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bodhrancomedy · 10 months
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Tocktick Chapter 1 An Intriguing Proposition
The Sturm Islands, 1880
The gas lamp flickered disconcertingly.
Emmett Askren, captain of The Iris, groaned and rubbed a large, brown hand across his face. The blinking light ignited shards of pain in his retinas, the ebb and pull of the chatter in the tavern threatening to wash him out to the sea of a meltdown.
Carefully, Emmett placed his hands on the table and closed his eyes, pulling all his concentration down through his arms in the half-forgotten method from his childhood. While the Sturm Islands were hardly the seat of Suliland decorum, certain traits were unacceptable anywhere.
Even as the thought passed through his head, guilt flooded him. Tapping unconsciously on the table, swaying just slightly in his seat, he offered up a silent apology to Kizzy. The idea of his daughter being ashamed of something they had no control over froze him to his core. But rules were rules and society was unforgiving – a tocktick child had time. An aeronaut with debts did not.
An aeronaut with debts and no ship had even less. Emmett scowled to himself and opened his eyes again, brushing a strand of greying hair behind his ears and then scratching his stubble. He should shave, he thought helplessly, to make himself seem more trustworthy to potential clients, but the idea of running a razor over his chin made his stomach turn more than the beer behind the counter.  
Five pounds… it was an impossible ask and the deadline was approaching at the speed of one of those new-fashioned locomotives which had driven him to this place. And that wasn’t even counting the coin he’d need to spend on the broken ship once he had it back. Emmett swallowed convulsively and glanced up at the clock on the wall, peering past the premature and garishly coloured banners proclaiming loyalties for the upcoming Throgmorton Aeronautical Contest.
Quarter past four.
Li was late, as usual. Later than usual, actually. His heart thudded faster, frissons of anxiety shooting up his spine as he tried to relax back into the chair – feeling every splinter of it – and wait.
Somehow, he doubted she was going to solve all his problems.
But it wasn’t going to stop her from trying.
His hands were still twitching as the tavern’s occupants suddenly increased in volume – one of the local cardsharps was trying, unsuccessfully, to start a game – so he shoved them into his pockets and tried to pretend he wasn’t about to become tonight’s entertainment if one more person bashed their mug into the table –
Paper crinkled against his fingers and he frowned in confusion. Looking around in vain for Li and her infamous cane, Emmett withdrew a folded sheet and realised he was holding Sixsmith’s last letter.
Something heavy settled in his gut and he swallowed. He didn’t remember putting it in his coat, but it’d been a long time of trying to break that habit. The letter stayed with him no matter how many times he told himself it should be stored with the others so it wouldn’t be lost, or stained, or torn. It was the logical thing to do, he thought, but somehow, every time, it was folded up and slipped back into his inner pockets.
Emmett wasn’t sentimental. At all.
With the gentleness of a historian examining a precious relic, Emmett opened the letter and scanned the first few lines.
Dear Emmett,
There might not be any correspondence for a bit. Things have happened here and I’m just not going to be able to write until it’s all over. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, and it’ll be a funny story when I’m done, but, for now, don’t expect to hear from me for a month or so…
It was dated 1876.
Someone smacked Emmett across the shin. He yelped and shot out of his chair, turning to face his attacker, pain-filled tears blurring his vision.
Captain Li Xiuying looked up at him, arms folded across her chest and her ornate, dolphin-tipped cane dangling from the crook of her cotton-clad elbow.
“Captain Askren,” she said sternly, “Your manners are appalling.”
“Sorry, Captain Li.”
“I said your name three times, Askren.”
Emmett grimaced and then gestured to his right ear. Even after twenty-five years, he couldn’t look his old employer in the eye. “The blast. It…”
“Pity. It could have knocked some sense into you. Now sit down and close your mouth. You look like a cooked carp.”
“Captain Li did you –“
“Manners, Askren? You cannot blame that one on your ear.”
Emmett shut his mouth, feeling his cheeks burning, and offered his hand to Li. She took it, her mottled grip vice-like on his fingers, and let him guide her into the other chair.
Perched on the edge like a queen, Li patted the table and said, “I have to say, I am relieved to see you looking so healthy, Askren. Skinny, but not, well. Still got everything. When I heard the news, I expected…”
Grimacing, Emmett righted his chair and sat down, spreading his fingers wide. “We were lucky. Well, lucky enough. Superficial –“ he saw Li raise her eyebrows and he amended – “light burns only. No one killed. Just destroyed The Iris.”
“But your ear?”
“The shockwave. It’s… it’s going to get better, I’m sure. It’ll be fine. Li, tell me –”
Li arched an eyebrow at that, but asked, “Miss Keziah Nunn?”
