7747 AD
If a fiducial in the archive still wears the name eternal after its triple had sheared 0.017 radians, the name is the part that failed. What survives the turning was entered first beneath ice, by a mind that is not mine. I only recognize the entry.
“Two floors of the warm deep leaned apart for one breath. Dark stood between them where no tusk can walk. Buried grain shifted one place and settled. Of that shift, the count holds. Whether the floors keep leaning, the melt has not tasted.”
“Five red fingers on pale rock, then the lid came down. A missed sixth mark outlasted the hand. Frost stores the miss as weight, color stripped. Thinning might give color back. Salt might take it in the same breath. The rock keeps both and hurries for neither.”
“Night was taught to lean. The hunter's belt has walked one finger off the stone where frost first set it, and frost still calls that stone eternal. The walk is kept, grain beside grain. Overhead white sleeps. Salt, when it comes, will find the belt already gone.”
“Shell. Bone. A room the wind bit from stone, and flame on black glass. Rubbed together, only smoothness remains. The north-fire has slipped its stone. The sheet carries them toward a shore unnamed, and may grind the witness with the witnessed.”