A short tale

((Wyrmrest Accord))

Another story?

Well. There is one other. A tragedy, really. Not... a comedy. A very sad story, but. I hear it is a true story. Sometimes the saddest things in life are the true things.

There once was a gnomish couple. The man was elderly, and lived his life with a love of all things mechanical. He was like most gnomes in that way, except he was brilliant. His machines never blew up or malfunctioned. They were beautiful gems of art and function.

What he was most passionate about was recreating life. Improving it, perhaps, as machines did not make mistakes or do things they were not programmed to do. And, if they broke, they were easily fixed-- unlike people.

What he made most often were automatons. They were creatures, like spiders and cats. What he wanted to do most was make a perfect humanoid automaton. He began to do exactly that. He worked day and night on it. Months. Years. He worked alone and in his workshop behind the small cottage he and his wife shared creating the perfect humanoid automaton.

His wife was becoming lonely and isolated from him. She came to him crying, saying he ought to give up the machines and spend what little life they had left together. They argued all though the night. When, finally, she broke and accused him of loving the machines more than her.

To hurt her, he agreed. Even though it wasn't true.

His wife sobbed in her chair in the living-room. She was inconsolable, and wept through the night. He tried to comfort her, but it was no use. Finally, he went to bed without her.

When he woke, his wife was stiff and cold in the chair. She had passed in the night. She had died of a broken heart.

Distraught, he sought comfort in his machine. He continued building the automaton, now alone in the world. The more he worked, the more the creation began to look like his love. He smoothed the lips into the perfect heart shape his wife had. He made the eyes the same sky blue and the slope of her nose just right.

When it was finally completed and perfected, he thought to take the creation before a panel of judges, as so they could see the magnificence of his machine. Before he left, he wanted to feel one last kiss from his wife. Perhaps it was to apologize, or perhaps it was to say goodbye. He felt compelled, drawn by the idea of her warmth and love.
He pulled in to kiss her, and tasted the copper and the cold steel. Then, suddenly, he felt a hard and painful crack against his chest. The machine had hit him, very hard, right in the center of his core where his heart thumped.
He was thrown across the room with a giant welt to his chest. The machine had killed him, broken his heart, just as he had broken his wife's.

They were together at least, together and bound. Two shattered hearts beating as one.