Faithful Pebble
Part Fifty-Three
It erupted…
No. It purred, the sound.
A soft thrumming stirred from the bushes. It skated the edge of the clearing, curled along the bordering crest of the hill, and teetered down the meandering path towards the town.
Curious, the wanderer turned away from the woods and tiptoed towards a shaking bush. Half way there, an idea struck. It slivered into a smile, softened a silent step and shook a teetering head as a brown and stout and strong gentle hand pushed back a prickly blur of blue-green branches.
The wanderer sighed. He sharply snorted as parting leaves unveiled the carefree dribble of a pickpocket's snore. Nestled in the underbrush, his hat was tilted. It wobbled off his apple colored curls as the sleeping child wiped his nose and rolled away, unconsciously shrinking from the sunshine that oozed between the wanderer's parted fingertips. The wanderer smiled. He recovered the nosy child behind those blue and green leaves unsurprised and slightly annoyed by the child's presence. Smirking, he resolved to keep the child a secret (for now) in order to bring him safely home, in order to not frighten the girl. They had time. The sunrise determined it. His watch ensured it.
His watch!
The wanderer paused. His step faltered as he retreated towards his sac. For a moment, he patted his pockets. For a moment, he stepped towards the blanket. The sight of her cleared his crisp blue eyes, now duller than they were the night prior, no longer glittering with his ability to see in the dark. He remembered. She had it last. The wanderer's gaze puzzled over the blanket draped mound resting quietly besides the well. Scanning over its roving folded curves, his blue eye searched. His fingers twitched. His ears deftly perked listening for the sound that suddenly seemed to vanish.
The snoring overlaid it… surely. The purr of the child, the tickle of the breeze, the rush of her breathing, these common taunting sounds which had uncovered his sleep, they must have smeared it, soiled it, smothered it; the tick, tick, ticking of the minute hand, the tock, tock, tocking of the second. He found it tucked behind the woman's knee under the cloth of her blanket, the drape of her cloak lying face down with the lid snapped open.
It sat awkwardly in the grass, the lid now tilted unnaturally away from its back. The hinges had popped apart. It looked as if someone had pulled them from their fixings one screw at a time. He didn't need to flip it over to know that it was broken. He didn't need to pick it up to know that its face was shattered and that its black hour hand, menacing dark minute hand, its sharply slicing second hand had stopped and ceased to move, ceased to make a sound.
Stepping away, the wanderer silently retucked the blanket around Pebble. In silence, he left the watch to sit hidden beneath the shelter of her cloak. It would stay there for another two hours until the girl would awaken. She would find him, the wanderer, staring silently into a campfire roasting two rabbits over a sprig. His movements would betray what his uneasy silence could not. The shaking of his fingers, the quick fidget of his stare that only seemed to skewer hers as black and bloody and dirty clawed hands gathered up the shattered timepiece. Something had changed and Pebble was certain, the wanderer was scared.
Duh, duh, duh. - Calla