#clockwork kingdom

Of course I can't have a Gt July prompt without the other story that started during this challenge a couple of years ago. It's time for some shenanigans with Tempo!

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Tempo was bored.

The clockmaker that had made him was hunched over her current work, which was much more mundane, being regular clockwork and not anything enchanted. At least not yet- she usually put some sort of enchantment into her creations, but that didn’t usually result in them coming to life like Tempo had, which made him the exception to the rule.

As well as exceptionally bored. The clockmaker’s workshop was filled with clocks, all ticking along in time to the one embedded in the center of Tempo’s chest. Her large desk took up most of the space, but seeing as it was covered in pieces and parts that Tempo was liable to trip over at his size of five and a half inches, and which weren’t of much interest, he’d wandered off instead. There were clocks that told the time in ancient runes, clocks with tiny mechanical birds that flew around them every quarter hour, clocks that played a different melody for every hour of the day. There were clocks that shimmered and glowed and could tell you the position of the stars.

But no clocks that walked and talked like Tempo did. The tiny mechanical man was alone in that as he clambered up and around the clockmaker’s other creations, magic and intricate clockwork articulation allowing his polished copper body to move like any organic creature. He stood atop one of the clocks, his eyes — made of miniscule, turning gears behind thin glass — looking around from his new vantage point. He still couldn’t see much; the workshop was too densely packed to get the sort of view he wanted. With this in mind, he huffed out a sigh (quite unnecessarily, seeing as he didn’t actually breathe) and eyed up a nearby clock. It was a good deal taller than the one he was currently standing on, but he was betting he could make it.

It begins! I’m hardly doing any outlining at all for the start of this story, since I kind of know what I want the Plot to be, but I still need to nudge the characters to the plot. They’ll get there sooner than any of them would like, I’m sure.

Word Count: 2066

Excerpt: 

What had stood before had crumbled, and what they built on top of it could crumble, too. They could leave their mark on the ruins of old Solian buildings, and then they would join history.

Making a clock was not easy work- especially when one was known for fine details and minor enchantments.

The clockmaker squinted through a large magnifying glass oriented over her latest project, her fingers looking enormous and bulky through the glass as she endeavored to slide a small cog into place with a pair of tweezers. Her perception of the world narrowed to intricate copper pieces less than a millimeter in length. Even her breath lay still in her chest as she slowly, carefully, positioned-

“Augh!”

The clockmaker flinched, her grip on the tweezers the only reason the cog didn’t fly off the table completely, and let out her breath in a startled gasp. She whipped her head up, her eyes endeavoring vainly to adjust from such a magnified view to the broad chaos of her entire shop.

And Tempo, a tiny clockwork man no more than six inches tall, who had managed to tip himself off of a nearby shelf and was hanging onto it by one slender metal arm.

“Tempo,” the clockmaker scolded, no shortage of exasperation in her voice. She set down the tweezers carefully, making sure not to damage the delicate cog held in its tip, and reached over to gather up her wayward charge in her hand. “I asked you to play quietly. This is the fifth time today I’ve nearly broken something.” Her work required the utmost concentration; something Tempo had to know, being around her every day, and being one of her clocks himself.

Tempo gave her a frown, the severeness of which was undercut quite thoroughly by the fact that he was sitting in her palm. “I’m bored!” he argued. “You’re always asking me to be quiet. There’s only so much to do around here.” The clockmaker sighed, but Tempo wasn’t done yet. “I mean, what do humans my age do in situations like this?”

“Humans your age are still crawling on their bellies on the rug,” the clockmaker bluntly replied. Tempo wasn’t quite a year old yet, but he’d also skipped any normal growth stages, since he was in a magically animate mechanical body. She set him down on the cleanest part of the desk, which really meant she put him on top of the paperwork, and added, “You’re not a baby.”

Tempo huffed and crossed his arms, glaring out at nothing in particular. “No, but… my question still stands, just for the age I act like, I guess.”

The clockmaker bit back an automatic quip about him acting like a toddler with a tantrum; even she could recognize that he was genuinely concerned about this. To be honest, the more thought she gave it, the more she saw his point: Tempo was, mentally and emotionally, close enough to a teenager, she supposed, or perhaps a preteen at points. He knew a lot—but not nearly as much as he thought he did—and needed some guidance, but not a lot of real caretaking.

