When all the clock's stop
There is stillness in the air, before a clock starts to work. A breathless moment, when all the world stands still, before a hundred tiny parts begin to synchronise. All to measure the one thing that all humans try to cling to. Time. You would have thought that seeing as Gabriel was immortal, time would have very little meaning, and that every precious second, which to us, could separate life and death, would be insignificant to him. But as Gabriel lay in bed, arms round another immortal soul, he treasured every single heartbeat.
He could feel the stillness in the air, a calm warmth, that flooded through his veins, pounding through his life, dictating his breath. But the grandfather clock tick-tocked on in the corner. Claire had insisted that they buy it, she planned to get one for every age of the world that they faced together. She would tell him that it would remind them of life before they, in her words, went senile.
As Gabriel lay there the gentle rhythm of the clock hanging in the night, he felt Claire shift slightly in his arms. Her cloud of golden curls fanned over the pillow, and her slight frame curled into Gabriel's bulkier form, before she stretched and yawned. Her green eyes gazed blearily up at him, and he felt his heart swell with such love, that it felt as if has chest would burst open, unable to contain such adoration.
"Hello," she said, her voice slightly hoarse as she rubbed at her eyes with one slender finger. "What are you doing awake?"
"Just listening to the silence," he replied, and his heart pounded faster as he listened to her silvery laugh, spiralling through the air, like the purest birdsong. "Sometimes," she replied, "I just don't understand you."
"Probably just as well," I murmured, stretching his own long limbs in turn.
"Maybe, it's still dark, what time is it?"
"Just after midnight, go back to sleep."
"No," she said, propping herself up, her hair spilling over her shoulders, like sunlight, "I want to listen to the silence with you." It was his turn to laugh. He loved laughing with Claire, loved to see the way her delicate features lifted and curved as she smiled.
"I was just daydreaming, listening to the clock," he said nodding towards the antique time keeper. "I love our clock. It was the best wedding present you could have given me. Now we can remember every second of our life."
"What if it stops?"
"Then it will be when all the clocks stop. When neither you or I are living, and every ocean has been washed away and the sun has burnt itself out. Our love will make it work." Gabriel very rarely heard Claire express her emotions with such fervour, and it still surprised him that such passion could come from someone so beautiful. It didn't seem fair really. That one person could be so beautiful, intelligent, kind and every other cherished word in the English language. He couldn't believe his luck that someone like her could love someone like him… especially with all he had done…
But Claire had changed him and that life belonged to a different person now.
So there he lay in the presence of the most amazing person in the universe and Gabriel swore that when all the clock's did stop, he would still give his heart, completely and willingly to Claire. Forever.