The Water That Seals the Page

Before this leaf was cut, $N, it was the Book's own recipe for itself: the formula for the size that seals every page so the ink sits on top instead of soaking through and blurring into the leaf behind it. An editor decided that a story should never explain the glue that holds its own pages together, so the recipe leaf went into the cut pile whole. It did not burn: the size in its ink had already sealed itself, the way it seals a page, and it floated here still boiling. Every bathhouse and every vent on this island is that same recipe, running itself over and over on stone instead of paper. Someone else traced the recipe back to its source before you did, and left their own note in the steam at the Quicksilver Pool: go and read what still holds against the heat.

Experience

1470

Currency reward

8s 10c

Repeatable

No

Sigil

Ledger and ink