“Only after I scrubbed the rest of the place clean,” I said.I let out a brief sigh.“You’ve never not been there before.I thought you’d abandoned me.”
You left me no other choice.You slept in.I didn’t want to disturb you.
I heard no accusation in his tone but only a dull frustration that bordered on sadness.“Aster, is everything all right?”
He drew a sharp breath.I wonder how lonely it must have been, for all the men who lived here and lit a flame here at night, all alone and unappreciated.Did they ever receive a vision unique to them?
This odd musing with ideas and philosophizing about the nature of the universe was common with Aster, who externalized much of my own curiosity, but now I sensed that he was dodging something, working to distract both himself and me.
“What is it?”I said.“Did you taste something new?Smell something?”
I can’t lie to you anymore, can I?said Aster, sadly.
“I don’t want you to lie.”
I slept last night.And I’ve never slept before.And when I woke up, my first thought was that I had become temporary.I don’t know how to deal with that.
He spoke gravely, as if to inform me of a terminal diagnosis.
“Temporary?”
Like a leaf on a tree in autumn.
“Aster, that’s ridiculous,” I said in a false effort to cheer him up.“You’re not temporary.What do you mean?”
I’m not made of what I was.I mean, I’m still Aster.I’m still a muse.I’m just worried that I’m not...
“Not a proper muse?”
His lips trembled before he spoke.I won’t last.
“You’re not dying, are you?”
Not dying.I’m immortal.But it’s not death I’m looking at.I’m afraid.
“Afraid of what?”
That one day, no one will know my name.
“Are you afraid of being forgotten?”I recognized the fear at once.This was a part of a dialog I’d put myself through many times, and I pressed forward over a familiar script.
When I seriously considered Aster’s situation, I lacked the ability to think of anything more than a cheap fantasy cliche or a half-remembered fragment from old mythology.I pictured a lower god losing his immortality and doomed to live out the rest of his life among humanity or an angel cast down from heaven.
Aster looked at me, fluttering his lashes timidly.Forgotten?Is that your word for it?Like any of the nameless men who used to work here and lived and died and no one ever noticed or cared?I’m not used to having an end, even a happy one.
“We all have our limits,” I said.
Limits mean death.Forgottenness.Ultimate namelessness.His eyes sparkled with fascination and horror at the concept.Tell me.You’re human.You’re mortal.How do you deal with the fact that you will die someday?
I pointed helplessly to the house below us.“There’s a book down there about the family who ran this place.The people who build the tower.Who climbed up here every time the weather got rough.Their names were Robert and Ethel Childress, and they were as real as we were.And they’re not forgotten.Their fingerprints are all over this place.”
Who were they?Do you know more than their names?
I held my breath in thought, but had no idea how to respond.“We’re standing on their legacy, and that has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
I can’t be a name on a list or a nail hammered into a plank of wood.That’s not life.That’s not mattering.This is the kind of thing that scares me, Stella.That really terrifies me.He gritted his teeth together and I realized that he had grabbed onto my arms in desperation, like a drowning man grabbing for a life raft.Then he looked down.Confused.He released my arms.Apologies.I never meant to hurt you.I don’t know what possessed me.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said, rubbing my arms where I could still feel his fingers.My words were a lie.Aster had hurt me with his touch more than I realized he could.Once or twice I had imagined that Aster’s grip was growing stronger, that it hadn’t always been so firm or so real.“Look, if something’s happening to you, we can fix it.We can stop running and hiding from convention.You were right, when you first came here.Right in saying that there were certain questions I couldn’t ask and certain things I couldn’t do.I’m sorry about that.I didn’t realize there would be consequences.”
