A Clock Holds Its Breath.

photo by minnie

On the sixteenth day of the first month of the new year, at precisely 18:23 Central European Time, every clock everywhere, stopped. 

 

The first person to notice, the only person to notice for some time was Shelly Pearl. She was walking across a hillside on the edge of a forest not far from her home and, although she was unconscious of the fact that the world’s clocks had ceased to tick, on a subconscious level she was suddenly aware that something in the surrounding hills had changed. And changed for the better. 

 

She felt it among the leaves of the trees, within the air she was breathing and both under her feet and above her head. The ticking had stopped. The incessant clamour of minutes turning into hours and hours into days, had fallen silent. 

 

She stopped walking and took a moment - it might have been longer as it was no longer possible to be exact – and marvelled at the silent beauty gently settling in place. For a moment – again it may have been much shorter or then again longer - she wondered what it would be like if all the world’s clocks stopped at exactly the same time. 

 

Never to start again.

 

She may even have been the one responsible for it happening.

 

Being someone unused to wearing a watch and never carrying a timepiece-enabled digital device, she pretty much continued as before. 

 

She was retired from professional life and cares, living on her own at the end of a dusty track that lead to a small house standing at the edge of a field where wild flowers grew in abandon every Spring. 

 

And Spring has never been dependant on a clock. 

 

So, she smiled with the delight that only beautiful solitude can allow, and walked on down the track as the twilight unfolded around her. 

 

She started whistling, and then stopped again and listened. A deep silence listened back and then she heard an owl, some ways distant. She realised that the Spring was not far off, and that meant that the cuckoo would soon be calling and then the first swallows of summer would return. 

 

She went home, happy at the thought and as there was neither clock nor calendar to tell her otherwise she went to bed and sleep – and, of course, dreams – when she was tired. 

 

And not a minute, second or hour sooner.