Her mind went to the neighborhood boys she saw running up and down the streets at times, ranging in age from about seven to seventeen. They were always up to something with each other, all boundless energy and who-knows-what in their minds. As long as they were out of any stores and not underfoot for the real work, nobody much minded where they went or what they did.

Very few of them were stuck in a shop having to be quiet- and those were mostly the older teens, the eldest children preparing to take over the family business. Not like Tempo, alone but without much in the way of responsibility.

Another sigh left her chest, this one a bit sad. Tempo was looking up at her now, expectant. “Human boys your age usually have… friends,” she replied, wincing a bit at how callous that sounded. “Other lads to run around with. Tempo, I’m sorry, but that’s just not for you.” She knew he wouldn’t fit in with human children—he’d be a toy at best, something the clockmaker wanted to spare him from—and there wasn’t a single other soul like him. She was at a loss.

Her heart broke as Tempo’s hopeful expression slowly turned to sadness. He looked down at his feet, engraved metal rather than flesh and bone, and was lost in thought for a long moment. Eventually he asked, “Could you maybe make another, then? Like me. As a… friend.”

“Oh, Tempo.” The clockmaker’s expression fell, full of pity and empathy, and she reached out to rest her fingers across his back in a facsimile of a hug. “No. No, I couldn’t do that.”

He turned his face up to look at hers, exasperated in his own way by the constant rejections. “Why not?”

Her heart sank into her stomach. “Tempo, it’s… it’s not that easy…” She didn’t want to tell him that he was an accident—though he already knew this—so instead she gave him every other reason. “Creating a life is no small decision. It wouldn’t feel right to bring somebody into this world purely for that reason alone. And I’m not sure I’m prepared to have another ward regardless.” Tempo was already a handful, quite literally.

Tempo nodded slowly, though he still seemed dismayed. “I understand.”

I think it's pretty obvious which story I had to go with for this prompt.

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The clockmaker was in the rooms she lived in above her shop, getting herself ready for the day. Normally, her shop was closed on Mondays (Sundays, of course, and then Mondays, allowing the shop to be open on Saturdays for the weekend shoppers). Today, however, she had a customer stopping by to pick up a custom order. She only needed to open the shop for an hour or so, but she did need to open it, and that meant looking presentable. “Tempo,” she said, calling over from where she stood by her vanity, fastening on her overskirt. “What time is it?”

Tempo, sitting on the front steps of the small dollhouse that stood on the bedside table and functioned as his own rooms, replied automatically. “It is currently eight fifty-four AM.” Then, the metal of his face twisted itself into an annoyed frown, and he complained, in a much less cadenced voice, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Do what?” the clockmaker asked, eyes still on the mirror, turning where she stood to make sure her blouse was evenly tucked.

Tempo leveled a tiny glare in her direction. He was certain she knew what he meant. “Treat me like a clock,” he said anyways. Whenever she asked him the time, he felt compelled to reply; it was part of the enchantment that had created him in the first place.

The clockmaker finally turned to look at him, her eyes landing pointedly upon the inch-wide timepiece embedded into the center of his metal chest. “You are literally a clock,” she bluntly replied.

Tempo bristled, at least as much as he could given that he was only about five inches tall and made of engraved metal. He protested, “I’m much more than a clock!”

“That still makes you a clock,” said the clockmaker.

“Does not!”

The clockmaker leveled a dry look at him behind her thick glasses. “Tempo,” she said calmly. “What time is it?”

“It is currently eight fifty-six AM- oh come off it!”

Of course I had to go with Clockwork Kingdom for this one.

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The clockmaker walked briskly through the city streets, her skirts swishing around her ankle-length boots. Around her, the city was alive with noise and color: crowds passing by on the sides of the street, while in the middle horseless automatic carriages rumbled along with clanking wheels and the occasional whistle of steam. Steam filled the city, in fact, muted the sunlight and refracted it against the thousand clouds drifting hither and yon from various sources. Clouds of steam rose from the city’s many factories, from the automatic carriages, from every building adorned with the newest inventions of industry and progress. The trains taking people to and from the city added to the white fog, while occasionally an airship could be seen drifting through the clouds high above.

