The Two clocks

The Two Clocks

Way out in a dry, sun-blasted patch of desert—one of those spots where everything blurs together and the heat refuses to chill—there were these two old clocks. Just sitting there. No tracks, no hint that anyone had ever passed by. It was like they’d dropped out of the sky. Just silence, wind, and sand that stretched forever. They didn’t tick anymore. Didn’t really need to. No one was watching. No one had been, probably for ages.

No one really knows how they ended up there. But according to some legend, back in the 10th century, an Arab traveler headed out into that brutal wasteland. He carried very little, except two clocks—beautiful, kind of strange for that time. The story says the desert won. He never made it across. His body and whatever he had on him got swallowed by the sand, and over time, only the clocks were left above the surface.

Time moved on—way more than anyone could count. The world kept spinning, changing, forgetting. But those clocks? Still there. Not ticking, not broken, just… waiting. Like they'd outgrown their purpose. They weren’t just objects anymore. They became something else—like echoes of our constant need to control time, to make sense of chaos.

But the desert? It doesn’t give a damn about symbols. The sun faded their color. The storms wore them down. The metal lost its shine, the wood started cracking. Bit by bit, they vanished. First from sight, then altogether—until they were just part of the sand. Dust, like everything else.

What once had precision—each little spring and cog placed perfectly—turned into scraps, slipping deeper into the earth every time the wind howled. Maybe they had dreams, if that’s even possible. Maybe they remembered the hands that held them, the guy who thought they mattered.

Far above, the stars kept doing their thing. Galaxies popped into existence and fizzled out. Entire systems blinked out like broken lights. And the clocks? Still there. Not noticed. Not remembered. But somehow, still part of the timeline.

Eventually, the whole planet started to fall apart. The sun puffed up into a red giant, swallowing Earth in its last breath. Whatever was left of the clocks got pulled into the molten core—just becoming part of whatever came next.

And that’s how they ended. No explosion, no grand finale. They just… became something else. Not clocks anymore. Just metal, dust, and maybe a little memory. No records. No legacy. But maybe that’s fine.

In the end, they were quiet proof that everything—no matter how small, how forgotten—has a place in the story of time. Even the stuff no one notices. Even the stuff we leave behind.