repeating patterns that didn’t seem decorative so much as deliberate. At the top were thin, articulated projections—like antennae or jointed limbs—arranged with unsettling precision. It didn’t resemble anything familiar. Not a tool. Not an ornament. Not something meant to be understood at a glance.
No one could explain what it was for.
When she handed it to me, I felt it immediately.
A weight—not just physical, but emotional. The moment my fingers closed around it, something shifted. Memories surfaced that didn’t feel like memories at all—fragments, sensations, impressions that didn’t
