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tick tock

“A storm is brewing,” said Xileh to his granddaughter, Toril, as they looked out from the balcony of Rigmor's clock tower. The air felt cool and humid as they breathed it in. Clouds were forming in the horizon and the wind started to pick up.

“Most people can’t tell when one is coming anymore.” He continued.

“I know. They’ve forgotten how to listen to nature.” Replied Toril, in awe at the spectacle in front of them.

“I don’t mean this storm." He said, taking a stronger grip on the balcony's rail. “Our time here is limited. As I near the end...”

“Don’t say that.” She interrupted him, noticing the many wrinkles on his face, a reflection of every experience and emotion he had carried across his lifetime. He had refused to go under the knife to correct them. She had grown to appreciate them as proof of what he had lived.

"When you look back on your life, you realize the only thing that mattered was love and those moments built around it." He turned to look at his granddaughter’s eyes, seeing a gleam of hope for the future, wrapped in concern for her safety.

"History keeps repeating. Life is much worse in periods of silence like these, where human thought is suppressed through fear. We are privileged, because they still need us, but most of our people have been forced to forget."

“You’re starting to worry me.” She said, noticing the seriousness in his voice.

“Worry is a sign to get ready. A lot will change. Your principles will be tested. You will have to make decisions that will affect people’s lives and they can be heavy to carry. You can only do the best you can with the knowledge you have. Avoid making assumptions.

"Be careful who you trust. Do not get taken by empty words. I don't think you can trust _____.”

“But I know him well, he’s practically family.”

“In this environment, his actions lived in a bubble. He is not the same person out there. I worry that he is not who we think he is. I hope to be proved wrong, but you can grow up in the same household and be opposite people. I fear, in my hope to protect him, I encouraged him to take more than to give. He is privileged above the rest." As he said that, the weight of the past felt so heavy in his heart that it could have pulled it down many floors.

“Listen, Toril. I have been prepping something for you. It will be delivered in an unexpected way. You’ll know what I mean when the time comes. This is important. No one can know about it.” She nodded, knowing how complex a human being her grandfather was, so much so, that the idea of something unexpected was to be expected.

“He cannot know about it either. He thinks he knows you just as you think you know him. They might use him to try to get to you.”

“Why do you not trust him?”

“People who seek attention are often malleable, their principles don’t exist in the ways we both understand them. Easy money removes the value of our effort and time. It can drive people to seek easy paths and the fastest way up to whatever ladder they think exists. Popularity may be popular in this society, but it doesn’t make you who you are. That depends on your actions and the reasons behind them. Your choices must be independent of whether people love you, hate you or cancel you. They’re your inner protocol.”

He continued speaking, as if he wanted to pour a lifetime of knowledge into those few minutes. He hoped to have given her enough tools to manage what was coming, but what he wished for the most was to have prevented it altogether.

“When words are built for headlines, stats, or votes, they cannot be trusted. You cannot trust someone who masks the truth, often not taking the time to dig deeper, to try to see the 360° view. Nothing is as simple as it seems. A lot of what you see and hear are just façades inside games of power and control. You must learn to see what's behind them.”

“It is hard to have people you trust wholeheartedly. You discover them when you spot similar principles and patterns of action. When you are lucky enough to have such a person, you keep them close, as they’ll have your back. You protect them as they protect you.”

“Was grandma that for you?”

“Yes, but I was too blind to see it in time. Do not make the same mistake.”

He removed a locket from his neck, one he had carried for as long as she had been under his care, and gave it to her.

As she took it in the palm of her hand, tears started swelling in her eyes, like the clouds rolling in.

The skies darkened and small rain droplets started falling, making a melancholic sound against the metal structure…