Grandmother, parts 2368 - 2371

 2368. In the box was another watch made of paper. Coromo had cut out the shape of a wristwatch on a strip of paper, and then in pencil had drawn the stitches of the band, the circle of the face, the hands, and the numbers all in pencil. The pencil marks were now faded but it was easy to see that the 1 through 9 took up too much room , and the 10 through 12 were crammed into too small a space. He wore this paper watch for an entire week, and then lost interest in it.

 2369. In the box there was a third watch, a real actual pocket-watch that had belonged to Coromo’s Grandfather who had died when he was 8 years old. The old man gave the watch to Coromo during a solemn moment when he lay dying, and the gift of the watch seemed to imply that he was somehow bequeathing his life to the boy symbolically by way of a pocket watch. 

 2370. The pocket watch was gold plated, and where the plating had worn off a dull silver color showed through. After Grandfather died the watch continued to work for several more days, but then, either because Coromo over wound it, of because it was just old, it stopped working. 

2371. Coromo decided to fix the pocket-watch himself. How difficult could it be? His efforts were rewarded right away, because he discovered that both the glass face, and the fitted back plate could be easily unscrewed. When he got the back plate off what greeted his young eye was a mechanism so wondrous, tiny and complex as to defy understanding.