Summary

The Observatory is a strange place. There are books tied up with string on tables and corners and stacked the way you wouldn’t expect on bookshelves. There is wallpaper with gold trimmings turned burgundy with age; with fantastical sketches pinned to the walls where holes could be. Most of all, the telescope in the middle of this crumbling attic has a crystal in the middle of it that hums with the faint, rose light of magical energy; a soothing sound that almost seems to bring the place back to life again.

Was it home always? Cyril doesn’t remember; though he always feels like it might be on the tip of his tongue - but whatever the case, it’s his home now. Funny thing, how memory can make the unfamiliar familiar.>

He’s always sitting there at his mahogany desk, scribbling in his notebook with a black quill that seems to be a remnant of his own feathers. People ask him for favours all the time, of course - and how easy it is for him to take and give the aspects of beings locked deep, deep behind our minds; the aspects we’d rather forget but which have made us who we are. And he’d tell you in an instant, with a sideways smile, “Oh, how they change so quickly”.

But it’s funny, he thinks, the way things work. Despite all the favours and deals and the knowledge he’s gathered over centuries; he can never scramble to put back his own memories together - to see if he was ever really mortal, after all.