She always insisted on that epithet. Emmett privately suspected it was to scare the kid into some semblance of obedience: no one could put more ice into a full name than a former tutor. It sent shivers up his spine and he wasn’t even the one in trouble.
“She’s alright. Wasn’t home. Only time I’ve ever been glad of her…”
“Criminal tendencies?”
“Explorations.”
Sighing, Li flapped her hand dismissively and said, “Not that I want to question yours – or even Sixsmith’s, I suppose – parenting…”
“Speaking of Six,” Emmett interrupted, heart thumping, “Did you go to Erdenbay? Did you find anything? See anything?”
Li sat with her arms folded and puffed out her cheeks in lieu of an answer.
“What does that mean? You did go, didn’t you?”
“Of course I went, Askren. I asked around – even dug out an old lumograph –“
“You’ve got lumographs of him?”
“I’ve known him longer than you have, Askren. And, strangely enough, they were invented back in the days of yore.” Li exhaled heavily. “Are you sure there was a message? That you’re not…?”
Her look laid a knife against the pit of his stomach. Even Emmett could interpret that one.
“I’m not mad.”
Li’s mouth twisted.
“I’m not. Look!”
The paper rattled in his hands as he slid it across the table. Obligingly, Li took her tiny eyeglasses – the lenses alone costing more than the entirety of Emmett’s current capital – and bent over the paper. She didn’t move.
“E-R-D-E-N-B-A-Y. Four. Eleven. The fourth of November. He was trying to send me a code!”
Li buried her face in her hands.
The knife in his stomach punctured his gut. Rocking back and forth, abruptly, painfully aware of the growing clamour of the tavern, Emmett jabbed a finger at the letter. “Don’t you see? Something was happening. He was –“ the words stuck in his throat because he’d never known them to be true – “he was scared, Li. Scared enough that he wanted me to meet him and he couldn’t say it straight. I flew out – diverted a big shipment and –”
“And he never showed.”
“No, but –“
“Why are you still here, Askren? Why didn’t you leave with every other intelligent aeronaut last year? The changeover, the riots, the permits that cost more than you make in a run, why did you not leave?”
Emmett’s jaw worked, but he couldn’t think of a response that didn’t make him sound stupid. The gaslight was flickering faster now, each flash as bright as lightning. Someone was tuning up an instrument. “I…”
“You knew it was happening, Askren,” Li said. The lines at the edges of her eyes were sharp. “I remember you voicing concerns at the time.”
Emmett nodded.
“Why didn’t you leave then? You knew there was going to be a disaster at some point, and these islands are not a good place for a child.” Her voice dropped to being barely audible. “Especially a child like yours.”
Emmett bristled. “There’s nothing wrong with my daughter. What are you trying to get at, Captain? I’m sorry, call me stupid, but you’re not making any sense.”
“How much are you short by?”
“Five pounds, Shades, Li, please just answer me.”
“I have a suggestion, Askren. You will not like it, but listen to me before you get angry.”
“Not until you tell me,” Emmett spat the words around his teeth, panic rising in his throat to thicken his accent, “what the fuck –“
“Sixsmith is dead.”
Her words hit him like a hammer. His lungs splinted under the assault, leaving a black void in his chest. Emmett opened his mouth several times, unable to draw a breath; not quite able to articulate the swirling tempest of terror, rage, and sorrow slamming into his stomach.
So, it was a small, stupid sound that escaped him. “No.”
Li leant forwards and, in an unusual display of sympathy, rested her hand on his. Emmett flinched, her touch burning his skin. “I called on an old friend in Ester –“ that meant nothing because Li counted every person she’d ever met a friend – “who has a ghastly habit of collecting obits.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for his blood to get colder, but Emmett felt ice slip into his veins as Li withdrew a folded sheet from a voluminous pocket of her dress.
“Obituaries of unclaimed bodies.” Li sighed and began to read, “Recovered thirty-first of August. 1876. Taiyeku male. Pale and of between sixty and seventy years of age. Shorter than average, medium build, short grey hair… beaten to death –“
“No!”
“And why not? Grey eyes? Sixty to seventy years of age? Pale? Grey hair –”
“Short hair. He never wore it short.”
“He could have cut it.”
“He wouldn’t. That was part of his – his particular sept. Remember? Even when he got soaked in that mud-oil-stuff in Wulder?” The laugh was an octave higher than he thought was possible, fingers drumming uncontrollably on the table. “Look, there must be – dozens of Taiyeks in Ester. It’s near a port for fuck’s sake!
“Look at the last line, Askren. Three scars on his left hip and brown birthmark below the collarbone. That’s him.”
