The Stars' Keeper

Record Five (I)

There is a certain guilt attached to the act of sweeping, an acceptance to fault in one's actions. The Elder was seldom wrong about my own actions, being a fact of master to apprentice like parent to child. Experience leads to expectations. There should have been a separation from the past to present matters. Though I feel right to attempt a fix in the lacking number of hands needed around the temple, my decisions may be affecting events outside. What happens within mustn't affect the external world. It hadn't crossed my mind to ask why she was in such a hurry.

My hand lifts the jar up onto the shelf and it clinks against another glass surface. The stardust inside brightens for a moment and casts a quarter-moon glow on my thumb nail. The glow is the same hue as the aura that surrounds the star. It's a reminder to me these supposed celestial beings are just as mortal as I. Something in the youth of the stars makes them different from myself; something I believe to be brought upon our vast difference in understanding. Age is a defining factor but not the reason in its entirety to cause segregation between Keepers and the Stars.

I trudge back to the foyer alongside the pathways I've come to recognize over the years. It takes fifteen steps before a dent in the shape of an arrow-head comes into view. The previous Keeper was the cause of the mar left on the floor. It points in the direction back to the foyer and is the only map in this section of labyrinth. He once claimed that he would fix it, an empty promise bound by the moment.

We all make mistakes, Immanent. He'd said each time the indent was mentioned. Each time he would cull the subject with a statement like such. On his face would be the weight of knowledge, his sins perhaps. Yet he never sought to polish the dent off the floor.