The ShopKeeper lay flat on his back at the top of the tower as the morning sun rose. Often, his platform was occupied by tourists or stargazers, but if no one was around, this was where he preferred to be. He would rest and watch the Stars above and absorb the bits of Quintessence that drifted down with their light. He hoped the Starling was coming out of hiding at least every now and then, to do the same. That Quintessence had been what kept him alive before he had learned to grow his own.
He reflected, as he lay there, on the sorrow and joy of the night.
The joy, of course, had come when the three Elementals had found true Water. Through his quintescope, he had watched as the Water Elemental bottled it. The true Water had shone so brightly in the container. And the true Water inside the Water Elemental had shone. And the other two Elementals, they had shone too, in their own ways.
Light, of course, begets Light.
In past quests, the ShopKeeper had always had to search far and wide for precisely the right Elementals, one for each Element. He had been shocked when he had found these four right here in this very town, although he had been uncertain about the third and, of course, the first had not actually joined the quest as yet.
There was still so much that could go wrong, so much that could fail. “There is no easy way to the stars from the Earth,” as the ShopKeeper’s old friend Seneca used to say. There was no easy way to create Quintessence.
But an Element had been found, and that was cause for joy.
“Water, Water, Water,” the ShopKeeper sang to the blushing sunrise sky and the gradually fading starlight. “True, true Water.”
The sorrow had come after that magnificent finding, once the ShopKeeper had left his tower and begun his search for the Starling in the earliest hours of the day, before dawn. He had trekked through the hills and caves of the North, over the mountain peaks of the East, across the farmlands of the South, and around the creeks and woods of the West. Everywhere there was Quintessence—clinging to a dead leaf, smeared across a stony outcropping—but the Starling herself was hidden away again.
“Starling!” he had sung out everywhere he roamed. “Starling!” He had tried his best to make his voice sound the way a Star from her home would sound, but it was impossible to get it just right with his earthly lungs in this thick, earthly atmosphere.
He would try again. The Elementals would continue gathering their Elements, and he would search for the Starling. Tomorrow night and the next night and the night after that.
He would try for as long as he was able.