Tick Tock

The pocket-watch sat on the counter, ticking.
“That’s it?” Darrell looked at it like it was a viper. Next to him, Cole chuckled.
“Come on, man. It’s just a freaking watch!”
“Yeah.” Darrell frowned and shook his head briskly. “Yeah!. Screw the legend, right?”
Cole clapped him on his back! “Right! And once we hand it to that weird guy, we’ll be rich!!”
“But”, Darrell said. “What if the legend is right? What if this thing is really what keeps the world running?”
“If it is, we keep it ticking! No biggie. You wound it up, right?”
“Nope. Didn’t y–”

I do hope you’ll play along with this week’s prompt. There are so many good places you could take a story about a pocket-watch and I’d like to visit some of them. But only you can take me there. So why not begin right here and now?

For my part, I’m a sucker for legends of normal devices that do extraordinary things. You can keep your Antikythera mechanism! Give me a pocket watch that keeps the whole universe ticking! But wind it first, huh?

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