Awakening upon a brown stone on a ceiling, eyes and fingers opened to the pale wind that crept through the canyon. It ambled down upon sinew legs, mottled like the sanguine sky. Feet followed one another, the blind leading themselves up and along a viewscape. All throughout and beyond smelled of ash. There It sat and breathed.

An opaque blue-white orb of light wove along the ground. The circle scintillated with the changing winds, faintly pulsing as its light brushed against the opaque eyes of the red creature.

"It's beautiful in a way," the orb said, "I can understand why you come here sometimes."

Several minutes passed. A voice like the earth seemed to echo from within the creature before it escaped. "It is dear to me," It said.

"How much longer shall all of this go on? Your eyes grow tired."

The thing looked over. "I am exhausted. I am threadbare to the passionate setbacks and setbacks of passion. Those winds pass through me all too quickly. My only consolation is that I am not always thinking now."

"Why is it consoling?" The wisp asked.

"Since I was a child," the thing began, "I have been plagued by unwanted thoughts. Strange or horrific, unbidden, softly screaming spirits whose horses rode in my dreams, my waking hours. But, lately, I have made them stop. I have felt less of a burden in general."

"...You don't seem well is what I'm getting at," the light said.

The thing nodded. "In a way it has never been better. Pieces reform, parts become whole, and reality grows predictable. Objectively, I have created almost all of what I have ever wanted."

The creature stroked the air before itself, indicating the canyon below. "This...I derive comfort from sitting here," It continued, "From looking out, feeling the hot howls of its wind pour over me. I can hear nearly nothing, and all is as a poem at night."

The wisp threaded closer, over fine hairs and long legs. "I take it you're missing something," it inquired.

Red appendages moved. "...I will not find it," said the creature, "It is not meant to be. We all need one object of desire out of reach. It is the way of things. This place, in part, is the way."

"And the other part?" The light asked.

The thing moved from side to side. "I am the lantern keeper. My eyes and tongue carry knowledge and insight to the afflicted, the broken, to show a lost teardrop where it may find a pool again. Be whole again. I am the nomad of a thousand worlds."

"Is any one of them yours?"

"All of them are. I observe, record, collect. Anyone becomes a storyteller after long. I enjoy it, but now the rest of my life is a trail I can see to the end."

"...Some would find comfort in that, while some wouldn't," the wisp remarked.

"I do and don't. I know what I chose to do when I volunteered to come here again. And it has been good. But the nights are cold. That is the way of things, though. I am grateful for what I have and expect no more."

"Obviously something is bothering you."

"Yes," the creature indicated. "Not this place, however. The fires that always burn here serve as an inspiration. I am tired of being a nomad, of always moving. Yet I find comfort in it; it is what I do and who I am."

"So what's the solution?" The wisp asked.

"To forget," It said.

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