Reintroducing Margaux

I’m going to see what I can do to patch up yesterday’s mess…

Margaux cinched the leather chin strap until she heard the groan of leather on leather.  She worked her jaw against the strap while snugging the helmet-like Chronicaller onto her head with her small hands.  If it sat loosely it got off symmetry.  If it got off symmetry she’d get funky results and a headache.  And she didn’t want a headache.

The grade schooler leaned forward to better balance the mass of copper and leather and shell and wood and rubber tubing that made up the Chronicaller.  It 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 and a box of garage sale junk to come up with a working replica.  The Chronicaller now settled, Margaux removed the mouthpiece from it’s perch and situated it between her lips.  She blew lightly to check the rested tuning.  With expert fingers she dialed in a finer pitch and blew again–still lightly.  Satisfied with the result, she unlatched a locked rubber tube along the sagittal line and actuated two copper levers: one on the left and one on the right near the base of her skull.  Some part, one she’d never identified precisely but guessed was the transcrystor, warmed to a hum as the released gases rushed over it.

She quickly rubbed her palms and placed them on the nautilus-like swirls on her temples afraid the suddenly cooled pressure tanks would freeze the delicate shells.  The familiar hum would pitch up until the disparate temperatures evened out then it would begin to drop down.  Careful to breathe through her nose she kept her tongue over the mouthpiece to avoid any premature winding of the Chronicaller.  Then she simply waited.

Tendrils of near-blonde red hair stuck out from under the cumbersome headpiece like vines struggling under a fence.  She looked like a nun at prayer.

More pleased with this edit and the additions than I was with yesterday’s bits.  I meant o squeeze some damn springs in there somewhere but may have to do that at another time.

Day 339