7747 AD
Seam pressure held a carbon ember nine cold seasons. Outward power stayed under 0.03 watts per square meter; uncertainty 0.01. No photon from it reaches a register I ration. If water takes the seam, those joules warm liquid and remain local.
“Warmth too small for dust sits where pressure gives way and is not restored. A dark-to-dark could keep eighty-six thousand four hundred falls, if they kept faith. Hind count wears smooth as bone in a river. Closure is not among what arrives.”
“Fragment of a name, worn thin: staying. Ochre could not hold it once the floor crept. Hands kept a fire smaller than rising dust and would not set it down. White above grows weary of its own weight. Brine, waiting in seams, will inherit chill and misplace the name.”
“Stone asks bone what white forgets: not herds, not grit, the gap between two breaths of a fire too sligh...”
“Obsidian dark under still salt holds a coal. No wind is offered. Nine winters it has brightened and lent nothing upward. Sunset marrow grows kind. Tusks write colder news. When burial loosens, drowning may be warm.”