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In twilight hours I find myself stricken with loneliness, a dull shrieking sound ringing in my ears from the silence of my study, the four walls entrapping me in my own silent cocoon. I hear screams sometimes from the murky depths outside, far beyond the iron woods, but I cannot say if this banshee talk is real or from my imagination.

I’ve realized, of late, perhaps there is something amiss within my mind. I’ve struggled, since my last failure, to make my companion whole again, but traversing the labyrinthine jigsaw of his minuscule innards is akin to sorting salt from sand, ash from snow. The wheels of perpetual motion that turn each hair-toothed gear were aligned with a precision that could have only been wrought by a god of engineering. Though my feeble hands have fought with themselves to recreate him as I saw, I can only fall shaking, weeping to the ground as once and again the metal gnashes upon itself, screeching.

In dead of dawn I’ve clutched at my scalp and laid curse to my own name, but a folly done is done.

The forest calls to me.