The clockmaker paid this little mind, finding the sight as mundane as ever, but the tiny automaton sitting on her shoulder looked around with open curiosity. Tempo rarely left the clockmaker’s workshop, and as such, this city of steam was a delight to his enchanted senses. His tiny glass eyes, with irises of turning copper gears, darted towards each new sight. He kept one articulated metal hand clasped around the thin necktie the clockmaker wore, magic and metal jointing working in tandem to allow him to keep his balance upon her shoulder. That shoulder swayed with her gait and occasionally shifted upward as she readjusted her grip on the large box she carried.

Back to Clockwork Kingdom for this one!

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The bell over the door let out a merry chime as it opened, heralding the arrival of a customer. The clockmaker looked up from her large desk at the back of her shop, past shelving packed with intricately designed clocks, to see who it was. Nobody she knew already, it would seem- a man, finely dressed, nearing middle age and with an air of propriety about him. A gentleman, then. That was good; her clocks were expensive, and walk-ins were rarer than they ought to be. Perhaps she could make a sale.

“Good morning, sir,” she greeted him politely, and the man nodded back, taking off his hat as he stepped fully into the store. “Anything I can help you with today?”

“Perhaps,” the man replied, his voice rich, self-assured. Definitely a man with money to spend. “I heard tell of your little shop from a friend of mine, the Duchess Pemberley. She was raving about an enchanted clock she bought here, with a little bird that flew upon the hour.”

“She’s too kind,” the clockmaker replied with all due modesty. “But yes, that was one of mine. As you can see, each piece is unique. The enchantments are likewise bespoke. Should nothing here catch your fancy, I also do custom pieces.” Those were more expensive, of course, but the sorts of people who dropped the names of duchesses usually didn’t care. The more expensive, the better, in their eyes; which was a mentality that allowed the clockmaker to continue keeping shop.

 The gentleman wandered further in, taking in the clocks around him. Everything from tiny pocket watches to a great looming grandfather clock were on display, each with its own charm. Some shimmered or glowed. Many of them had figures so delicate that one couldn’t tell where the clockwork ended and the enchantment began: tiny squirrels that would race up and down the carved ivy of a clock’s side, sinuous snakes coiling around wristwatch chains, clocks whose gears floated within encased glass. “These are all your creations?” he gathered, sounding mildly impressed.

The clockmaker nodded. The desk in front of her was covered in pieces and parts, tools ranging from large to incredibly small; the amount of detail work present in the enchanted creatures, the clockwork, and the engraving would suggest that more than mild awe was likely due, though she certainly didn’t give off that impression in the least. “Yes,” was all she said instead. “From start to finish, I create everything myself.”

The gentleman’s eyes fell upon a piece that wasn’t sitting on a shelf, but rather standing atop the clockmaker’s desk. He reached out and picked it up, eyes widening and eyebrows rising to his silver-flecked brown hair as the little clock — shaped like a tiny person — began to wriggle and protest. “Fascinating,” the gentleman said, looking it over despite its squirming. The miniature automaton had fully articulated joints, engraved clothing down to tiny tailcoats, and an enchanted face that could make expressions- one that was currently glaring up at him. Ignoring that, the gentleman looked at the clockmaker and asked, “How much?”

The phrase didn’t elicit the usual response. Instead, the clockmaker shook her head, her brow furrowed over her thick glasses. “He’s not for sale.”

Genuine surprise crossed the gentleman’s face. “Really? I assure you I can pay a fair amount for such fine craftsmanship. Say, five hundred?”

That would pay the shop’s mortgage for a solid half year, if not more, but the clockmaker still shook her head. Tension was beginning to set into the lines of her face, the angles of her shoulders. “I’m sorry, sir, but he truly isn’t for sale.” She held out her hand expectantly and the gentleman, with visible reluctance, placed the little automaton into it. “I would be happy to create you a custom clock similar to him,” she offered, the tiny, person-shaped clock settling itself into her gentle grasp with irritation, “but it would only be able to move and tell you the time. This one has a soul.” She glanced down at her creation, which looked back up at her with tiny glass eyes, and the tension wound back out of her shoulders. “I can’t sell a soul. I’m sure you understand.”

The gentleman didn’t seem particularly understanding, though propriety kept him from demanding that which had been so thoroughly removed from offer. “I see,” he said, a mere platitude, though the clockmaker still let out a quiet breath of relief. “A pity. Well, I shall consider it. In the meantime, do you have any other creations of equal rarity?”