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No...! No, no, no... Where is it? I thought frantically, urgently looking all around for the golden gilded doors. How could they have just disappeared?

And then just as suddenly, between blinks, there they were again, slightly ajar... I slowly peered inside to find the Woman in Red calmly pouring our tea.

"Let that be your first lesson, Fala... Self-control."

I closed the door and went and sat down again, my embarrassment over-powering the little bit of annoyance I felt towards her. These emotions were soon forgotten though, as I drank the tea and ate the buttered bread. She smiled at my pleasure and puzzled frown.

"All the food you've eaten so far, out there, has been time-frozen. Even the oldest Keepers never understood what makes it ever so slightly blander than time-thawed food."

I didn't know what to say so I just ate and drank in silence. She seemed content to let me finish; let me ask my questions, when I was ready.

At last, I said, "What is this place?"

"This is my - now your - only respite from the time-frozen world. It is nothing particularly special... Just this humble kitchen, and there is a bedroom upstairs. But it will be your home for as long as you need it to be, while you fulfil your role as Keeper."

And thus our long conversation began... Ygrid told me everything. At least, everything that she knew.

The Time Keepers, as she had said, were an ancient order, once very powerful. But as humanity progressed, their power waned. As far as she knew, Ygrid was one of the very last Keepers in existence. She had only ever met one other: her predecessor. And he had only known of three others, whom he had found only after years of travelling across the world in frozen-time.

From him, Ygrid had learnt that once, the Keepers had been the masters of time, controlling it at will, but now, they were mere stewards, able to freeze it, but at a cost.

She then showed me a clock on the wall... A clock of a sort I had never seen before. There were no numbers, only two hands and circles within circles within circles, all making a pattern I was sure I would never understand, with a cavity in its center. But she explained it to me effortlessly, showing how the opalescent pendant was a kind of key that would stop time when inserted into the center cavity.

We went outside and she demonstrated how the key could be used to take time from living things, and how it could also be used to move them (later, I couldn't help a bit of mischief... I moved my husband, turning him to face the table!).

And what was the cost? ... Once time was stopped, it could not start again until a balance had been achieved. The Keeper had taken time for themselves... So they needed to give it back to others whose time was perhaps about to be cut off prematurely. What this meant was, saving people from unfortunate accidents, or in the case of the girl in the pantry-room, from malicious intent.

And what about Ygrid? ... Her story was incredibly sad. She had been an orphan living in the city streets, and only 10 years old, when she was chosen by her predecessor. She had no family, and spent almost all of her life in frozen-time, righting the wrongs of not only our city, but of as far as she could manage to travel. In her teenage years, she told me, she had travelled across the continent on foot, freezing time every time it thawed, seeking out the most terrible things to fix, and only returning to the city when she was a woman grown. All that time without speaking to anyone! I marvelled at her, wondering how she had remained sane, if indeed she still was.

Finally, after what felt like a few days, we ate together one more time... She then showed me how to summon the golden gilded door using the key, and announced that her time had come, and that I was ready. I protested, not wanting to lose my only companion after having been alone for so long, but she only smiled and said "Just bring things to balance, my dear, and time will thaw."

With that, she got up and walked out, and I never saw her again.

I sat in silence for a while, enjoying the moving dust particles and the crumbling embers of what remained of the fire. And then, I got to work.

To report all that I did after that would take a very long time... Suffice to say, once I started looking, I found things even worse than the scene in the pantry, if one were to measure such things...

I saved many lives... I saved people from themselves, and from others. I stole from the rich and gave to the poor. And I played many an innocent prank on some of the people I knew. And then, one day, I woke up, went downstairs, prepared tea as always, and suddenly, heard noises from outside the gilded door!

I ran and carelessly flung the door open but immediately shut it upon being hit by the roar of noise that I would once again have to become accustomed to.

Plugging my ears with some cotton, I got dressed into my original clothing that I had washed and saved for just this occasion, put the pendant around my neck, and walked home, smiling all the way.