The Chronos-Vein Ledger

Artifact

March 12, 1882 Items: 2 sacks flour, 1 lb coffee, 1 tin lard. Cost: 4 months (biological vitality). Balance: 42 years, 8 months. April 19, 1882 Items: Blasting caps (12), 5 lbs black powder. Cost: 6 months (biological vitality). Balance: 42 years, 2 months. Note: Mule 'Bess' shows advanced cataracts. She was three years old on Tuesday; she is ten today. June 3, 1882 Items: New leather boots, waterproofed. Cost: 1 year (biological vitality). Balance: 41 years, 2 months. Note: Hands are shaking. Skin on knuckles is thinning; translucent. August 11, 1882 Items: High-yield sifting pan, reinforced steel. Cost: 3 years (biological vitality). Balance: 38 years, 2 months. Note: The vein in the ridge is humming. The town of Oakhaven has built three new hotels this month. The pines in the lower valley are turning white and brittle. They are not dying; they are simply out of time. October 20, 1882 Items: Winter stores (salted pork, kerosene, wool blankets). Cost: 7 years (biological vitality). Balance: 31 years, 2 months. Note: I woke up with a cough that sounds like gravel. My mirror shows a man of fifty. I am twenty-eight. December 1, 1882 Items: Tincture for the lungs, peppermint lozenges. Cost: 2 years (biological vitality). Balance: 29 years, 2 months. Note: The valley is silent. No birds. No wind. The town’s clock tower now runs on a concentrated core of Stilled Time; it is the only thing in the county that does not age. The Mayor looks twenty years younger than he did in the spring. January 14, 1883 Items: Coal (2 tons). Cost: 10 years (biological vitality). Balance: 19 years, 2 months. Note: Bess died this morning. She was a skeleton in a grey pelt. I cannot remember the color of the valley before the mining started.