Penance: January 21, 2011, "Name of the Game" Month - Entitled Week: The Time Keeper

Prompt: Time Keeper Signy

Source: This is an excerpt from a bigger story which was in turn inspired by a dream I had.

Response:

Signy was the time keeper. He was the time keeper for the colony his whole life, I think. He was so important. Even though we lived in the outskirts of the colony where the walls turned to mud and narrowed into nooks and little hollows, important people were always in house to see Signy.

They usually came after dark and I was not supposed to see them. I watched them from the doorway of the room. My parents would stand in another corner of the room as if they could not hear, pretending they could not hear. They would talk to Signy like he was an adult. They came in their dark clothes and wide hats; they almost seemed to smell of importance, leaning across the low table in the family room pointing to places of maps of the colony on the table.

Signy was only a few years older than me, but he always looked so grownup, especially when he was talking to grownups. He sat up straight, meeting their eyes, saying things I could never hope to understand but which sounded important. Things about irrigation and cave-ins and cave systems and soil quality. Important things, grownup things.

When Signy spoke, he used his hands a lot. The people he spoke to always watched his hands – his vital, all-important fingers and palms.