Nausea rose in Emmett’s throat and he had to swallow, shaking his head. The musician in the corner drew her bow across the strings like some sick celestial underscore to his horror. Eyes burning, he shot to his feet, covering his mouth with his hand. The thud of the chair hitting the ground was gunshot loud, smashing through what little self-control he had left. Steadily, a drumbeat against the rising – rising everything – he began to slam a hand into the back of his neck.
“Askren?”
Too much. Everything. Too much.                              
Barely aware of the stares and the exclamations, Emmett fled.
The alleyway wasn’t much better. It was dark and dank, reeking of piss and refuse, but that was moderately better than the swirling barrage of humans outside it. At least the setting sun would help with his aching eyes and it wasn’t snowing.
Struggling to slow his breathing, Emmett leant up against the slick stone walls and pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth. Marketplace chatter was still spiking against his temples and – feeling like a small child – he clamped his hands over his ears. The noise dampened, falling to a manageable ache in his good ear, completely gone in his left.
Dead.
The word looped over and over in his brain as he tried to calm himself.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
“No,” he muttered. Sixsmith wasn’t dead. There had been a mistake or maybe something worse. Maybe it was some kind of trick. Maybe Sixsmith had – had faked his death. Yes, that sounded right. That sounded like something he would do. Or sounded like something Emmett could imagine him doing. Li hadn’t seen the body, right? So it wasn’t official.
Yes. Of course, the man wasn’t dead. The banging in his chest was abating as he seized this new certainty with both hands. He was just – just taking his sweet time getting here. Probably having issues with getting a permit. He’d heard they’d shut down production after the poor little Harvester kid had tried to shank Phineas Gorge on his quarterly annual inspections of his sky factories. Being a Taiyek would only double the difficulty, as unfair as that was.
Abruptly, Emmett’s stomach dropped as another memory forced its way through the throng. The oh-so-small – ha – matter of the arrears.
Dazedly, head still ringing and squinting against the low light, Emmett made his way out of the alleyway and towards Clinker’s Hill. As he began the climb, nervously ignoring the persistent calls of the Long Market which lined the rubble-strewn path, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing up at the silver specks, glittering and grumbling against the ruby-red storm clouds, several miles out into the ocean, suspended on the coasts of the blighted Harvest Isle.
He’d seen the Sky-Harvesters almost every day for five years and he still shivered at the sight. There were six of them, all tethered deep into the ocean, and sometimes he had nightmares if he watched them for too long. Each airship was a behemoth of a machine: the smallest half a mile wide, all engineless, all crammed with more than a hundred workers right in the heart of a never-ending arcane storm. The original workers – certainly all of them dead despite the Islands’ capture being less than thirty years prior – had been the families of the soldiers who had kept attacking the Suliland troops after the surrender, caged on a barren lump of rock. The life expectancy of a Harvester back then had been four years. Now it was barely nine.
So the Empire had needed new workers to reap its volatile lifeblood from the tempests. You never applied for the job. Gorge’s East Empyrean Enterprises had a steady supply of those who escaped the noose. It was the employer of thieves, turncoats…
… and debtors.
Emmett stopped at the crown of the hill, panting hard. He leant against a low brick wall, emblazoned with fresh graffiti foretelling a Miss Devitt as Throgmorton champion of 1880, and tried to get his breath back. Putting The Iris down as collateral had been stupid, he thought, but the alternative – himself or Kizzy – was unthinkable. He’d rather lose his home than his freedom.
Well, he’d rather not lose either, but it was an impossible situation. Today’s earnings (four shillings and ninepence) would barely cover food, let alone a ship, and Kizzy’s wage – while welcome – was a pittance compared to it.
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tocktickofficial · 2 years
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clockgirl that gets mad about something and says “oh that really grinds my gears”
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bodhranwriting · 10 months
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Tocktick: An Intriguing Proposition
The Sturm Islands, 1880
The gas lamp flickered disconcertingly.
Emmett Askren, captain of The Iris, groaned and rubbed a large, brown hand across his face. The blinking light ignited shards of pain in his retinas, the ebb and pull of the chatter in the tavern threatening to wash him out to the sea of a meltdown.
Carefully, Emmett placed his hands on the table and closed his eyes, pulling all his concentration down through his arms in the half-forgotten method from his childhood. While the Sturm Islands were hardly the seat of Suliland decorum, certain traits were unacceptable anywhere.
Even as the thought passed through his head, guilt flooded him. Tapping unconsciously on the table, swaying just slightly in his seat, he offered up a silent apology to Kizzy. The idea of his daughter being ashamed of something they had no control over froze him to his core. But rules were rules and society was unforgiving – a tocktick child had time. An aeronaut with debts did not.
An aeronaut with debts and no ship had even less. Emmett scowled to himself and opened his eyes again, brushing a strand of greying hair behind his ears and then scratching his stubble. He should shave, he thought helplessly, to make himself seem more trustworthy to potential clients, but the idea of running a razor over his chin made his stomach turn more than the beer behind the counter.  
