Brammelwurz and The Clockwork Beneath the Fern

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n the mists of Eldervane, where silence weighs heavier than the wind, Brammelwurz wandered alone. He wore his spur cloak, which smelled of wet moss, and followed a path that was more feeling than road. The air tasted of old stories, and each step seemed to open a chapter he had long forgotten. The trees bent over him like old acquaintances, silent yet knowing. Today he wasn't searching for spores or glowing lichens. Today he was following an inner calling. He had heard of the Mist Clock—a secret place where memories don't die, but breathe. They said it had no hands, no numbers, only a floating drop that responds to what lives in the heart. When he reached the clearing, there was no sound. No birdcall, no rustling. Only mist. And light. In the midst of the silence, the drop hung, clear as a tear, crisscrossed by luminous threads that pulsed like thoughts. Brammelwurz stepped closer. With every step, a shadow seemed to awaken within him: the laughter of a child, the scent of apple pie, a melody no one played anymore. He sat down in the moss that nestled warmly against his legs and opened his notebook. But he didn't write. The words didn't come because they didn't have to. The clock spoke without a voice, remembered without an image, sang without a sound. It wasn't a machine. It was a being. Or a place. Perhaps both. And Brammelwurz, the collector of time, understood: It wasn't about remembering, but about allowing. He let go. Not everything, just enough to make room for what was yet to come. As he left the clearing, the drop vibrated one last time, as if the clock, too, had remembered. And the fog absorbed it like a thought not thought, but felt. He remembered an incident from his childhood, when he hid in a rain barrel and counted the drops of rain in the sky. Back then, he didn't know what time was—but he knew it had sound. And now, in front of the fog clock, he felt that sound again. Not in his ears, but in his chest. The drops floated like breaths of the past, and each one said: You have been here. A silver thread almost touched his forehead, and for a moment he felt what it was like to hear his name for the first time. Not spoken—thought. The clock knew him. Not because it saw him, but because it felt him. And he felt not recognized, but remembered. The fog had changed. It was no longer just moisture in the air; it carried meaning. In its clouds glittered tiny points of light, fragments of memory perhaps, or spores of past thoughts. Brammelwurz could almost grasp them, but they eluded him each time—like ideas understood only when half asleep. He thought of all the hours he'd spent in archives, all the spores of time he'd catalogued, and how little of it had truly mattered compared to what he felt now. This wasn't about preserving. It was about understanding. The fog clock wasn't made to count time. It was a mirror. A being of memory, revealing itself only to those willing to encounter themselves.