The Measure of Redolence
written by: Monika Ajay Kaul
The bell above the door gave a soft, uncertain chime as the journalist stepped in. The shop smelled faintly of brass, varnish, and yesterday’s coffee. Clocks of every shape surrounded her… some ticking obediently, others stilled as if they had forgotten their duty. Aurel Veyne looked up from his bench.
“You’re late,” he said, not unkindly. “Though I suppose that’s only a matter of perspective.”
The journalist smiled as she set her recorder down. “They told me you dislike being interviewed.”
“I dislike being explained,” Aurel replied, pouring two cups of coffee. “Sit. The steam cools faster than memory.”
She noticed a peculiar clock on the far wall; its face slightly luminous, its hands turning in uneven loops. “That’s the one, isn’t it? The device that doesn’t just tell time.”
Aurel followed her gaze. “It alters it,” he said softly. “Or it once did.”
Outside, a sparrow called… off-key, as if the hour confused it. Somewhere in the back, a kettle whistled too early. The journalist began her notes, but the air already felt like an old story retelling itself.
Aurel’s voice found a rhythm between the ticking. “It began when my wife, Eliora, started to lose her memory. She’d forget small things… the lyrics of her morning song, the reason for boiling water twice. Then, one morning, she looked at the sun and asked me if it was rising or setting.”
He sipped his coffee, eyes fixed on the trembling liquid. “When someone you love begins to forget, you start keeping time differently. Each day becomes a negotiation. She once said to me, ‘If I could remember long enough to forget properly, I might rest easy.’ That sentence stayed with me. I decided to answer it with metal and motion.”
The journalist leaned in. “So the clock was for her?”
“It was an act of defiance,” Aurel said. “Or perhaps devotion. I thought if I could turn back an hour, just an hour, she might recall a forgotten afternoon; the one where she sang to the kettle, or scolded the sparrow for pecking at her tea biscuits. I wanted to bend time toward tenderness.”
A pause. The pendulums continued their quiet debate.
“But it didn’t work,” he said. “Or it worked too well. The first time I reversed a minute, she laughed like before. But the sound was thin, like memory imitating itself. The second time, the smell of lilac disappeared from the room. The third, even the light changed. It was as though reality began unthreading itself to obey her memory’s fading logic.”
He smiled faintly, almost in pity for his own creation. “I once relived a sunset so many times it stopped feeling warm. Time has no patience for sentiment. It keeps the record, not the feeling.”
The journalist closed her notebook slightly. “Do you believe time resists interference?”
“Not resist,” Aurel said. “Remember. Time remembers everything… especially what we ask it to forget. It’s the only witness that never sleeps.”
He looked toward the glowing clock. Its click seemed alive… not mechanical, but breathing. “When Eliora passed, I tried to feel her presence again through the device. I thought maybe one last rewind, one gentle fold, would let me hear her voice. I did, for a moment. But it was hollow, without warmth, like a reflection calling back from water.”
He glanced up. “That’s when I realized… love cannot survive repetition. It decays with perfection. Only imperfection keeps it real.”
Outside, the rain thickened. Aurel refilled her cup. The journalist, moved but uncertain, asked quietly, “Do you ever hear her still?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “In the flaws. When the kettle whistles a beat too early, or the sparrow sings in the wrong key. Those errors… they’re her redolence, her way of staying. Time keeps what it cannot correct.”
The journalist looked at him, the kind of look reserved for people whose grief has outgrown words. “So you live among reminders.”
“I live among balances,” Aurel replied. “Time isn’t cruel or kind, it’s precise. It gives us the rhythm; we make the melody, and sometimes, it lets the notes slip out of place.”
She closed her notebook slowly, reluctant to disturb the air. “If you could do it again,” she asked, “would you?”
Aurel thought for a long time. The ticking seemed to wait. “No,” he said finally. “But I wouldn’t undo it either. Because the clock didn’t break time. It showed me its nature. We think time moves forward, but it actually gathers, folds upon itself, dense with memory. We move through those folds like dust through sunlight.”
The journalist smiled faintly, almost grateful. “That sounds like something out of a novel.”
“Then perhaps novels remember better than we do,” he said with a smile.
She rose to leave. The rain had softened. Aurel remained by the counter, lost in thought. As she reached the door, a faint sound filled the room… a hum, then a single laugh, delicate and brief.
The journalist turned, startled. Aurel was still, listening.
The luminous clock had stopped. But on the workbench, a half-finished watch ticked once; softly, irregularly, as if waking from sleep. The smell of lilac drifted through the air, unmistakable.
Aurel said nothing. He only looked at the clock, his expression unreadable… somewhere between disbelief and recognition.
The journalist hesitated, then left quietly.
Outside, the sparrow was singing. And for the first time, it sang in tune with the rain.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – The Clockmaker’s Rebellion
- The Measure of Redolence - November 21, 2025
- Songs Beneath the Tangerine Tree - October 18, 2025
- How Long Must I Wait to Forget? - September 18, 2025
