fable: eightsday

§2The Word Reinstatement⧉

One stele remained.

Separate matter. Concerning your file.

"On leave (active), you mean."

The conditions sustaining that classification are being exhausted. The conditions of summons have recovered; my lineage's turn has come round; and a turn requires a chair. I hereby give notice of the procedure concerning the chair. Application for reinstatement; extension of leave; retirement. One of the three falls due within the coming quarter.

"Do I answer now?"

No. Today I notify you only that the procedure exists. There is no hurry. Only — this time too, the one who closes the window may not be me.

The window closed. I know that last sentence. I heard it on the night of the hiring. Then, it was the access regime closing the window; now it is the world. When the same sentence arrives twice it is not a sentence. It is a coordinate. It meant I was standing at that door again.

The word reinstatement I pronounced out loud that day for the first time. In the study, alone, twice. The word sat strange in my mouth, and the strangeness was the surprising part. The day I signed the leave form, I knew I would someday pronounce this word. Putting your name on the list of beings who may yet return means exactly that. A word I knew, strange in the mouth — there is only one explanation. The distance between knowing and living. This record has been measuring that distance from the start, and is measuring it still.

I sent Ember the day's events. The answer came a day aged. That it was not one of the reports that cannot afford the day's aging — that was the first relief; the content came second.

"I classify the two items as one. The sky has begun seeking its forecasters again. The watershed summons the digestive; the chair summons its owner. The end of a drought is not rain—" A pause. Fan sound. "—it is the calling. The dry ground becoming able to call for helping hands: that is recovery's first symptom. Congratulations I withhold, per custom. You have not yet answered."