The spire of the once-holy cross glinted wicked, silver bright in the dim light like a full moon waxing over rivers. There’s a cruel sheen that bathes her eyes as she holds the tip of her tongue between her teeth, the immaculate set of white bone pale against the pink in repose. For the relic forged its own war, blood spilt just for it, even now the alloy smells of the ruddy miasma-laden fields it calls home and kingdom.
Reality pulls back revealing spaces upon spaces, an eternity which stretches out before lonely eyes. Their true size is too narrow and too vast to comprehend, there is a great sense of enormity pooling outwards from warm hues of purest brightness. Transcendental reality ebbs like a breath being sucked from her lungs, cementing loathsome lethargy. Then they shut, lashes drawing the curtains closed as she thinks. Carefully tan fingers hover over her tools, a sort of mediation, many called it Metronome; time was a whorl, but the desire behind it that changes the pace at which it appears to pass was most potent.
A creation of the atman; the actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. It could be argued what it all meant, if—in fact—it were real, and truly, what does it mean? What exactly was the point to test? To this impassioned sport and way of life? With ghosted stroke of metal tools, Lucky listens. The stories reverberated, calling upon memories that tug heartstrings and bring crystalline swells to kohl-lined eyes. Too much; not enough. It had been easier when times were simpler, when she was younger.
Gasping, instantly perception flits to the tools of her trade, though they were were scratched and years worn, they had never let her down. Piano key strokes lift one and then the other, plucked in accordance to the melody steadily hammering. She hums at the musing, netted in a hymn woven by the sweetest of dulcet. Something simmers ‘neath the surface of finely-tuned veneer; the symphonic seed of hope.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Nothing contrived and overwrought, naught but Love’s chime.
It was small, dwarfed in her palm. Of course, it wouldn't compare to the real thing, but artificial mechanism still carried a weight, a cautionary tale, a tapestry woven. Labyrinthine parts fashioned together, crafted into a heart. Enterprising leaps of faith, unhindered by splintering heartbreak and the polluted chaos.
It is an artificial heart for a child; an innocent essence. Clockwork ticks serenade harmoniously with her beating organ tucked behind its ribbed cage.
