The Names

The tablet Hypenor carried up was a civic record: whoever was written on it could be spoken across, and rest. This page is the archive’s small copy of that rite, built for the living to use.

Give a name to the water — someone missed, someone unnamed elsewhere, or your own. The name is written once in light, and then the water takes it. It is sent nowhere, shown to no one, and stored by nothing; what remains is only the count, which is how the sea keeps things.