Ticking is: “A strong cotton or linen fabric used to cover pillows and mattresses.” Etymology. Images. I come across it in the first paragraph of Flannery O’Connor’s “The Artificial Nigger” which is also just a great paragraph:
Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of moonlight. He sat up and stared at the floor boards –the color of silver– and then at the ticking of his pillow, which might have been brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for his permission to enter. It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything. The straight chair against the wall looked stiff and attentive as if it were awaiting an order and Mr. Head’s trousers, hanging to the back of it, had an almost noble air, like the garment some great man had just flung to his servant; but the face on the moon was a grave one. It gazed across the room and out the window where it floated over the horse stall and appeared to contemplate itself with the look of a young man who sees his old age before him.”