Symphony of the Crimson Gear

My heart is a cage of brass filigree, where copper pistons pump a thick, viscous lifeblood through veins of silver wire. I sit upon this beach, the sand beneath me an ash-heap of obsidian, watching the tide reclaim what was once solid ground. I am a creature of clockwork and velvet—a decadent automaton dreaming in a world of glass and steel.
The sun’s light is too bright for my sepulchral eyes, yet it seeks to thaw the frozen gears within my marrow. In this modern wasteland of noise and neon, I am an anomaly, a ghost in a machine.
Then, his fingers brush against mine—a touch so human it feels like a rupture in my programming. He does not see the ticking rhythm under my skin; he sees only the girl in the shimmering crimson skin. In that contact, the friction of my inner workings smooths into a languid, golden hum. It is healing, this simple warmth—as if his touch were the oil that soothes a grinding wheel. For one fleeting second, I am not a machine awaiting winding; I am a soul awakening in the gears of time.

Editor: Gothic Gear