Gindledorf’s Tinkerey did indeed have clocks, along with a wide assortment of other gadgets and gizmos. The store consisted of several aisles packed with boxes and crates overflowing with half-built contraptions, small tools, cogs, bolts, nuts, screws, and small metal plates of various shapes.

  Abernathy, Katarina, Tobias, Hannah, and myself decided to check out the shop while Arlo and Elsetha perused the book store next door. We agreed to meet up at the inn after looking around.

  Gindledorf Godfrey, the proprietor of Gindledorf’s Tinkerey, greeted us as we entered. He stood on a stool behind a desk, a pair of large goggles on his bald head, using a wand to weld two metal plates together on a metal box about a foot and a half tall and half as wide.

  He slid the wand into a holster at his waist, raising the goggles to rest on his forehead and removing a thick apron, hanging it on a nearby hook. He wore a pair of overalls with small plates sewn into the knees and down the shins. His shirt was a thick canvas fabric, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Thick black eyebrows grew down and nearly joined a thick black beard, both speckled with gray. A large burn mark married the right side of his face which resulted in him missing a quarter of his eyebrow and a portion of beard. His right ear was a bundle of scar tissue.

  “Ahoy and welcome! Welcome!” he called in a high voice. He spoke quickly, at times combining words. “What are you looking for today? I’ve got gizmos and gadgets a’plenty!”

  “Hi! Do you have any clocks?” I asked. Abernathy had immediately vanished into an aisle, literally salivating at all of the things he saw. I noticed several large wall clocks ticking away behind the gnome and clarified.

  “Portable clock, I mean?”

  “Portable clock, aye aye I do, but only a few. New design, fresh out of Ganesh! Just got the schematic in a few weeks ago. Put together a few prototypes. I haven’t improved on the design too much, mostly just followed the schematics. Here, let me see.” He ruffled through the large desk he had been working behind, shook his head and began looking through a large wooden box. “No, not this box, is it here? No that’s not right either.”

  He stood and looked at the aisles of his store, checking something in the air that I couldn’t see. “Ahh that’s right, aisle 4 shelf C Row 3. Right this way please!”

  He leapt from the stool and hop-stepped across the store to the correct aisle. He jumped onto a ladder attached to a wheel system in front of the shelves, sliding down the aisle on it before stopping at a section. He reached into the shelf, all the way back with his cheek pressed against the shelf’s edge.

  “Aha!” his eye lit up as he exclaimed, pulling a wooden box off of the shelf. He brought it over, opening it and showing me the contents.

  Three watches lay in the box. One was adorned in silver, with a chain attached to the top. The other two were built into bracelets, one with a smokey gray color and white face while the other was blue on darker blue.

  I started to reach for the silver pocket watch and paused. “May I?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course!” He said.

  I took the pocket watch and inspected it.

  Silver Pocket-Watch.

  Rare Item.

  Unlocks time feature in the heads up display, must be in inventory for this feature to persist. Mechanical. Must be wound once a day to function.

  Ahh, so that was why there was no time keeping element to the heads up display! It required an item!

  “This is perfect, how much?” I asked.

  “For the one in your hand, five gold,” he said, “45 each for the other two. They run off of crystal gems infused with mana. Much more expensive, those crystal gems, but don’t need to wind’em up each day. And they require a mana infusion every month or so, by my calculations.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  I thought about it for a moment. Five gold was the largest amount I had paid for any one item, but I also hadn’t really been shopping. I would love to know what time it was at any given time.

  “Deal! I will take the watch,” I said, producing five gold coins and handing them over.

  “Pleasure doing business with you! Anything else you’re after?” He asked.

  “Nothing in particular for me, but my friend Abernathy may. He is a few aisles over.”

  Gindledorf kicked off and went rolling down the aisle on his ladder, hopping off once it hit the end and went to search out Abernathy as I twisted a small circular section in the back of the watch with two small indentions for grip. It took about ten twists before it would no longer wind. I turned it over and saw the smallest hand ticking away seconds, smiling as I put it in my inventory.

