The Keeper knelt, her head bowed low.

Firelight glinted, outlining her figure. She reached up and carefully pulled the hood off of her head. Her hair shone as red as the flames in front of her.

Surreptitiously she looked around.

"All right, what do you want?" she snapped impatiently. "The torches are still lit, and the fire burns brightly. The room is spotless. I haven't failed in my duties, so why have you summoned me?"

Ghostly laughter filled the room. "Why child, I do believe you have forgotten. It is your birthday."

The Keeper frowned. "I have no birthday, nor do I have any family. I am a foundling! Foundlings are less than nothing as you well know."

"Child, child," the voice sighed. "You may be my keeper, but please remember I know more than you. I have always been, I always will be. I know what no one else does and that includes your history. You may be a foundling to the world, but you are not nothing. And today, at this very moment you turn sixteen. But perhaps you would not choose to hear your history?"

"I would hear it," the Keeper snapped, "whatever it may be. I have no choice but to hear it, as you well know."

"Aye, I know. I know how much it galls you too�"

She stared out the window. Rain dripped slowly down upon the world, chill and lonely. The gray sky beckoned her as did the cold rain. She wondered if it could take the pain away. If it could free her from the never ending fire on her skin and in her soul.

"Ash!" a voice bellowed. "Ash, come here, at once!"

She rose to her feet wondering what she had done, or what she had not done this time.

She went to the voice, as she had once gone to another voice, and she longed to go back to that time. She remembered sarcastically how much she had chafed at that voice. How she had always felt put upon, never realizing the luxury she lived in. To her it seemed that everyone had had it better than she. Now, now she knew how wrong she had been. Now, she knew better.

She knelt down before the speaker, not daring to look up. She had been forbidden to look at the flame by her master's, but she had done it anyway, then. And the flame, her charge had always laughed at her for it. The flame had loved her in it's own way, but eventually all things ended. Eventually everything changed.

She should have known that.

She had known that.

But she foolishly ignored what life had taught her, and she had paid the price. Now she knew better. Now she listened. Now she feared to do what she should not.

She was no longer the Keeper.

She was Ash.

Her world had ended, by the very thing that had sustained it, that had sustained her. It had ended, and she had gone to her true fate. The fate that left her kneeling on a floor of ice, afraid to look up, unable to see whatever blow that would come her way.

Just as she had not seen the blow that had caused the end of her world, the end of the Keeper.

"Ash, the rooms are not up to standard. You do know what his Lordship will do if he ever sees them like that? You do know that whatever punishment he would meet out upon me would be piled upon you tenfold? You do realize that I will not allow anything to happen to me, do you not?"

She flinched inwardly, knowing it was too late.

His Lordship knew. His Lordship always knew.

Ash bowed her head low. "Yes, HouseKeeper," she said. "I'll redo them at once."

"Yes, you will," Housekeeper agreed, her voice colder than the heart of winter. "If they are not done properly you will do more than forfeit your meal for the evening."

Ash flinched again. She knew what was coming.

Oh yes, she knew.

Housekeeper would find a way out of her punishment, she always did. Ash knew perfectly well that Housekeeper meant exactly what she had said. She would let nothing happen to her. The punishment would be entirely Ash's, and it would be worse than she could ever dream of.

They always were.

"Go now, Ash, and pray that his Lordship has not seen them," Housekeeper said.

Ash could hear the gloating underneath the ice of her voice.

Housekeeper always warned them that they were due for punishment. However, she always tried to make them think they could fix it before hand, that they would not be punished.

Housekeeper got as much delight out of that as his Lordship did out of the punishments.

The new one's always fell for it until they learned better.

Ash was not new. She had learned better.

The old ones pretended they still believed. They knew they had to do that, or their punishment would be worse, because Housekeeper would add onto whatever his Lordship gave them.

"Yes, Housekeeper," Ash said submissively. She rose to her feet, and backed away from her superior.

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