The Skywatcher

Of all the visitors who could come by that night, he was surprised most by the perhaps unhealthily tall person who stood before him when he opened his door at the paradoxically ginger and yet resounding knocks which interrupted his typical night-time regimen and launched him across his fittingly small home. Fitting in that he was one who dwelled alone, the sole keeper of both books and candles, and the occasional keeper of town secrets.

The person, whose wild mane of luminous, crimson hair drew his attention away from the ghastly deer skull adorning their face, from the sage dress lined with gilded, braided, sable strings, leant so that their eyes could meet the denizen of the efficient home. They murmured a greeting; one was returned in kind. They asked for him to follow them. He asked where. They asked for him to follow them. He remarked that to leave his candle would potentially threaten — oh, why not? The air asked for him to follow them. The house asked for him to follow them. The books begged for him to go; the candles swore they would be safe; the secrets hid amongst the unfinished bindings beside his vanity mirror.

And so they departed, the one, tall, heart perhaps not the best prepared for their seemingly endless limbs, the other, much shorter, heart perhaps not the best prepared for the drumbeat of anticipation; they walked until they stopped, and the former spoke of the above, of its magnificence, of how many skies there were beyond the skies they saw, and the latter listened, his heart listened, his mind listened, his soul vibrated, resonating with the ideas it always knew. The tall one showed him the stars, the galaxies, the planets — those wanderers, sometimes getting stuck in their routes — and he memorised them all. The breeze flew by, kissing his face. He grinned, and turned to the one who was tall, the one who had vanished. East he looked, and west, and south, and north, and east again. He looked up and down. He did not see them. He could not remember their face. He went home. He went to sleep. He bound secrets in books, he made string and wax into candles, he sold two of one and three of the other. Day left; night entered.

And to the outside, so did he.