Margaux cinched the leather chin strap tightly to hear the groan of leather on leather. She worked her jaw around while snugging the helmet-like Chronicaller onto her head. If it sat loosely it would get off symmetry. If it got off symmetry she’d get funky results and a headache. And she didn’t want a headache. The Chronicaller looked like a brain might look had it been designed by an artistic god who’d seen a real brain for a moment and then been given a week to come up with a replica. Now snug, Margaux removed the mouthpiece from it’s perch and situated it between her lips. She blew lightly to check the resting tune. With expert fingers she dialed in a finer note and blew again–still lightly. As a result she unlatched a locked rubber tube along the sagittal and actuated two copper levers: one on the left and one on the right near the base of her skull. Tendrils of near-blonde red hair stuck out from under the cumbersome headpiece like a bad neighbor’s vines growing under a fence.
She leaned forward to better balance the mass of copper and leather and shell and wood and rubber tubing that made up the Chronicaller.
OK, gonna need to come back to this mess another day.