Tick Tick Tick

That ticking. Tick-tick-ticking. That interminable ticking.

It rings in your skull. The grace of silence is no more; only ticking, only clicking.

That vile land, where beings of metal make their home among dagger-spires of glass and strangling heat, where the song howls from within the throat of the world.

That beautiful place, that beautiful melody.

It has never left you, even when you left it. Of course it hasn’t. Many people who visit those lands do not come back the same, but most recover. But you? How could you forget your brush with perfection, of not just harmony, but the harmony? Yet your memories mean nothing. Its potential, unlimited as it may be, slips your fingers with every click out of place and every tick astray. The tune plays so maddeningly clear in your head when you don’t notice it, but the light of your scrutiny sears away the details. It’s never, ever quite right.

But you can feel the power it brings you each time you get close. Magic slips along the sharp edges of the ticks and swoops along the crystalline hums. It’s not quite so literal, perhaps—even after all these years, you’re hard pressed to explain how magic can be carried by music. But you can brush your finger along the wick of a candle and set it alight, and you can watch that magical flame reach higher and grow hungrier with the clockwork rhythm. This, of course, is how you identify the errors in your recreation, too—and they’re so crushingly numerous. The little flame snuffs into a plume of smoke that practically fills the room with a scent of failure. The clockwork rhythm stops. The work starts again. Again. Again.

Tick, tick, tick.

For six years.