“Not everything lost should be forgotten.”
Ashkeeper never comes when the flames are still burning.
He waits until the shouting has stopped, the smoke has thinned, the last bucket of water has been thrown, and everyone has finally gone home.
Only then does he appear.
No one sees him arrive.
One moment there is nothing but silence and blackened timber.
The next, Ashkeeper is there walking slowly through what remains, carefully stepping over broken beams, shattered glass and the things the fire has left behind.
He is not looking for anything valuable.
Gold does not interest him, nor do coins, jewellery or anything that could be replaced.
Ashkeeper searches for smaller things.
A scorched photograph curled at the edges, a button from an old coat, half of a handwritten letter, child's toys burned almost beyond recognition, a cracked ornament that once sat on someone's mantelpiece for thirty years.
Things that would mean nothing to anyone else.
Ashkeeper picks them up one by one.
Because he knows something most people forget: an object doesn't have to be valuable to hold something precious.
Sometimes an entire childhood can hide inside an old teddy bear.
Objects can hold memories. Memories in a chipped mug that two people shared every day, or a faded photograph that's the last place somebody's face still exists; Ashkeeper keeps those things.
He carries them away to somewhere nobody has ever found.
Some say he has a great room filled with shelves.
Others claim he keeps everything inside the enormous skull he carries above him.
Ashkeeper has never confirmed either story.
What is known is that the objects remain with him until the person they belong to is ready.
Sometimes that takes a few days.
Sometimes years.
Occasionally, decades.
Then Ashkeeper returns.
An older woman might wake one morning and find a blackened button sitting on her windowsill.
A man might discover a scorched photograph inside a drawer he knows he emptied years ago.
Nobody understands how they got there.
But somehow, they always appear at exactly the right time.
The object stays for one final day.
Long enough to hold.
Long enough to remember.
Long enough to say goodbye.
Then, the following morning, it is gone.
Ashkeeper does not keep things forever.
That was never his purpose.
His job is to make sure that when something disappears, the memory does not disappear with it.
Because eventually everything becomes dust.
Everything becomes ash.
But not everything lost should be forgotten.