The clockmakers last tooth

In a quiet town by the Niger Delta, old Baba Ime was the only one who still repaired clocks. His shop smelled of oil, dust, and burnt coffee. People said his hands could hear time.

One evening, a boy brought him a pocket watch that had stopped the day his father left for the sea and never returned. “Can you make it tick again?” the boy asked.

Baba Ime opened the watch. Gears, springs, and one tiny broken tooth on the main wheel. “This tooth is gone,” he said. “Without it, time won’t move.”

He looked at the boy, then at his own workbench. The only spare tooth he had was from his personal watch—the one his wife had given him 40 years ago. It still kept perfect time.

He swapped it in. The watch clicked, then ticked. Slow at first, then steady.

The boy ran off, clutching it to his chest. Baba Ime’s own watch stopped.

He smiled. “Some things are meant to keep going, even if you have to stop.”

And from then on, every clock in his shop ran a second faster than anywhere else in town. As if they were trying to catch up to a promise.

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