Clockwork Orc Name Generator

The story

The trouble began with the word casual. Kessa had suggested a casual meal by the river. Barrod had agreed so casually that he forgot to ask which riverside steps she meant. Afterwards he spent an hour choosing a coat that appeared to have been chosen in a minute. He was forty-seven, had survived several winters in a room without a proper door, and could not decide whether a metal dress clip made him look hopeful. The clip had belonged to no heroic ancestor. He had bought it last week because he thought Kessa might notice.

His beard was older than most of his coats. It spread broadly enough to hide a dropped biscuit, a talent his friend Vark admired more than Barrod now wished he would. On the afternoon of the meal, Barrod borrowed Vark's narrow beard comb. ‘Mind the handle,’ Vark said. One side of the handle already rocked against its fitting. ‘I've been meaning to put a proper brace on it.’ Barrod promised to return it that day, improved if he could manage it. He carried the comb to Helb's automatic barber and asked for something restrained. Helb asked whether he meant short. Barrod said restrained again, as though that supplied a measurement.

The shop had two rooms and one drive. A brass wheel above the counter showed the barber carriage's position; a smaller pointer beside it showed the neighboring portrait platform. Helb demonstrated the coupling before seating him. When the empty comb carriage advanced, a miniature painted sitter rotated on the little indicator. The next accepted portrait sitting was marked for half past four. There was time for a normal trim before it. ‘If the drive catches, I stop both sides,’ Helb said. Barrod nodded without listening carefully. He was looking at a drawing of a handsome jaw partly concealed by an elegantly narrow beard.

For several minutes the apparatus behaved like an apparatus whose advertising had been honest. Soft brushes moved. The padded headrest held still. Helb remained beside the stop lever. Then the machine made a bright, questioning sound and stopped. Barrod's right cheek felt unexpectedly exposed to the room. On the left, his old beard remained in full occupation. Helb stopped the shared drive, examined the carriage, and said the return clutch was holding. Barrod asked whether it could finish the other half before discussing the clutch's feelings. Helb said a forced restart would engage the portrait platform through the same faulty wheel.

The portrait customer arrived carrying a baby in a hat larger than its head. Her father came behind her, holding a clean jacket over one arm. He had traveled in for this sitting and had a homeward coach to catch. They were not an imaginary claim on a blank appointment book. The baby looked at Barrod and began laughing. Its mother said sorry, then laughed once herself, which made the apology less useful. Helb could isolate the stalled barber carriage and let the portrait room run its already booked cycle. Repairing and restarting the unfinished trim now would occupy that cycle instead. He could not honestly promise both.

Barrod looked at the customers. It would have been easy to make a speech about how little a portrait mattered compared with his particular afternoon. The grandfather was putting on the jacket carefully, using a mirror to reach the second sleeve. Barrod knew nothing about their afternoon. He asked Helb what part of his service had actually been supplied. They agreed that Helb would keep one of the three coins for the wash and completed part of the trim and return two. The remaining beard could be handled another day, after the fault was repaired. The family kept its sitting. Barrod left with two coins, one short cheek, and no convincing way to call the result restrained.

Outside, he tried turning the longer side toward a shop window. The reflection looked as if he were hiding somebody behind his face. A scarf made the contrast less visible until he moved, when the scarf caught in the long half. A hat helped only if he wore it around his chin. Vark found him considering that arrangement beside a closed umbrella stall. ‘What did you ask for?’ he said. ‘A disagreement?’ Barrod told him about the coupling wheel. He explained the refund very thoroughly. Vark listened, then asked why Barrod kept touching the little meeting token in his coat pocket.

‘It's just supper,’ Barrod said. ‘Then stop checking whether supper has escaped.’ Vark's grin softened before Barrod could become properly angry. Barrod admitted that he had chosen the new coat and the clip and the cut because he wanted Kessa to think he looked well. Saying it was worse than looking uneven. A beard could be blamed on machinery. Wanting a particular person's company left him without an apparatus to accuse. Vark suggested sending a message if he preferred another evening. That was possible; the riverside message stand was still open. Barrod stood for a while considering a postponement that might be sensible and might also be another place to hide.

Before deciding, he took out the borrowed comb. The handle was as loose as it had been when Vark lent it. Nothing about the spoiled haircut had removed that earlier obligation. The dress clip had a firm sprung band that Vark, who made little fittings for his own tools, recognized as suitable for the brace he had wanted. Barrod agreed to give it up. At Vark's bench they fitted it over the loose joint without removing the comb's ordinary grip. Vark checked the movement, combed the long half of Barrod's beard, and pressed the handle again. It no longer rocked. ‘Better than when you took it,’ he said. ‘Less smart than when you bought it.’ The clip would stay with the comb.

Barrod went to the riverside without the clip. He arrived at the wrong steps first, but early enough to find the right ones without turning his face into a navigational problem. Kessa saw him and stopped halfway through a greeting. ‘I tried something different,’ he said. She looked from one cheek to the other. ‘So I see.’ He told her the short version, including that the portrait customer had kept her appointment and that he had considered postponing. He did not invent a dangerous errand that had required half his beard as a disguise. ‘You could have sent a message,’ Kessa said. ‘I know.’ ‘I'm glad you came. I would also have understood a message.’ Both statements seemed to be true.

The meal was pleasant in patches. Kessa disliked the loud river boats, which Barrod had assumed everyone enjoyed watching. He made a joke that she did not hear and repeated it, which made it worse. She told him about a book she had kept despite its terrible ending; he disagreed so eagerly that he forgot which side of his face he was presenting. They talked for some time. She did not announce that the uneven beard suited him perfectly. When he asked whether it was distracting, she said yes, a little, then asked how he would have ended the book. The conversation survived an answer he would have preferred not to need.

They parted before the last ferry. Kessa had enjoyed talking about the book and wanted time before making another plan. Barrod said he understood, then wondered all the way home whether he had sounded too quick or too solemn. At Helb's shuttered shop a notice said the drive was awaiting repair. His decision had not fixed it. At home, the mirror showed precisely the beard he had left the shop with. He turned his head, trying the long side and then the short. Neither looked casual. He took off the carefully chosen coat and hung it up instead of dropping it where a person indifferent to appearances might. He had gone to supper. For that evening, he let this be an event rather than a verdict.