Five pounds… it was an impossible ask and the deadline was approaching at the speed of one of those new-fashioned locomotives which had driven him to this place. And that wasn’t even counting the coin he’d need to spend on the broken ship once he had it back. Emmett swallowed convulsively and glanced up at the clock on the wall, peering past the premature and garishly coloured banners proclaiming loyalties for the upcoming Throgmorton Aeronautical Contest.
Quarter past four.
Li was late, as usual. Later than usual, actually. His heart thudded faster, frissons of anxiety shooting up his spine as he tried to relax back into the chair – feeling every splinter of it – and wait.
Somehow, he doubted she was going to solve all his problems.
But it wasn’t going to stop her from trying.
His hands were still twitching as the tavern’s occupants suddenly increased in volume – one of the local cardsharps was trying, unsuccessfully, to start a game – so he shoved them into his pockets and tried to pretend he wasn’t about to become tonight’s entertainment if one more person bashed their mug into the table –
Paper crinkled against his fingers and he frowned in confusion. Looking around in vain for Li and her infamous cane, Emmett withdrew a folded sheet and realised he was holding Sixsmith’s last letter.
Something heavy settled in his gut and he swallowed. He didn’t remember putting it in his coat, but it’d been a long time of trying to break that habit. The letter stayed with him no matter how many times he told himself it should be stored with the others so it wouldn’t be lost, or stained, or torn. It was the logical thing to do, he thought, but somehow, every time, it was folded up and slipped back into his inner pockets.
Emmett wasn’t sentimental. At all.
With the gentleness of a historian examining a precious relic, Emmett opened the letter and scanned the first few lines.
Dear Emmett,
There might not be any correspondence for a bit. Things have happened here and I’m just not going to be able to write until it’s all over. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, and it’ll be a funny story when I’m done, but, for now, don’t expect to hear from me for a month or so…
It was dated 1876.
Someone smacked Emmett across the shin. He yelped and shot out of his chair, turning to face his attacker, pain-filled tears blurring his vision.
Captain Li Xiuying looked up at him, arms folded across her chest and her ornate, dolphin-tipped cane dangling from the crook of her cotton-clad elbow.
“Captain Askren,” she said sternly, “Your manners are appalling.”
“Sorry, Captain Li.”
“I said your name three times, Askren.”
Emmett grimaced and then gestured to his right ear. Even after twenty-five years, he couldn’t look his old employer in the eye. “The blast. It…”
“Pity. It could have knocked some sense into you. Now sit down and close your mouth. You look like a cooked carp.”
“Captain Li did you –“
“Manners, Askren? You cannot blame that one on your ear.”
Emmett shut his mouth, feeling his cheeks burning, and offered his hand to Li. She took it, her mottled grip vice-like on his fingers, and let him guide her into the other chair.
Perched on the edge like a queen, Li patted the table and said, “I have to say, I am relieved to see you looking so healthy, Askren. Skinny, but not, well. Still got everything. When I heard the news, I expected…”
Grimacing, Emmett righted his chair and sat down, spreading his fingers wide. “We were lucky. Well, lucky enough. Superficial –“ he saw Li raise her eyebrows and he amended – “light burns only. No one killed. Just destroyed The Iris.”
“But your ear?”
“The shockwave. It’s… it’s going to get better, I’m sure. It’ll be fine. Li, tell me –”
Li arched an eyebrow at that, but asked, “Miss Keziah Nunn?”
She always insisted on that epithet. Emmett privately suspected it was to scare the kid into some semblance of obedience: no one could put more ice into a full name than a former tutor. It sent shivers up his spine and he wasn’t even the one in trouble.
“She’s alright. Wasn’t home. Only time I’ve ever been glad of her…”
“Criminal tendencies?”
“Explorations.”
Sighing, Li flapped her hand dismissively and said, “Not that I want to question yours – or even Sixsmith’s, I suppose – parenting…”
“Speaking of Six,” Emmett interrupted, heart thumping, “Did you go to Erdenbay? Did you find anything? See anything?”
Li sat with her arms folded and puffed out her cheeks in lieu of an answer.
“What does that mean? You did go, didn’t you?”
“Of course I went, Askren. I asked around – even dug out an old lumograph –“
“You’ve got lumographs of him?”
“I’ve known him longer than you have, Askren. And, strangely enough, they were invented back in the days of yore.” Li exhaled heavily. “Are you sure there was a message? That you’re not…?”
Her look laid a knife against the pit of his stomach. Even Emmett could interpret that one.
“I’m not mad.”
Li’s mouth twisted.
“I’m not. Look!”
