the smallness of things.

“Good evening! Are you still awake?” The small face looked out into the night, listening carefully for her friend’s response. The night peered down on her for some time before glancing across the earth, noticing a more solemn face at a distance. This friend sat, ornately established, on an old stone roof in the centre of a city. He contemplated words in the silence.
“Yes, Wristwatch.” He spoke, after a pause: “I am here.”
The watch smiled. She was a delicate but plain piece of silverwork, not very costly, nor as old as the stone-tower clock. She had a pleasant nature and a bright face.
“A lovely evening!” she murmured a few times, half-mindful of her listener. “How is the city tonight?”
Stone-Tower Clock spoke his mind, although he was accustomed to silence. “My eyes are failing, Little Watch. There is little difference from night to night in the movement of the people; the year is growing warm, yet they all wear their coats and seem to be unmindful of the seasons.”
“A strange thing,” agreed the wristwatch. She was still looking out at the night, but she listened intently.

Being set with about an hours’ difference, the two conversants grew increasingly aware of the symmetry and difference of their movements. Wristwatch spent a while admiring the silence. “Aren’t the seconds fascinating? I think I’m overwhelmed by the idea.”
“Yes.” Stone-Tower Clock spoke in a strange voice, she thought. “I try not to think about it.”
“Oh.”
“I rarely think; I prefer to observe.”
Wristwatch was thinking, her small motor buzzing almost without sound. “I love how we are so small, but we are caught up so inherently with something as large as time. Is this what it feels like to be swimming, or breathing?”
“Time is distant, Little Watch,” Stone-Tower Clock responded gently.
“I have always felt it to be close.”

“Think about what we are.”
“Clocks.” The watch felt curious, uncertain.
“You are silver and leather. I am embedded in these rocks. We are material things and the hours escape us.”
The thought was almost too foreign for Wristwatch to find a reply to. “Our hands are always moving. We are moving things, set to move in time.” She frowned a little as she thought.
“But can you hold time, or speak to it?” Although his eyes did not meet those of the night, he appeared very respectable in the clouds’ dappled shadows. “You are almost irreverent to the immensity, Little Watch.”
“So large we can hardly flee from it.”
“Are you made of movement? Are you time itself? Are you as old as I am?”
“I am not time.”
“Do we represent time?”
The wristwatch imagined what the night might perceive when it saw her. “Not very well.”
“And where is time, what is it like? Words are elusive as the thing itself. So you see,” said the city clock, “that some things are too immense for either you or me to ponder well.”