrist. “How do I put this...?”
He sighed and stood up, walking closer to Rose’s head before sitting down. He tapped his chin and started, “How long do you think the ClockKeeper has been around?”
“A million years?” She asked.
He shook his head. “Since the dawn of time. The ClockKeeper has been around since time started flowing, so he’s been around forever.”
“You’re infinite years old?”
“No.”
“But... what?”
Thomas pulled out his pocket watch and looked at it. He remembered that day clearer than any other. He had appeared in The World Clock, staring around in awe, a pocket watch nearby. It was a special day, a day which he would never, not in an eternity, forget.
“Trick question, how old am I?” Thomas asked Rose.
“A million?”
“Nope.” He said. “You lose.”
Rose looked at his face. “Then how old are you?”
“Give or take, a hundred.” Thomas said.
Thomas laid down beside Rose and stared above. It was the same view as that say, the day he became the ClockKeeper. He heard Rose ask him, “But aren’t you the ClockKeeper?”
“I am.” He answered. “But there’s that thing with Myths. We do not fully die even when we do. I don’t know the full details, but I know one thing.”
There was a slight pause before he continued. “A hundred years ago, the ClockKeeper then committed suicide. He died, and I appeared as the replacement, as simple as that. You may ask why I did not do anything back when the humans were in war with the demons, it was because I was just a small child, I couldn’t have done anything.”
Rose processed all of it before asking again, “Another question then. Why do you keep saving me?”
Thomas paused for a whole ten seconds. “I... it’s a bit embarrassing.”
“C’mon, we’ll be stuck together for a month, so open up.” Rose chided.
Thomas looked away. “I remember when I was younger, someone that looked like you talked to me. I, uh, was quite inspired by what she said. That’s probably it.”
“Likely story.”
“It’s the truth!”
Rose laughed. “Like I’ll believe someone looked like me back then.”
“She did. Red hair, attitude, everything is the same, you’re probably her reincarnation or something.” Thomas told her, half joking.
“I don’t want to think those scary thoughts.”
“Just shut up and go to sleep already.”
“You better not run away when I sleep.”
“What? Are you afraid of being alone?”
“As the bravest woman of my town, I fear nothing.”
“Okay, whatever.”
“Make sure you don’t ditch me like you always do.”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
“You’re probably already planning an escape.”
“Fine, if you don’t trust me that much, I’ll just sleep here, is that fine with you?”
“Perfectly fine.”
- Writer
