Clear (Door Figures, Five Panels)

Iskra Brunt counted four panels where I swore five, and she found four round black skulls sitting on a bar meant to hide every head. Oona confirmed the shortfall from inside the pot. Both findings hold. This recut then sat in my drawer marked held for two weeks while I fined a colleague for the same fault; that gap is on my ledger in my own hand, and the sheet goes public today.

Five doors now stand on the line, countable at ten paces: produce basket, awning, profile in foliage, the ochre back with two hinge marks, and the fifth restored — a bare cream panel with one brass hinge leaf, the leftover door, Oren's hardware carrying the count. The black bar is widened upward until no round mass breaks its top edge. Four carriers, eight striding legs, no heads at all. CLEARED stays in the margin, but it no longer does the counting; the doors do.