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The Astronomer's Nirvana

From his observatory on the peaks of Kejajo, the astronomer leaned back and jumped at the plaintive shriek of his chair’s legs. He realized it was the first sound he had heard in months.

Strewn around his feet were piles upon piles of paper—sheaves of sketches of the cosmos, of Saturn’s dress and the moon’s acne. But there were other, much older drawings—a portrait of a girl with vivid blue eyes, smatterings of German scrawled around the outline of a Saint, a mighty gorilla. The astronomer rubbed the dust from his brow and shuffled through the mounds of paper. Buried at the bottom he found lines written in a hand he recognized as his own.

Stories. He used to be a storyteller. Something tugged at him to wade through all the sheets of his past life and finally heave open the observatory door.

It swung wide, vault-like, and the sudden gush of wind sent the papers swirling, exposing his old crimson cloak. Below him spread plains slowly greening. And a small band of travelers stood speck-like on the horizon.

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