Matt took a break from looking through the eyepiece of his telescope. He blinked his eyes several times, trying to undo the eye strain in a few seconds that he had inflicted upon himself over the last several minutes of not blinking. The candles on his desk provided a warm but wavering light as the crisp, chilly, night wind washed over him and the candles. His conservatory, yes, his conservatory, had an open air design on account of the domed-roof being open in order to observe the heavens.

 

He then got off the telescope seat, walked down the viewing platform and over to his desk along the wall. Matt brought out his observation notebook, at least, the one for this year. It was marked “1785AD”. Above the desk were specially inlaid bookshelves made to hold all of his years’ worth of lab notebooks and observations. The oldest of which started from the very top-left of the bookshelf, marked along the spine with the year “1608AD”. Matt took a deep breath and opened the current year’s notebook, which was more like a tome, and turned to the day’s date, and jotted down his observations. 

 

Had Matt really been doing this for that long? One hundred and seventy seven years flew by just like that. He felt like 1620 had only been last year. After the first decade or two, everything really seemed to blur. He barely remembered when he stopped aging, or how. All he remembered were the terrible feelings that accompanied him during that time. Perhaps it was better that he did not remember the details after all. 

 

Matt finished writing down his observations for the night. He was cataloguing all the stars and planets in the sky, giving them all unique, but unfortunately boring, names based on a long complicated nomenclature. He had spent the vast majority of his life doing this every night, and every night, there seemed to be more celestial bodies to add to the list. He felt the more he focused on one tiny portion of the sky, the more entries he would have. As he closed his notebook, a knock came to his observatory door. 

 

“Come in,” Matt said.

 

“I thought you might be in here.”

 

“I’ve been in here every night since before you were born, Blake.”

 

“Yes, yes. I just thought—well you never know. Maybe tonight’s the night you pull a fast one on me,” Blake replied. “Anyways, I brought you some food and tea to keep you through the night’s work. Can’t have you losing your young complexion due to malnourishment”. 

 

Matt chuckled, “Yes, I’ve spent your entire life here every night just to prank you by suddenly disappearing one night. But if I were to do that, then who would be my butler?”

 

Blake laughed back, “Oh, I’m sure you could easily find another, as you have done for the last hundred years or so.”

 

“Yes, but no one I’ve hired in the last hundred years makes tea quite as good as you do, Mr. Blake.”

 

“Is that what you say to all your butlers on the verge of death?”

 

“Just the ones who are as sassy as you. And trust me, you are second to none in that regard.”

“Now that compliment I believe,” Blake laughed, then shifted to a more solemn tone, “But with all due respect, Master Matt, why have you been doing this for so long? Don’t you ever get bored? What could be so important up there that it can’t wait at least one day?”

 

This was not the first time Blake had asked Matt similar questions. Hell, every butler he had asked him the same question after various amounts of time working for him, and Matt suspected Blake would not be the last one to inquire into the nature of his work. Matt knew where this conversation would lead based on previous conversations with Bake, and he did not feel like going there tonight. Not now. Instead, he decided to give Blake just a tiny bit of what he wanted in order to placate him.

 

“Do you want to know the real reason that I’ve spent my entire life up here in these mountains, living like an owl in the night?” Matt said with a firmer tone than normal. Suddenly Blake felt like he was in trouble, like when he used to run around Matt’s mansion as a child and broke something by accident and Matt would give him a stern talking to, looking the same as he does now. Funny, given that Blake was often mistaken for Matt’s grandfather whenever they went out into town together. No one at the markets would ever know that Matt practically raised Blake as his own.  

 

Blake tried his best to put on his best stern face and serious tone against the crushing weight, that towering authority of the man that practically raised him. No matter how old Blake got, no matter how much older he looked than him, Blake still felt small in front of Matt.

 

“Please, sir. It would help lay this old soul to rest.”

 

Matt paused and composed himself for just for a moment before continuing, the  cold, windy, midnight air between them growing still, “I’m looking for something that is very important to me, Blake. Something that I’ve been craving since I myself was a child. It’s the entire reason I went to the Sorceress and begged for immortality.”

 

“What knowledge of the heavens could you possibly crave that badly, sir?” Blake replied.

 

“Please, I’ve already told you more than everyone else before you. I think that’s quite enough for one night. Maybe I’ll tell you the rest on your deathbed,” Matt said with a quick wink, attempting to lighten up the mood again.

 

“Very well, sir, I’ll hold you to that. Now, don’t stay up too late. You may be able to live forever, but you still need your sleep.”

 

“Thank you, Blake. And thank you for the food and the tea.”
 

Blake turned around and left, closing the observatory door behind him, leaving Matt to his own thoughts for a moment. Matt ruminated on what he had just exposed to Blake, that thing he had been craving since he was a kid. He thought back to that time, when his parents were both sick with a chronic disease. Back to that time when the disease was running through his town like wildfire. Back to that time when his parents’ uttered the last words Matt ever heard from them. Those labored, strained, and heavy last words before they died:

 

“My son, my life, if you wake up in the morning and we aren’t moving, just know. Just know that we’ve moved on, onto the heavens above. We’ll always be smiling down at you no matter what. We love you.”

 

That next day, other men from his town came to his house to check in on them, only to find his parents lying still in their beds, unresponsive. They took them from Matt’s house to prevent Matt from also contracting the disease, and buried them in the town square, along with the rest of the victims.

 

It was still too painful to think about, even after almost two hundred years. All Matt remembered was that flaring, burning, want, no, need that he felt following his parents death.

 

Matt set his food and tea down on the small nightstand table next to the telescope. He sat down in the seat, rubbed his eyes and blinked several more times, getting himself ready for another several minutes of eye strain staring through a series of mirrors. After the preparation was over, Matt hunched over the telescope lens and gazed out upon the magnificent heavens yet again, looking for his parents’ smiles.