The paper rattled in his hands as he slid it across the table. Obligingly, Li took her tiny eyeglasses – the lenses alone costing more than the entirety of Emmett’s current capital – and bent over the paper. She didn’t move.
“E-R-D-E-N-B-A-Y. Four. Eleven. The fourth of November. He was trying to send me a code!”
Li buried her face in her hands.
The knife in his stomach punctured his gut. Rocking back and forth, abruptly, painfully aware of the growing clamour of the tavern, Emmett jabbed a finger at the letter. “Don’t you see? Something was happening. He was –“ the words stuck in his throat because he’d never known them to be true – “he was scared, Li. Scared enough that he wanted me to meet him and he couldn’t say it straight. I flew out – diverted a big shipment and –”
“And he never showed.”
“No, but –“
“Why are you still here, Askren? Why didn’t you leave with every other intelligent aeronaut last year? The changeover, the riots, the permits that cost more than you make in a run, why did you not leave?”
Emmett’s jaw worked, but he couldn’t think of a response that didn’t make him sound stupid. The gaslight was flickering faster now, each flash as bright as lightning. Someone was tuning up an instrument. “I…”
“You knew it was happening, Askren,” Li said. The lines at the edges of her eyes were sharp. “I remember you voicing concerns at the time.”
Emmett nodded.
“Why didn’t you leave then? You knew there was going to be a disaster at some point, and these islands are not a good place for a child.” Her voice dropped to being barely audible. “Especially a child like yours.”
Emmett bristled. “There’s nothing wrong with my daughter. What are you trying to get at, Captain? I’m sorry, call me stupid, but you’re not making any sense.”
“How much are you short by?”
“Five pounds, Shades, Li, please just answer me.”
“I have a suggestion, Askren. You will not like it, but listen to me before you get angry.”
“Not until you tell me,” Emmett spat the words around his teeth, panic rising in his throat to thicken his accent, “what the fuck –“
“Sixsmith is dead.”
Her words hit him like a hammer. His lungs splinted under the assault, leaving a black void in his chest. Emmett opened his mouth several times, unable to draw a breath; not quite able to articulate the swirling tempest of terror, rage, and sorrow slamming into his stomach.
So, it was a small, stupid sound that escaped him. “No.”
Li leant forwards and, in an unusual display of sympathy, rested her hand on his. Emmett flinched, her touch burning his skin. “I called on an old friend in Ester –“ that meant nothing because Li counted every person she’d ever met a friend – “who has a ghastly habit of collecting obits.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for his blood to get colder, but Emmett felt ice slip into his veins as Li withdrew a folded sheet from a voluminous pocket of her dress.
“Obituaries of unclaimed bodies.” Li sighed and began to read, “Recovered thirty-first of August. 1876. Taiyeku male. Pale and of between sixty and seventy years of age. Shorter than average, medium build, short grey hair… beaten to death –“
“No!”
“And why not? Grey eyes? Sixty to seventy years of age? Pale? Grey hair –”
“Short hair. He never wore it short.”
“He could have cut it.”
“He wouldn’t. That was part of his – his particular sept. Remember? Even when he got soaked in that mud-oil-stuff in Wulder?” The laugh was an octave higher than he thought was possible, fingers drumming uncontrollably on the table. “Look, there must be – dozens of Taiyeks in Ester. It’s near a port for fuck’s sake!
“Look at the last line, Askren. Three scars on his left hip and brown birthmark below the collarbone. That’s him.”
Nausea rose in Emmett’s throat and he had to swallow, shaking his head. The musician in the corner drew her bow across the strings like some sick celestial underscore to his horror. Eyes burning, he shot to his feet, covering his mouth with his hand. The thud of the chair hitting the ground was gunshot loud, smashing through what little self-control he had left. Steadily, a drumbeat against the rising – rising everything – he began to slam a hand into the back of his neck.
“Askren?”
Too much. Everything. Too much.                              
Barely aware of the stares and the exclamations, Emmett fled.
The alleyway wasn’t much better. It was dark and dank, reeking of piss and refuse, but that was moderately better than the swirling barrage of humans outside it. At least the setting sun would help with his aching eyes and it wasn’t snowing.
Struggling to slow his breathing, Emmett leant up against the slick stone walls and pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth. Marketplace chatter was still spiking against his temples and – feeling like a small child – he clamped his hands over his ears. The noise dampened, falling to a manageable ache in his good ear, completely gone in his left.
Dead.
The word looped over and over in his brain as he tried to calm himself.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
“No,” he muttered. Sixsmith wasn’t dead. There had been a mistake or maybe something worse. Maybe it was some kind of trick. Maybe Sixsmith had – had faked his death. Yes, that sounded right. That sounded like something he would do. Or sounded like something Emmett could imagine him doing. Li hadn’t seen the body, right? So it wasn’t official.
