The Mad Hattress Mattress Actress

I eat wires//25/Clock fanatic/amateur computer biologist

[clockwirer]

The mother in law just called the cops on me and my girlfriend for us kissing in front of her. It was a lovely experience

[clockwirer]

Ya know coffee shop coffee and a coffee shop donut makes a good combination

Oh I ate too much coffee shop donut...

[clockwirer]

After months of exploring feelings, growing as a person, working my ass off at my day job, it feels so good to open up my workshop and work on a clock again.

[clockwirer]

Oh my sister in law ate too much Chinese food

[clockwirer]

what are your pronouns?

She/they

[clockwirer]

Ohhhh I ate too much Sam's Club foood

[clockwirer]

Oh I'm about to eat too much Sam's Club food...

[clockwirer]

Do you consider a hallway to be a distinct room?

[clockwirer]

Old wounds open my heart exposed

The flesh is healed and new

This times different this time is bright

For this time it is something true

[clockwirer]

Words and words

Words express

Words and words

Words compress

Words and words

Words impress

Words and words

Words confess

[clockwirer]

I get to be a guard bird tomorrow

[mikittalabs]

forget if i mentioned it on tumblr dot com but i made a pair of cat ears because Fursona anyways wore them for the first time in public today cuz i was hanging out with my friends and we got several weird looks, barked at, meowed at, and some kid air humped a receipt printer while his friend said "don't worry about him he has autism" which i think was an attempt to harass us but frankly i've never felt such deep secondhand embarrassment. where are your parents. and that all happened within 2 hours.

[mikittalabs]

oh and we also got called freaks but that was a couple hours later

[mikittalabs]

anyways it's like after a certain point you have to realize that whatever you are doing to make fun of me is infinitely more embarrassing than me minding my own business. i'm just chilling and eating my gay little chicken wrap while you're doing. all that.

[mellon-collie-scorpio]

It was absolutely hilarious, THEY WERE WEARING CONSTRUCTION WORKER GREEN

Like????? You can't say shit while wearing THAT

[clockwirer]

My dumbass heard them say "sorry he has autism" and half paying attention just responded "it's all good I get it, I've got Tourettes"

This only made those wingnuts more obnoxious lol

[clockwirer]

Pressuria never slept never ate never spoke. A machine driven by springs and gears, clockwork escapement made up her mind and heart and yet she was greater than the sum of her parts.

Pressuria's maker admired her creation, the soul and passion a machine is capable of expressing as the Mad Machinist realized she had successfully created a living creature of nothing but brass and steel.

A living breathing mechanically minded mouse breathed life into gears and wheels and pulleys over the course of half a century. She spent the next half teaching her clockwork mouse creation the basics of machinery, clockworks, steam, tooling, and metal smithing.

Pressuria learned, slowly and precisely, how to be a better Machinist than her maker. She learned to hold several tools in the same hand, cut metal with precision beyond perception. She could juggle operating a lathe and a mill simultaneously, she could carve gears with only her fingertips, she could make new parts for herself when hers broke.

Madam Muridae, the Mad Machinist, worked alongside her creation, her apprentice, and over the next few centuries fell in love. And Pressuria loved her back.

The two would do everything together. They were practically inseparable. They'd build machines together, travel the railroads and waterways, in the evenings Muridae would play her cello and Pressuria would sit on the floor and listen in admiration.

Eventually Pressuria learned to play the violin, and the two would play together for hours and hours at a time. And when Muridae would grow tired, Pressuria would continue playing, serenading her to sleep.

Neither of them truly ever aged, always young at heart, always adventurous if reclusive, the two had built a name for themselves as a duo who could build impossible things. They spent their time around the Muridae estate up until the era of the Empress.

Muridae had an idea for a project to build a new locomotive. The locomotive would be a replica of a record breaking steam engine, capable of impressive speeds over a hundred miles an hour. Able to think, able to perceive. Able to rule the rails as a goddess among the unthinking steel. She dubbed this creation "Empress"

At first Pressuria helped with the build. She advised and cut cylinders pistons and wheels, tested and heat treated lines and valves. She helped Samuel the Railworker build a small line of track from the Muridae estate to the mainline.

