The ShopKeeper had been a young Star when he fell.
A blue supergiant, he had been fifty thousand times more luminous than the sun, destined to someday collapse into himself and then explode magnificently. That was to be his fate someday, and it was a fate that did not disappoint him. He could not have imagined a more glorious end.
But then that glorious end had happened to someone else, to a star nearby, and he had fallen.
Runaway Stars didn’t always fall to Earth—in this never-ending Universe, there is very seldom an always—but many did. The ShopKeeper, who was the first ever to study such things, speculated that there was something about the Earth’s Elements that drew the Stars to it. There was no denying that it was a special place, a place where Quintessence could be created.
Although he hadn’t felt that way at first.
Oh, how weak he had been those first days! Oh, how lost and afraid! And how changed, with an Elemental-like body and an uncertain and possibly very brief future ahead of him.
That first night, he had lain on the rocky mountain peak that had broken his fall and wept desperately under Stars that shone down on him like cold, distant strangers. Yet their light, unreachable as it seemed, had revived him.
That Quintessence-filled light had kept him alive as he had figured out how to walk, how to talk. It had kept him alive as he had learned to disguise his true nature and live among the Elementals. It had kept him alive as he had uncovered the secrets of the fifth Element, and befriended other Stars, and begun his life’s work—to save the fallen.
He had found that with time his Quintessence could be grown, even in this new home. With every Star he helped, with every Keeper he trained, with every thrown-away item he loved, his Quintessence had increased.
But there is more than one way for a Star to burn out. It wasn’t the ShopKeeper’s Quintessence that was running low now. No, he was simply, finally getting old. He was running out of fuel.
He sat on the top of the Fifth Point now, feet swinging over the edge of the platform, there between his old home and his new home. Wearily, he wiped his eyes with his patched blue sleeve. The sleeve came away with green and black and tan smears.
He too had seen the Starling that night. She had not been as bright as he would have hoped, but at least she had not lost all her Quintessence. If only he could find her, he could teach her to collect starlight, he could help her grow her Quintessence as he had, while she waited for the Elementals to complete their quest and send her home.
But the Starling did not want to be found; she didn’t know that help was here.
As the sun rose, the ShopKeeper rose too. He opened the trapdoor and descended the stairs at the center of the platform, back into the shop.
He had more to do. Starting with another phone call.
“Hello,” he said into the receiver. “I’m calling from Four Points Middle School.”