“No tree at all,” Hap recovered the bottle and took another swallow. “A flowering vine. It is the seed in the flower which is used. I know little past that.”
The Keeper set the bottle on its knee and kept close and quiet eye on its guest. Wilhelm was his name and he was very large, this much was true. What had driven a creature of the green, growing things into the pale wasteland of Hap's Western Reach? What had driven a creature to pause in the cold? Hap had seen a creature or two in it's travels which had chosen to do the same, to stop. They often were found half curled into a snow bank when the wind brushed the bodies into sight. They usually seemed to have fallen naturally into sleep. Now and again, particularly with the predators, they were grimacing, teeth bared, eyes frozen half open, as if they snarled against the cold that they had curled under.
Such questions would do no good, Hap sensed. It did not seem as if those creatures had known the reason behind binding themselves to snow. No more would this Wilhelm with his thick skin and thicker face. Every expression was carved from rock, flowing into the next expression and again rock. Without the air thrumming into the bellows like chest, Hap would have assumed him dead whenever he lapsed into rest.
Krell's pup made a pipping sound which incited the Keeper to stand with the tiny thing. It set the bottle on the floor besides Wilhelm's silent head, then returned the pup to its mother. A small slide on the wall was touched and the light dimmed so that it was almost gone and in the quiet of the thick walled Light House, the Keeper left the main room to its occupant and trudged up the stairs to the cooled second floor. With a few creaks of floorboards, the Keeper divested itself of the last of it's light clothing and curled its tiny body under a thick fur throw. With a snuffle, not unlike a puppy, Hap's large eyes closed and it buried its small face into a lightly muscled arm. The days, the nights, they were without passing in the darkness of the Reach and so sleep occurred as it was necessary while the stars kept time. In the “morning” there would be work enough to do, but truthfully, Hap had returned from a long journey, had put itself on the task of caring for a visitor too far from life to allow the Keeper to do more than nap. With Wilhelm's increased strength, his willingness to have a conversation, Hap's inner care-taker had decided it was now acceptable to rest.
Rest the Keeper did. Krell, during her master's sleep, moved her pups onto the skin one at a time. The actions did nothing to wake the tiny creature and below, in the dark, the visitor was finally left to his own devices, what little he could do with them.