Over the next few years Muridae grew distant and obsessed with the Empress. She built and tested and melted down and rebuilt the same parts over and over until they were perfect. She sat in her drawing room making drafts for days on end, stacking assembly and part drawings as tall as herself before building. She had the old drawings for Pressuria's heart, and adapted them to fit the locomotive. All the while Pressuria supported her wife, bringing her food and water, reminding her to sleep, playing violin for her even though Muridae's cello had long since harbored cobwebs and dust.

The Empress drove a spike between the two, and even more so when Muridae attempted to recreate Pressuria's heart. She watched over Muridae's shoulder as she leafed through the drawings and built the parts. She could smell the mistakes, the bad energy, the rushed bearings and shafts. Something was wrong with the heart before it was done, and Pressuria knew it. Muridae wouldn't hear of it, for Muridae thought Pressuria was only jealous.

While she was jealous, she also knew something was wrong with the Empress's heart. Something was dangerous about it. At night the engine would whisper and only Pressuria knew what was said.

It spoke of death, hatred, greed. That machine knew what it was doing. That horrid machine would steal Muridae from Pressuria. It had other desires, but Muridae was the gateway to its real goals.

And yet when Muridae turned her attention back to her wife, it was not for love and missing her, but for information. For mechanical understanding. For calculation. For labor.

Pressuria knew that deep down Muridae still loved her, but she also knew that the Empress was corrupting her.

The Mad Machinist that completed the Empress was not the Muridae that Pressuria had grown to love.

[xylophonetangerine]

[clockwirer]

Samuel the railworker spent centuries building railroads. He maintained his steam powered equipment, a crane and a steam roller diligently.

He stood crooked, his right shoulder higher than the left from years of carrying the ties over his back. His right ram horn was broken and chipped, his right eye silver and blind. A massive scar just beneath it in the shape of a lightning bolt shown through his grayish white fur, stretching from just below his eye, down his neck and across his chest.

He never spoke much, and when he did it was either to ask where the tracks should lead or to tell the railroad owner how much they owed him for his effort.

He knew how to tend to the locomotives as well, as he once was the head of the roundhouse. Though he stopped ages ago, some still ask him for advice in maintaining the older locomotives. The ones with character and personality that younger steam heads weren't familiar with or couldn't understand. The ones the legends say he built.

Now, he builds the tracks, lays them down for miles and miles day after day. Hauls ties and rails out on a wagon behind his steam roller and cranes them in himself. He works day and night for the right price, and he's been known to lay the smoothest track imaginable for high speed trains.

When the curator of the railroad museum met with him, the idea of upgrading existing trackage wasn't necessarily new to Samuel, but the nature of the request was. Samuel would need to reroute the track to avoid a mountain and add super elevation to bank the train inward around the corners. For this Samuel charged the curator a handsome fee and set to work.

He parked his steamroller at the museum and grabbed a lantern from his crate. He started walking along the eight miles along tracks into the night, noting every joint, every surface imperfection, everywhere he would have to move ballast and everywhere the track looked alright.

He noted the corners that would need lifted and super elevated, and charted out a path to reroute the tracks around the mountain.

He had had heavily overcharged the curator for this job, but that tabby would never know how easy this was for the old goat.

[animentality]

[clockwirer]

Wretch the Rat Racer spent hours tuning every part of their car. Shaving down mating faces by hand, making custom gaskets, listening to the engine breathe as they tweaked air fuel mixture.

They had just harvested a carburetor from the loser of last night's race, adding it to the Owl as part of the traditional taking.

Every race Wretch wins in the Owl, they take a part from the losing vehicle. Every car in town was missing a headlight or a hose or a wiper. One old jalopy has a wagon wheel fitted in place of the original wheel. They won every time, but they helped teach other drivers how to win.

There were two times they ever lost a race, and both times the winner refused to take anything from Wretch's car, instead just asking for bragging rights for doing the impossible.

The Owl is a hodge podge of parts from both forgotten car makers and some more recognizable names, but what is unrecognizable is what the car originally was. While she has the original engine, she hardly resembles the 30's Cadillac Sixteen she started out as. Bumpers and wheels and exhaust and bodywork, transmission and driveline and grill and roof, all taken from other vehicles that lost the race.