  A new screen generated on my heads up display, a clock. I selected it and a wider menu populated. There were several customization options with how it was displayed that ranged from the round clock to twenty-four hour numerical displays. I chose a simple display that showed numbers and either AM or PM. Veil used the same twenty-four hour cycle as the real world.

  I positioned the timer to appear right below my mini-map on the top left of my field of view, shrinking it to fit snugly at the bottom corner of the map.

  It was 5:45 PM. I wondered if Veil had time zones, but highly doubted it. I glanced around the shop to see what everyone else was doing.

  Hannah was nowhere to be seen. Katarina was one aisle over, digging through a box of wrenches. I left her to the wrenches and kept walking.

  I heard Abernathy and Gindledorf chatting amiably as I rounded the end of their aisle. They spoke using so much technical jargon that I wasn’t able to follow the conversation, only understanding about every third word.

  They chatted for a bit. Abernathy handed over a sack bulging with coins and received a crate full of a variety of things he had gathered while talking with Gindledorf. Katarina bought a large wrench, only smiling and winking when I asked what she would use it for. Tobias and Hannah looked but chose not to purchase anything.

  We waved goodbye, with Abernathy promising to come back as soon as he could. Gindledorf followed us to the door, a sad smile on his face,

  “I really hope you do, Abernathy. It’s been a real pleasure talking with someone as knowledgeable and passionate as myself on this subject. Please come by any time, you are always welcome. You and your friends! And if I find myself in Verdantbrook, I will stop by the Adventurer’s Guild and say hello!”

  “That would be fantastic!” Abernathy replied.

  “You know what, here. Take this. It really is great to see such passion in the youth.” He took a small object from his pocket and presented it to Abernathy. It was a small blue crystal suspended in a glass orb in a clear liquid.

  “Make something new with it.” Gindledorf said.

  Abernathy looked at the item with large eyes. His hand shook slightly as he placed it in his inventory. “This is a large mana core. It is… it’s worth more gold than I have ever seen.”

  “You can’t put a price on potential, and I see it in you, lad. Go out there and tinker. Improve. Invent.”

  Abernathy wrapped the old gnome in a hug. The gnome was shocked at first, but returned the hug after a brief pause. His eyes were wet as he stepped back and closed the door, waving goodbye through the large panels of glass built into the door. We all waved back turned.

  Arlo and Elsetha sat on a bench outside of the book store with open books held in their hands. They both looked at us, presumably having watched the exchange.

  “What… what did you do to the gnome? Is he an old friend or something?” Arlo said.

  “We have been in Veil less than a week, he is certainly not an ‘old friend’, Elsetha said. “You two did seem to hit it off though, from that touching exit.”

  Abernathy cleared his throat, looking around and shifting his weight from one foot to another. “Yeah, he was just really into tinkering and alchemy. Just like me. So we talked about a lot of things. He had some really cool stuff. I’m excited. Oh! That reminds me. I got some things, I am going to try putting them together tonight. I think it will be useful with your skill, Chanter.”

  “Oh really? That's awesome, thanks!” I said. “My song tends to destroy what it enchants though, I would hate for one of your creations to get destroyed.”

  “You let me worry about that, but I am excited to get started. Is everyone ready to head to the inn?” he replied.

  We headed to the Inn and procured a room, which cost five silver each for rooms. I used the gold from the mutual party fund to pay for it. Katarina paid for her own room since she had not been in the party when we earned that coin, refusing my offer to pay for her room. Dinner consisted of a delicious, if fishy, meat pie. We decided to go up to our rooms after dinner, exhausted from two days on the road.

  I had ambitiously planned on practicing my transform skill before going to bed, but when I stepped into the room and saw the massive bed with overstuffed pillows and a blanket that could be mistaken for clouds, all of those plans were discarded. I launched myself at the bed after taking care of my nightly routine and was asleep in minutes as the soft bedding enveloped me. It really felt like a cloud. Worth every silver.

  Veil. :)