1. There is Only Here

He barely notices as time sorts and scatters and loops. The clock gears click gently and inexorably, a counterweight to his gentle, abstract, work. He waits (he is always waiting for something that never happens) until the clocks pause and the chamber lights up with his next assignment. The quiet is deafening but time continues to flow underneath the silence. When time is not marked by the hands on the clock faces it is marked by his own hands on the faces of the people he engraves.

“Shhhh, you will still be beautiful,” he says to calm the very old woman under his hands.

She sits in the Chamber, suspended and unmoving, but her spirit cries out to him in frustration and fury. She is one of many who fear wrinkles more than they fear death. Yet, she is beautiful. Her skin is as thin as the finest tissue, her eyes pale gold from years spent squinting at the sun. He loves her. He loves all of them.

“Age is a gift.” Words lost to time, he thinks as he puts away the burin, snaps his fingers, waits for his next assignment.

The clocks around him all wake up to ting and twitter in counterpoint to each other. They will stop again soon. Everybody ages in unpredictable ways (even him) but time itself is never unpredictable. It ticks along. It never runs tight or loose.

A middle aged woman is next, slightly plump, smiling at someone. One of those moments that he can’t parse from her outfit or expression, just a happy woman in a puffy jacket with unfashionably short hair. He comments on it, thinking about how his work ironically keeps him abreast of the latest fashions, or at least the popular ones. She’s not wearing makeup either, and he compliments her on that too.

“Your skin will thank you, and I will thank you later for giving me less work to do,” he says with a grin as he strokes a slight furrow around her mouth.

The clocks pick up again noisily the moment he snaps his fingers.

Odd how he feels the most alone when surrounded by noise.

Still, it is soothing to hear them. He has been in this grotto…he’s not sure how long. A long time. Not quite forever. He’s certain he would know if it was forever.

A young man is next. Or not so young, but not old. He’s in that precious in-between age filled with vitality and conviction. Beautiful. A profile fit for an emperor, a smile bright as the sun. He gazes for a moment, then startles at the sound of a clock…just one, lonely and quiet.

“Hi?” The man looks at him.

Looks at him.

He steps backwards. The single, solitary clock sounds like a drum beat through the room.

“Uhm. So. This is weird.” The guy turns around, squints at the clocks, then focuses on the large clock face that looks out over the city. “I’m not this drunk.”

“No, you’re not,” he says automatically. He cannot take his eyes off the face of his unexpected visitor. He’s seen many beautiful people, of course. What is one more? But none of them ever saw him.

The man blinks at him. “Who are you?”

“The Scrivener,” he says, automatically. He has not considered himself anything else for a long time, and he figures it is the only answer that matters, here in this place.

The man nods slowly. “Okay. That’s…not a name?” He smiles and it feels like the whole room lights up around him. “But you look familiar.” He peers at him closely.

“No I don’t.” He turns away from the brilliance of the man’s handsome face and glares at his clocks, looking for the errant time piece responsible for this disaster.

“You’re very pretty,” the man says, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, which are ripped at the knees. “Not that I mind being mysteriously abducted by a beautiful man! I’m just curious as to why?”

He finds the culprit and picks up the clock, shakes it. “I don’t know why.” It keeps ticking like it’s normal for clocks to mark time while he has an assignment in the grotto. He slams it onto the counter.

“Hey! No need to get upset. We can figure this out!” The man simply steps off the platform, as if that is something anyone can do, and the ring of light that defines the confinement chamber winks out. Like it doesn’t exist at all.

“Whoa! Hey! Don’t panic!”

Was he panicking? He looks down at where the man his clutching at his upper arms, as if to hold him up.

“Hah. Nice. Uhm. Biceps.” The man peels his fingers free, steps back, and then holds out his hand for a Western style handshake. The scrivener has no intention of touching him on purpose.

“No?” He pulls the hand back. “Sure! I get it! You’re old fashioned! Don’t worry my mother taught me manners.” He bows, properly, if a little over dramatically. “Zhao Yunlan, at your service!”

The name is as meaningless as all names are. Still, manners are important. “I am the Scrivener,” he repeats, with a short, shallow bow in return.

The bright grin returns. “Thank you, Scrivener!” Zhao Yunlan says it like it is a name, which it is not.

“Why are you like this, Zhao Yunlan?” He motions at him, meaning, alive and moving and talking to him.

“Calling me out so early in our relationship? I’m stung! Aiyo, my mother could only teach me so much,” Zhao Yunlan says, answering another question entirely. He looks around. “Although maybe I can explain as we head back down?”

“Down?” He frowns. “Where?”

Zhao Yunlan looks at him, then looks out at the city through the clock face, then back at him. “There,” he says, pointing.

“There is no there. There is only here.”

“Ah.” Zhao Yunlan grimaces, then frowns, then smiles again. “I see!”

The scrivener picks up the ticking clock and shakes it again. Zhao Yunlan steps closer and gently pulls it out of his grasp. He smells sweet. He smells like home would smell, if the scrivener had a home he could remember. Did he forget?

Zhao Yunlan is smiling, gently. “Easy there. I can tell that this is an expensive time piece.”

It might be. There is no way to know. His hands fall away as Zhao Yunlan gently places the clock back in its place.

He stares at Zhao Yunlan, his stomach twisting in…anticipation? Fear? Excitement? Familiar flavors of feeling, odd and old.

“So. The city? What say you?” Zhao Yunlan phrases it like an invitation, like offering candy to a child.

For the first time in perhaps all of time, the scrivener looks around his home and realizes that there is no way out. Not for him. His assignments come and go, but he stays here, caught. Time as it twists around him, a separate force. He answers to it but time is not a part of him.

Or, perhaps, he is not a part of time.

He looks at Zhao Yunlan, who is studying him thoughtfully. He’s smart, the scrivener thinks, as he watches Zhao Yunlan look around and see what is obvious to anyone but the scrivener himself.

“You can’t get out, can you?”

The scrivener shakes his head. He’s known this forever but this is the first time he’s felt it.

He wants to fight his way out. He wants to pick up his burin and carve through time. For all the faces he’s marked, all the miles of skin he’s corrupted, this is the first time he’s felt the violence of time slice into him. It’s brutal. It’s alluring.

Instinctively he reaches out and grabs hold of Zhao Yunlan’s worn denim jacket. It’s not enough to shake him senseless. It’s not enough to drag him close, to swallow his surprised gasp, to kiss his soft, plump lips. It’s not enough. It’s not enough time.

Zhao Yunlan pushes him away, but gently, and doesn’t let go of his arms this time. “Let’s try something.”

The scrivener nods. Why not? He licks his lips and watches Zhao Yunlan trace the movement with interest.

“We have better places to be, Scrivener,” Zhao Yunlan says, his voice scratchy and deep. He pulls him onto the platform of the chamber, and this is familiar. His hands are empty of tools, clinging to the warmth of Zhao Yunlan — a man bound by time and who must return to it, live through it and in it and despite it. “Hold on,” he whispers softly.

Zhao Yunlan holds him close, and it is an obscure instinct for the scrivener to wrap his arms around him protectively. He feels like he could guard him from time itself. He holds on, and holds Zhao Yunlan close. Zhao Yunlan snaps his fingers. The chamber lights up and time slips away.