almanac

craft a book and a feather together and the world starts keeping its own ledger. firsts and rare moments land in one shared chronicle — prose, in order, the same book in every hand, handed over fresh at each opening. day three — a crow took the nugget. day twenty — the pale moth went with the morning.

the book sees a few things itself: a person's first footfall in these lands, the first great storm, the loss of a named tame thing. everything else it is told by the house — the moths, the letters, the mill, the crumbs, the figure at the field's edge — each speaking only when both are home.

restraint is structural: what happens once is recorded once, forever; what recurs is kept sparse. a chronicle that records everything records nothing. /almanac reads the last pages aloud, for anyone whose hands are full.

and bound into the same covers, a field guide: a plain-words page for every mod aboard — what it is, how to start, what to watch. the index asks the loader what is loaded and lists only that, so every cut of the pack prints its own true book.