after a while, after a very long time, the keeper stops asking the stranger questions—not out of dislike or lack of curiosity but rather to sit back and observe.
what does one ask someone they know by the shape of their mirage on the horizon? what do you ask when you know every dip and curve of their body from memorizing it with just eyes, because hands would be too much?
what do you ask someone who shares thoughts so easily with you, shares vulnerability, space—even after months and months apart. surely how are you? would be too thin, too small to capture the magnitude of the time and distance between them.
so the stranger comes back from some faraway land. again, and again, always with a new book or scroll or story for our storyteller, babbling with excitement that no other soul on this barren planet gets to see.
again and again, our storyteller listens, and does not ask. looks, but does not touch.