Yes. Of course, the man wasn’t dead. The banging in his chest was abating as he seized this new certainty with both hands. He was just – just taking his sweet time getting here. Probably having issues with getting a permit. He’d heard they’d shut down production after the poor little Harvester kid had tried to shank Phineas Gorge on his quarterly annual inspections of his sky factories. Being a Taiyek would only double the difficulty, as unfair as that was.
Abruptly, Emmett’s stomach dropped as another memory forced its way through the throng. The oh-so-small – ha – matter of the arrears.
Dazedly, head still ringing and squinting against the low light, Emmett made his way out of the alleyway and towards Clinker’s Hill. As he began the climb, nervously ignoring the persistent calls of the Long Market which lined the rubble-strewn path, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing up at the silver specks, glittering and grumbling against the ruby-red storm clouds, several miles out into the ocean, suspended on the coasts of the blighted Harvest Isle.
He’d seen the Sky-Harvesters almost every day for five years and he still shivered at the sight. There were six of them, all tethered deep into the ocean, and sometimes he had nightmares if he watched them for too long. Each airship was a behemoth of a machine: the smallest half a mile wide, all engineless, all crammed with more than a hundred workers right in the heart of a never-ending arcane storm. The original workers – certainly all of them dead despite the Islands’ capture being less than thirty years prior – had been the families of the soldiers who had kept attacking the Suliland troops after the surrender, caged on a barren lump of rock. The life expectancy of a Harvester back then had been four years. Now it was barely nine.
So the Empire had needed new workers to reap its volatile lifeblood from the tempests. You never applied for the job. Gorge’s East Empyrean Enterprises had a steady supply of those who escaped the noose. It was the employer of thieves, turncoats…
… and debtors.
Emmett stopped at the crown of the hill, panting hard. He leant against a low brick wall, emblazoned with fresh graffiti foretelling a Miss Devitt as Throgmorton champion of 1880, and tried to get his breath back. Putting The Iris down as collateral had been stupid, he thought, but the alternative – himself or Kizzy – was unthinkable. He’d rather lose his home than his freedom.
Well, he’d rather not lose either, but it was an impossible situation. Today’s earnings (four shillings and ninepence) would barely cover food, let alone a ship, and Kizzy’s wage – while welcome – was a pittance compared to it.
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decodercypher · 2 years
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Text Decode for the TOCKTICK arg
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"HEARTLESS
BUT
STILL
STANDING
HOW
CRUEL"
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it’s the end of limited life. time to dissect martyn’s video.
there are some who watch, we are those who listen not yet free, still you flee, from a weighted decision in each peace, lies a piece, that makes up the whole woven the fragments that make up a soul.
the listeners talking to martyn after he died. the first line is pretty obvious: there are watchers, and we are listeners. martyn himself is a listener, but a pretty confused one. but since he is one, i would assume the voice is benign, if controlling.
analysis under the cut
“not yet free, still you flee” - i’m not sure if this is referring to something specific like his betrayal, but it could also refer to the inevitability of the series, of how everyone desperately tries to hang on for more time but will still die in the end.
“from a weighted decision” - now weighted means biased. biased as in, the watchers make sure everyone dies? biased as in, the watchers make everyone create entertainment?
“in each peace, lies a piece, that makes up the whole. woven the fragments that make up a soul” - the “soul” probably refers to martyn. so the “pieces” make him up. probably, then they refer to the peace in the last three seasons.
i’d like to bring up @give-grian-rights’s analysis here. they point out that the “peace” could mean the times that martyn stayed loyal to his allies, instead of this season’s brutal betrayal. every time he stays loyal, he fragments a piece of himself. every time he betrays, like now, the listeners “heal” him one time, as can be seen in the animation when the crack on his glove disappears when the mysterious hand touches it.
extrapolating from this: people often say that the watchers egg the players on for entertainment. but this seems to say that there is another force at work: the listeners. martyn is a listener, and his eyes are closed in the animation. could he be subconsciously giving himself the cracks for not providing enough entertainment and keeping the peace?
the one time that he betrayed, he won the series. the listeners are the ones involved in the end segment and rewarding martyn. the listeners are the ones who can control the series, giving him the win. the listeners are doing as their name states, hearing the ticktock and tocktick of the end game as martyn goes near mad with despair.
at the end, the video says “fragment protected” - note protected. not healed, not restored. what does the fragment mean? is it a mark of martyn’s peacefulness?
i think it could mean that the listeners are trying to urge martyn to make entertainment, to not anger the watchers. the watchers target him, because he is a listener, forcing him to make more content, punishing him every time he fails to do so, with the cracks. the listeners can only help by mending the crack when he finally complies with the watchers.
martyn is a marked man - marked by the watchers, and watched by the listeners.
