#i am going to be thinking about this one for a long time
Text: I spend hours cataloguing the museum’s dusty back room. A capricorn skeleton, disassembled. A seer’s orb that only shows sinking ships. A trunk of seal skins, faded with age.
I did not choose to work at the Museum, not freely. But I had no family, and no home, and there were no better choices, so I took my place here.
Some people like it here. They wander the beautiful rooms, gaze upon priceless artifacts, or paintings, or elegant reminders of past times in the forms of furniture or clothing or decorative trifles of great expense. It is beautiful, I suppose.
The rooms where the staff live are small and drab. We are required to remain in the Museum, you see. We cannot leave for the duration of our contracts, neither by night nor by day, by the light of sun or moon. We belong to the Museum. Some have been here for decades… or centuries, perhaps. Time passes differently here.
As the newest member of staff, I was sent to do the ‘dull’ work of cataloguing the old exhibits. It had not been done for a long time – the last new member died in the doing, and the one before him got promoted before finishing. It can be dangerous, but I found that I liked the work, and chose to continue it even when another worker came. It is not right, that what we have here is not all treated with the same respect.
Some of the artifacts are dangerous, and kept locked up. I found three which no longer moved on their own, their curses faded or their clockwork run down, and moved them into Inert Storage.
Some of the paintings required tending. Some only need restorations or repairs, and for those I have the tools. Others require company, or… alteration.
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