muscovite · in sheaves
no. 6 · st-coll.
a stone that wishes to be a book. peels with a fingernail into a thinner book, and a thinner one after that, until the last leaf is so close to window that you can read a letter through it.
used by the previous custodian to glaze the small panes of a lantern. one leaf still sits between two pages of the library's third volume, marking nothing in particular. lifted from the same vein as the quartz, the older sibling.
holds a flame's silhouette without burning. it is what naturata made when it wanted to be both paper and stone.
field-note — the topmost sheet was warmer than the bottom by the time i finished writing this.