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brokskar · 2 years
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IM A BIT LATE IN THE DAY BUT ICELAND HCS LETS GO-
- I honestly despise the common fandom portrayal where he’s a memelord. Iceland has always been super separated and behind on European trends. He’s an old man trapped inside a young body, he has no idea what mee-mees are or what tocktick is
- formidable story teller, brilliant writer. He, in fact, learnt to write before Norway did.
- he loves nature, but rather than trees and mountains and streams, iceland loves the the more unique parts of nature that you’ll only find in one specific place.
- he has a messed up sleep schedule and will stay up until like 06:00 reading a new story or knitting a new jumper.
- in human aus, since he can’t actually own a puffin, I imagine mr puffin is, instead, his childhood comfort toy
- he’s 20 rather than 16. Fuck his canon age. Why on earth is he that young?
Fuck canon iceland all my homies hate canon iceland
These are all great! The memelord thing can be funny, but yeah, he’s old as hell and has no idea what’s going on. I think that if he really was into that stuff, he finds it way too late and keeps it going for too long to be funny.
And the age thing: yes. Definitely an adult rather than a teen. Literally over a thousand years old but is canonically younger than America?? Bullshit.
Love it love it love it all glad we’re on the same page
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beepboopbirb · 9 months
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CW: suicidal ideation
Tick Tock
Tick tock, the clock keeps striking: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Pretend it's like you'd wished: that you were not alive
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poetryispretentious · 10 months
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Prompt 143 - A Date with a Twist
One signature part of traditional sijo is a twist in the last line. In this form, you have four lines instead of two to build suspense. Write a poem about a date with a twist! Example Hollywood Sijo There’s a bomb beneath the table, it’s ticking away, tick-tocktick-tock. “I haven’t been bowling in years,” she says.“Maybe we should go together?” “I’d like that, I said. Tick-tock,tick-tock. She…
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spearheadrampancy · 1 year
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if there’s a specific post you can try filtering a specific phrase from the post, i’ve had to do that with a few posts that were super upsetting to me. but yeah it sucks that you can’t tell tumblr to block the post from even showing up at all
that's true, i didnt think about blocking some other phrase from the post. i might do that if it crosses my dash again. shame that it doesnt actually... fix the problem of the filtered word showing.
the reason it's a problem is the filtered word i'm havin issues with is actually fairly common as a name, shorthand for stuff, and i think even a couple companies use it as or in their name/branding.
but actually its reading the word that is Really Bad for us psychologically, even in other contexts than the original source of the trigger ):
i think having options for "show post containing these filered term(s)" (as it is currently), "show post or click this other button to reveal filtered term(s) in post" and "do not show at all" would be really beneficial for a lot of people, but with the way tumblr's been tocktick-ifying the site i really Do Not have faith
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mi4016-w21030083 · 2 years
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Tick Tock
Tick Tock
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residentofthedisc · 3 years
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Last Line Tag
Tagged by @pamsdrabbles
This is a bit more than a last line, but I’m pretty proud of this. Pretty graphic, so be warned!
There was too much blood for him to handle alone.
Sixsmith felt it dripping from his coat, the life-warmth trickling across his fingers, saw it dotting and blotching into the packed earth and he realised, deep somewhere in his gut, that he was scared. But he couldn’t show it, not with Godwin under his hands, not with his eyes wide and breath coming quicker and quicker.
He spoke Taiyeku. It was natural, flowing to his tongue like blood. “We’re alright, we’re alright, we’re alright. Someone’s coming. Someone’s coming.”
A litany. A prayer.
Not for the first time in his long life, Sixsmith wished there was someone – or something – up there. That his Gods hadn’t abandoned them. That his forebearers’ spirits could really step in and do more than nudge aside a bullet or change the wind direction.
What he really needed (what Godwin really needed) right now was a spirit of a proper surgeon with a surplus of blood and some really good  stitches.
He laughed and saw Godwin’s fear briefly flash into confusion before the pain came back.
“Stay with me,” he whispered. “Don’t die.”
Godwin tried to nod. His eyelids were fluttering.
Sixsmith leant back. He could still smell smoke coming from somewhere, people were still screaming, but it seemed more concentrated, less chaotic. What was happening?
He worked spit back into his mouth and tried to yell. “Help!”
The tent flap clattered in the rising wind. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“Help me! Help!”
Godwin’s fingers closed about his wrist. His lips moved.
“Help! I need another medic!”
Godwin’s hand was shaking and it took him a moment to realise that it was deliberate. Sixsmith moved closer again, putting his ear next to the stricken man’s mouth. “What is it?”
