Legends LXXX - The Girl who forgot Time

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They say that beyond all maps lies a desert where even the wind is silent, as if it would disturb nothing older than itself. There, where the dunes lie like frozen waves beneath a pale, too-close moon, a girl in a white dress was once encountered. No one knew where she had come from, only that her footsteps left no trace, as if she were formed not of flesh, but of memory. She stood among enormous pocket watches, half-buried in the sand, their hands bending slowly like softening metal flowers. Some opened like shells, spilling colors that had no name in this world—liquid light, time melting. The desert had not always been like this. Once it was a garden of voices, a place where people plucked the hours like fruit and wove them into stories. But as time began to swallow itself whole, the garden sank into sand, and only the clocks remained—trapped between striking and silence. And in the midst of it all stood the girl, still, like someone waiting for something no one knows if it will ever come. Legend says she has no past. Some claim she is the daughter of a forgotten god of hours; others say she is the last child of a timeline erased. Still others whisper she is not a being at all, but an answer—to a question never asked. But what was seen was this: when the moon poured its light across the desert, the melting clocks trembled as if trying to speak, and the girl placed her hand on one of their disintegrating faces. Then something happened that the few eyewitnesses could never forget. The clock began to strike, but the chime sounded backward, like a heart searching for the past. The colors that seeped from the clocks crept across the sand like liquid dreams, tracing lines that formed patterns—paths leading to times long past or yet unborn. An old wanderer recounted asking the girl who she was. At first, she was silent, then she raised her eyes and said softly, “I don’t remember.” It wasn’t the kind of forgetting humans know; it was an abyss, a void greater than the desert itself. She didn’t know her name, didn’t know if she had ever laughed, if anyone had ever called to her. But her eyes, dark and still, reflected all the hours the world had lost. As the clocks continued to melt, a silvery wind settled over the dunes. Time began to unravel into threads, and some said they had seen, in the moonlight, the shadows of entire cities—cities that had never been or that would only come into being centuries from now. The girl walked among them like someone searching for a door meant only for her. The world held its breath. Then the inevitable happened. One of the largest clocks shattered silently. Its intricate workings—wheels, springs, tiny, sparkling gears—rose as golden dust into the sky, forming a shimmering arc above the girl.