When time permits

Previously

…“What time is it?” she asked. Thaddeus smiled. “It’s the time of the poem. It doesn’t measure hours. It measures the space between one word and the next.” Elara returned home that evening, the feather glowing brighter than ever. The sapling had grown a second silver leaf, and the watch in her pocket had stopped ticking. She placed it on the windowsill, and for a moment, it seemed to ring with a faint echo of the clockmaker’s workshop. She sat down to write, knowing that the poem was not yet finished. The clock had its hands, but every hand needed a face to read, and every face needed eyes to see it. She would write that next, she decided. When time permitted.