Every Sunday, Arturo sat on his narrow stool by the window, polishing a brass pocket watch that didn’t belong to anyone. The watch had stopped ticking decades ago, its gears fused together like lovers who had held on too tightly. Arturo didn’t care. He polished it anyway, buffing the brass until it caught the sunlight and sent thin threads of gold light crawling up the faded walls of his workshop.
The town whispered that Arturo’s shop was strange. Not haunted, exactly, but not untouched by the peculiar either. It had no sign above its crooked door, and though Arturo repaired watches, clocks, and even the occasional phonograph, he never took payment. Instead, customers would leave small, peculiar gifts—a jar of sea glass, a half-melted candle, or, once, a birdcage missing its door. Arturo accepted them with a small nod and a smile that seemed to carry secrets.
One day, it began to rain inside Arturo’s shop. It started not with a thunderclap but with a gentle mist, the kind that creeps into your lungs before you notice the dampness. Arturo was bent over a grandfather clock, its mahogany frame worn smooth by decades of touch. He paused, staring at the tiny droplets forming on the clock face. Within moments, the mist thickened, transforming into a steady rain that soaked the wooden floor and pooled around his feet. The rainwater smelled faintly of citrus, and when Arturo touched it, it left behind not wetness but a faint silver dust.
The rain lasted three days. Arturo carried on as usual, wiping silver streaks from his tools and keeping a bucket under the worst leaks. He did not mention the rain to his neighbors, and they did not ask.
But on the fourth day, something happened. A woman named Beatriz stepped into the shop, her umbrella dripping water onto the threshold. She had not visited before. Beatriz, a teacher, rarely left her home except for lessons or groceries. Her students said her eyes were like old pennies—dull but oddly warm—and she always carried a notebook bound in red leather.
“I need a clock,” she said, her voice soft but deliberate.
“Why?” Arturo asked, though he had never questioned a customer before.
Beatriz hesitated. “Time is slipping,” she said at last. “My days blur into each other, and I don’t know where one ends and the next begins. I thought maybe a clock could… hold things in place.”
Arturo nodded. He reached under his workbench and pulled out a peculiar clock, one he had repaired but never displayed. Its face was square, with hands that moved counterclockwise. The numbers were not in any order but arranged like stars scattered across the night sky. Beatriz frowned.
“It works differently,” Arturo explained. “It doesn’t measure time as it is but as it feels.”
Beatriz tilted her head. “And how does it feel?”
“Uneven,” Arturo said. “Like walking across a rope bridge in the wind.”
She took the clock, leaving behind her red notebook. Arturo flipped through it after she left. The pages were filled with sketches of birds—eagles, sparrows, cranes—but each bird had human eyes, their gazes heavy with sorrow or delight. On the final page, someone had written: What do birds dream of when they cannot fly?
The rain stopped, but it left behind a peculiar residue. The silver dust that had coated Arturo’s tools began to glow faintly in the dark, and anything it touched seemed to change. A jar of marbles on a high shelf began to hum, producing a low, mournful melody whenever Arturo approached. The broken phonograph on his desk emitted faint echoes of voices it had once played, snippets of old arguments, laughter, and lullabies.
The townspeople started bringing their broken clocks and watches in greater numbers, drawn by rumors of strange repairs. They spoke of clocks that chimed not hours but memories: the scent of bread baking, the sound of a child’s first laugh, the weight of a hand on your shoulder when you needed it most. Arturo worked late into the night, his shop illuminated by the soft glow of the silver dust.
One evening, Beatriz returned, the clock tucked under her arm. “It’s broken,” she said, though her voice lacked any accusation.
Arturo took the clock from her. Its hands spun wildly, a blur of gold and black, as if it were chasing something just out of reach.
“It’s not broken,” he said. “It’s searching.”
“For what?”
Arturo didn’t answer. Instead, he placed the clock on his workbench and began to disassemble it. Inside, he found something unexpected—a small, folded piece of paper. He unfolded it carefully. The paper was blank, but when the silver dust on his fingers brushed against it, words appeared, shimmering faintly before fading again: Time is not a river. It is a breath held too long.
Beatriz gasped. “I wrote that,” she said. “Years ago. In the margins of a book.”
Arturo handed her the paper. “Then it belongs to you.”
She hesitated. “How did it get inside the clock?”
“Sometimes,” Arturo said, “time listens.”
The rain returned twice more in the months that followed, each time bringing new changes. A customer’s watch began to whisper her grandmother’s recipes, while another’s alarm clock ticked out the rhythm of a lullaby he hadn’t heard since childhood. The objects in Arturo’s shop seemed to weave lives together, connecting the distant and the forgotten.
Arturo’s own pocket watch began to hum faintly, though it remained stopped. The hum was soft, almost imperceptible, but Arturo found himself humming along, the tune strange yet familiar. He did not know where it came from or what it meant, only that it comforted him.
Beatriz visited often, though she no longer brought clocks to repair. Instead, she brought small, strange items—a feather she had found in her garden, a stone that seemed to glow faintly in the moonlight. “I don’t know what to do with these,” she admitted.
Arturo took them without question. He placed them on his shelves, where they began to hum and glow and whisper alongside the other objects.
One day, the rain stopped for good. The silver dust faded, and the objects in Arturo’s shop grew quiet. The townspeople still visited, but their clocks no longer chimed with memories or dreams. Arturo’s pocket watch remained stopped, and its hum grew fainter until it disappeared entirely.
Beatriz came one last time. She stood in the center of the shop, staring at the now-ordinary clocks lining the walls.
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
Arturo thought for a long time before answering. “Not everything extraordinary needs to stay. Sometimes, it’s enough to have seen it.”
Beatriz nodded. She left a small paper bird on the counter before walking out into the sunlight. When Arturo picked up the bird, it unfolded itself in his hands, revealing a single sentence written in faint, silver script: What do clocks dream of when they cannot tick?
Arturo smiled, though he had no answer.
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