The Verdant Orrery

You find a circular clearing where the trees have grown around a squat brass machine. Moss fills its seams, wet leaves cling to its toothed wheels, and a slow metallic heartbeat pulses beneath the forest floor. Four dials face outward from the pedestal, each crowded with tiny woodland and clockwork symbols. Above them, a black clock hand twitches between the dials. Green light leaks through the engraved poem on the plaque, and somewhere inside the machine, a bell waits to ring.