“I’m… s…”
“It’s alright. Stay alive and I can yell at you later.” Sixsmith forced a smile.
Godwin’s eyes flickered. They grew wider.
His hand convulsed and suddenly he was trying to scream.
“What’s wrong? Stay with me!”
A shadow was his only warning.
The wire yanked against his throat, dragging him backwards.  Sixsmith choked, panic foaming to the surface, hands going to the garrotte. A body pressed up against him, he felt elbows digging into his shoulder blades as they crossed their arms, turning the line into a noose. He couldn’t get his fingers under the cord and now he couldn’t turn.
Lashing out desperately, he hit an ankle, heard a grunt, but the stranglehold only tightened. Blood pumped in his ears, pressure building in his head, in his eyes. The taste of copper rose in his mouth and all he could understand was pain, that hot-freezing line across his throat, digging deeper and deeper until it’d slice right through to the other side. His head was a ball of expanding, filling, thundering blood and spikes and pressure – shades the pressure – shoving, inexorably blistering his brain apart until –
“I’ll send Askren your regards,” said Norris.
Something popped.
The world blinked out.  
Tagging (no pressure) @queer-crusader @rebelqueen-immortalbadass @radioactive-tiefling @inky-duchess @dragonstoravens @humour-and-hyperfocus @fields-of-ink
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bodhrancomedy · 1 year
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Talas sighed and put down the tray. “You know you cannot remain in that room forever, do you not?”
There was silence from the other side of the door, but it was a heavy silence of somebody listening intently.
“And I could do what Emmett does and come to talk at you and - uh - weasel you to exit. I could copy Maia’s attempts by sending flowers every morning. If I had the physical ability, I could even follow young Kizzy’s method of clambering dangerously around the outside walls of my house and throwing snowballs. But I am not.”
Still there was no answer. Talas took a bite from his toast and continued, “What I am going to do is sit here and not make a single sound - well, I am not going to talk. I will be very busy so I do not wish to be disturbed, but I think just my presence will be enough to uplift you from that bed simply because I will do something to annoy you.” Talas smiled to himself, hearing the faint rustling of sheets that indicated at least some movement. “I understand,” he said, a little quieter, “how embarrassing healing can be. How much you want everyone to just fuck off because you feel weak and uncertain and just not very companionable.” He paused. “Particularly healing the way you are.”
There was another slither of movement.
“But it is also very lonely,” Talas said, carefully switching his attention to his book, “so I am going to enjoy my own corridor. Have a good afternoon, Sixsmith.”
He’d only finished the first page when the door cracked open, letting out the sour smell of every sickroom he’d ever been in. A pale, bruised face appeared in the gap.
“When,” Sixsmith asked in a rough voice, “did weasels come into this?”
Talas turned his head away to hide his smile. “I do believe I meant wheedle. My apologies. I am, of course, operating in a second language. But since you are here now, I have a pot of tea on its way. How lucky I accidentally requested two cups.”
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tocktickofficial · 2 years
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if i don't sing like an external higher power is wringing the words out of me then what's even the point
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bodhranwriting · 8 months
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I’m writing a book. It’s called Tocktick. It’s steampunk, every single main character is disabled and/or queer and it’s about an airship race around a colonised island (totally not Ireland at all).
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tocktickwip · 4 years
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TOCKTICK BLURB by ResidentoftheDisc/H.M
Autistic aeronaut and single father, Captain Emmett Askren has a problem.
That problem being that his ship, The Iris has been grounded for the foreseeable future, robbing him of his only source of income and now his debts are due yesterday. He needs a job with a large payment upfront or he and his daughter will be forced into the death-trap sky-harvesters which hang ominously along the coasts of the Sturm Islands.
But then, a miracle. A pair of genius inventors approach him with a proposal: they will pay off Emmett’s debts and repair his home and, in return, he will test their revolutionary new engine in the race of a lifetime. The 1880 Throgmorton Aeronautical Contest is a chance for Emmett to prove himself as both a worthy captain and a productive normal member of society.
However, to race Emmett needs a crew and a whole lot of luck. Besides the inventors, his recruits are the un-hireable, the dregs and outcasts of society. And worse, they have a brought their own baggage and murderous ghosts along for the ride.
Emmett can fly them through any storm, arcane or otherwise, but it is the dangers on the ground which he will struggle to outwit. 
@queer-crusader @rebelqueenofthediscovery
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b2-different2021 · 3 years
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Big thanks to my brotha @troygreen23 for the G21 @axumstore watch series lovely early birthday present 🙏🏿😎🥂shop with @axumstore for black owned luxury wrist watch if you a enthusiast here's my proudly cherished collection #TockTick (at Oakland, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CSN995vLO-s/?utm_medium=tumblr
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