Frozen in time: short story

Short story

My name is Rose Cogsworth. I was an inventor for the queen at the time of the industrial revolution, before the political storm that took over the town of Steamworkings. An organization known as the Mutiny wants to overthrow the Queen, to have the power she has. They are not kind men, and their politics aren't either. The queen, at least, this one, is respectable, and very progressive. These people only want power, and they shall remove it from the people as their goal. They go around trapping loved ones, revolutionaries against their tyranny, into crystal balls, where they are condemned to spinning, frozen in time, like music box figures. My love, they have taken as well. She didn't utter a cry in protest. She was quiet when they came. They took her not because she was the problem, but because I was the problem. To keep me in check, as the queen's worker. I wish they should have taken me instead, but they want my inventions. They want my knowledge, they want my mind. So they have robbed me of the most precious thing to me in the world. My Drew. But they will not have us. I am become intelligencer for the queen's rule. They couldn't find me. I will put my mind to this instead.
I spend days at her crystal ball. In a simple white dress, she stands, as a swan poised atop the water, her left hand reaching up, in parallel with her right leg which is outstretched as a ballerina's, on her toes. On her face is read fear and sadness, frozen in time, her tawny curls framing her perfect, round rosy cheeks, her lips, parted slightly, with their shapely Cupid's bow catching the light on the edges. Her eyes read sadness, glossy ice blue as the skies when we were little girls, the lashes fine, still very visible even so lightly coloured. I trace her face in my mind, longing for it to be animated as it once was. Around us there's emptiness. It takes a hardened intelligencer to brave getting past the guards, but I do every time. I'm gutsy like that. Does her mind spin as her figure in the glass, or is it as frozen as her form? How I wish to know this mind again... How I wish to see her well. But for our sake, I must carry on. I must fix this. Fixing is what I do best. Isn't it? I drop to one knee, not caring much for the ruffling of my petticoats beneath my skirts. I open the compartment beneath her still world, to the webwork of gears and cogs I understand so well usually. I have spent ever moment of my free time by her crystal cage, over the workings of machinery that hold her. I pluck the tiny gear from where it hangs from my ear and take apart the wire I had used to make it into an earring. The last piece...
I used to understand this kind of thing so very well, almost by instinct. I always knew what to fix, what to remove, what to add, the way the gears turn and how they should instead, but ever since the Mutiny, ever since they took her... My mind is a foreign place. I am lost in a maze of incomprehensible workings, as though frozen in time as she. It's not as easy anymore.
-click-
I can hear the gear find it's place. I push the hair back from my face, streaked with coal and grease, the bun atop my head falling appart. I'm too tired to care. I don't have time for this. A little grease and the machinery begins to whir and spin again. I stand up, feeling and looking like an entire mess. She seems to have stopped spinning, for the time being. I press my hand against the glass, and stare into her unmoving face, her eyes like a doll's. It hurts to watch her like this. Drew would never stand wearing a dress if she could help it. She just doesn't do doll.

-"My love, can you hear me?" I ask under my breath, in the thick quiet, my voice raw with fatigue and breathing in all of the smog.

She doesn't move. I don't either. I stay there, standing as my heart sinks slowly into my chest. I feel the prickle of tears sting my nose as I remain still, gazing into her beautiful face. An eternity seems to pass, and then I notice something of crystalline shine on her porcelain, flushed cheeks. A single tear, like liquid diamond crawls slowly down her face.
My heart breaks for the billionth time.
Drew never cries...