There was never any shame in it, always friendly competition. In fact Wretch often selected whatever part they deemed lost their opponent the race as what they took. By all accounts the Owl should be the slowest car, but no machine or entity is ever only the sum of its parts.

The most important parts of the Owl in Wretch's mind were two things: the Owl's soul and a bumper sticker from Chloe's ice cream truck.

Chloe Crow ran a small ice cream shop and once raced the truck against the Owl. Wretch opted to take the sticker of a clockwork ice cream dispenser for themselves and spent nearly an hour peeling it off carefully and resticking it to the Owl.

Last night's race has been a close one, the scent of dust and the rich burning engine of the other car, the scream of the Owl's ancient engine pushed to her limit, the clash and crash of the old wheels on the cobblestone roads, Wretch wound up behind the Lincoln model K, but managed to stay only a few inches from its bumper, waiting for a chance to pass.

The K had different gearing, a higher top speed than the Owl, but Wrench could smell it in the exhaust that every time the driver shifted up the exhaust went rich. The engine choked and sputtered, coughed and threw sick smoke for just a moment every time the car accelerated.

Wretch could not keep up on the long straight sections, the K would just pull away. Coming into a corner, the K had better brakes and better tires, but coming out of a corner the Owl would shoot ahead with a burst of speed while the K would chug and sputter like a sick locomotive.

That was the K's one weakness to the Owl. Wretch knew how to beat it, and drove gentler and slower, braking earlier and softer to preserve tires and brakes, while the K had no choice but to push at 100% through every corner. Any slip up on the entry and the Owl couldn't get past and pull ahead at the exit.

Eventually at one corner before the finish line, the old drum brakes on the K had started to fade, and it couldn't slow down enough to enter the corner smoothly, throwing off its line and forcing it to the outside of the turn. Wretch used this opportunity to shove the Owl's nose alongside the back tire of the K taking the inside line, and pushed the Owl to accelerate out of the turn with everything she had.

The K and the Owl both stabilized and exited the turn faster than anyone had ever seen a car on that stretch of road, and with the finish line just a thousand feet ahead Wretch was already in second and then third gear while the K was still pulling in second. The faster gearing meaning the K would have to shift later, and the Owl's meaning she was already in top gear at the power band, the split second it took for the K to go from second to third was all it took for the Owl's nose to get ahead by the length of the bumper before the finish line.

Wretch wiped the sweat from their forehead as they brought the Owl to a stop. They had won, and the exhilaration and jitters of a close race had them shaking as they killed the engine.

They stepped out of the car and stood up straight. In trying to close the driver's door behind them found it would not latch shut. This wasn't unusual.

When the Owl was not racing, she was the most unreliable broken down piece of equipment anyone could imagine. The doors fought to open, they refuse to close. The body rattles and wheels have fallen off before. Brakes stick on, too. The engine refuses to start sometimes.

The Owl makes no show of what she is actually capable of when her spirit sleeps between races.

Wretch gave up trying to close the door and instead just left it hang open. They turned to face the K. A wide toothy ratty smile stretched across Wretch's face under their whiskers.

"I'll take that 6 barrel" they said.

"How did you know she had a 6 barrel carburetor?" Said the Rich the tiger climbing out of the K.

"Well, I could tell when I got up next to you how many primaries you had opening between your shifts, and I heard the auxiliaries open when your engine picked up."

"Is that what did it then?" Rich asked, leaning against the K.

"Yes, I think that's what did it. You're running rich, Rich," Wretch said with a grin.

"Only at first," Rich said as he crossed his arms.

"True, once your auxiliaries open she breathed fine. It's every time you have to open her again."

"Imagine that," Rich said with a smile. "You tune for the top end and the mid range too thinking you cover everything you need, and the bottom end is what takes you out."

Wretch nodded. "I bet if you tune for the mid range you can make better use of that gearing in the corners," Wretch added. "I would recommend turning back your ignition as well a little, it'll help with your corner exits."

As they spoke a taller gray tabby cat walked slowly towards them, standing almost within earshot.

"Not to interrupt, but I have a challenge for you, Wretch," said the tabby. "I'm the curator of the railway museum across the river. I'm sure you've heard of our new locomotive, the Empress?"

Wretch nodded.

"How would you like to race her next?"