Agnes rolled up her sleeve and stuck a bare, grease-spattered arm
into the machinery. Fingers closed around the misplaced wrench – a
critical moment. Yank too hard, the cogs would break. Move too slow,
she'd lose a hand. One.
Two.
Three.
With a grating metallic noise, wrench and arm and girl pulled free of
the machinery, and the cogs began their slow, halting grind. The
clock was running again.
“That looked dangerous.”
She turned around, startled, dropping the wrench. A tall apparition
appeared before her, a terrifying woman in a charred school uniform.
The skirt was riddled with holes, the blouse stained with something
yellow and vaguely fluorescent. The stockings sagged in tatters
around legs that seemed to have been viciously seared, and the same
went for the arms, wrapped in bandages.
“Sis. You scared me.”
“That's why I waited.”
The taller girl sat down, looking into the gears as the clock went back up to speed, automatically adjusting itself with the Storm Astrolabe. It would soon have made up for lost time.
“You won an award, Agnes. Top of the class in Storm Lore.”
“This year too? Huh.”
Agnes wiped her hands on a piece of rough sackcloth, leaving only the
rest of her completely covered in grease, from her round glasses to
her shoes. She was dressed more practically, in worker's coveralls,
with her hair cropped. Skirts and long hair were for people who
didn't have to worry about getting dragged into the clockwork's
innards. Like her sister.
“I couldn't make it. Clock needed fixing.”
“Right away?”
“It runs almost everything in Eisenkrone, you know. Including the
scheduling. Somehow.” She paused, looking Amanda over. “...what
happened to you?”
“Alchemy accident. I won an award too, but I didn't want to go
there like this.”
“Which one?”
“Top of the class in Storm Lore.”
“This year too?”
“Mm.”
They sat at the door of the clocktower, gazing out over the school.
They didn't sit too close together. They both knew how the chemicals
would react with the grease.
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