Main Characters:
• Elias Thorne: A brilliant but reclusive watchmaker losing his eyesight to a degenerative condition.
• Clara Vance: A spirited landscape painter who believes every color has a sound.
The silence in Elias Thorne's workshop didn't bother him; it was the fading of the light that felt like a slow death.
Elias sat at his workbench, a jeweler's loupe pressed against his eye, peering into the skeletal remains of an 18th-century pocket watch. To anyone else, the gears were just brass and steel. To Elias, they were a heartbeat. But lately, the heartbeat was blurring. The sharp edges of the springs were softening into grey smudges. He was twenty-eight years old, and the world was retreating into a thick, permanent fog.
He lived his life in "The Shallows"—the name he gave to the brief hours of morning when the sun was bright enough for him to see the tools on his desk. By noon, he was functionally blind.
Then, the bell above his shop door chimed. It was a bright, silver sound that sliced through the smell of oil and old dust.
"I was told you could fix things that are broken," a voice said.
Elias didn't look up immediately. He didn't want her to see him squinting. "Depends on what's broken," he replied, his voice raspy from hours of disuse. "Clocks, I can handle. Hearts and humors? You're in the wrong shop."
He heard footsteps—light, rhythmic, energetic. A woman leaned over his counter. Even with his failing vision, she felt like a burst of heat. She smelled like turpentine and crushed marigolds.
"My easel is broken," she said, placing a heavy wooden frame on the counter. "And my favorite palette knife is snapped in half. I know, I know—you're a horologist. But the carpenter down the street said you have 'the hands of a saint and the patience of a dead man.'"
Elias finally looked up. He couldn't see the color of her eyes, but he saw the shape of her smile. It was wide, crooked, and devastatingly alive. "I'm Elias," he said, clearing his throat.
"I'm Clara," she replied, reaching out a hand.
He hesitated, then reached out, his fingers brushing hers. She was warm—dangerously warm. Elias spent his days touching cold metal; her skin felt like a sun-drenched afternoon.
"I can't see very well, Clara," he admitted, the honesty stinging his throat. It was the first time he'd said it aloud to a stranger. "If I fix your easel, I'll have to do it by touch."
"The best things are done by touch anyway," she whispered.
That afternoon, for the first time in years, Elias didn't close his shop at noon. Clara stayed. She sat on his workbench and talked about the "sound" of colors. She told him that cadmium yellow sounded like a trumpet blast and that Prussian blue was a cello's low hum.
Elias worked on the wooden hinge of her easel. His fingers moved over the grain of the oak, sensing the splinters and the stress points. He realized that while his eyes were failing, his hands were becoming hyper-aware. He could feel the microscopic texture of the wood, the vibration of Clara's voice in the air, the way the room cooled as the sun moved.
"Why are you so obsessed with the light?" he asked, his voice low.
"Because I'm losing it too," she said. The cheerfulness in her voice didn't vanish, but it thinned. "Not like you. I'm not going blind. But I'm a painter, Elias. And the doctor says the tremors in my hands are only going to get worse. One day, I won't be able to hold a brush. So, I'm painting everything I can before the shaking starts."
The workshop went silent. Two people in their twenties, one losing his sight, the other losing her touch. It was a cruel irony of the universe—a watchmaker who couldn't see time, and a painter who couldn't hold the color.
Elias handed her the palette knife, now seamlessly welded back together. "It's fixed," he said.
Clara took the knife, her hand trembling just slightly—a tiny, rhythmic quiver. She looked at the tool, then at him. Without a word, she reached across the table and traced the line of his jaw with her thumb.
"I'll be your eyes, Elias," she whispered. "If you'll be my steady hand."
That night, for the first time in months, Elias didn't dream of darkness. He dreamt of the sound of yellow.