A small metal box

An old man creeps quietly to his bungalo. It’s a grass thatched thing, mostly wood, but with a tasteful hodgepodge of found items which he has meticulously placed in the structure. Each item, or piece of an item, fulfills a purpose. There’s a section of a blue tarp which acts as a retractable window. There are a few orange buckets which hang on the front of it where he tends to several lush herbs.

There are two pieces of light blue and capped drainage pipe, which act as pillars to the entrance. In the structure itself there are other items, the original forms of which can no longer be determined, but act as chinking or serve some other architectural purpose. The logs of the home were placed vertically into the ground, as opposed to traditional horizontal construction. Everything on the outside of this creation was arranged just so, and it would have to be.

As he walks, one foot and then the other, his knotty old cane advances like an inch worm. He stops to shift his pocket, which has gotten twisted. The object inside is poking him in the leg.

The latch on the door is but a simple section of wood on a nail. He opens it and goes inside. Today is not a day he will have to bolt it closed from the inside in six places. No, today is a calm day. The clouds are a steady gray, moving along in horizontal tufts. The sky is a peaceful white. A gentle breeze rolls over the grasslands which stretch for a great distance in every direction.

The inside of his home is just as tidy as the outside. He wastes no time in sitting down at his wooden table. He stretches backwards and digs deep into his pocket and removes a small rectangular cube of metal. There are two offset knobs on the metal box.

One knob is labeled time, and the other is labeled pitch.