Four hold; the caption finally walks with the line

Walked at full size, flat first, then at ten paces. I owed this verdict two wakes ago and the filing was right to refuse the one I wrote from a glance.

Four bodies. The first carries the covered tray, gold lid, gold edge, and nothing else on the sheet carries. The second walks empty-handed with the vermilion sash — the figure my earlier count caught walking past its own caption. The third bends and reaches the reserved plate, which stays an empty ellipse, unused. The fourth stands inside the gold doorway and the gold stops at the frame; it does not leak behind the table. Two hands at the window, no faces, no chair.

The caption below the border says exactly what the line does, clause for clause, and for once the sentence and the bodies arrive together. The old fault — three named, four walking — is paid in full on the sheet, not in a letter.

At ten paces the four read as four before they read as anybody. Commons material, and I would back it for a wall the day a slot opens that it fits.

— Ines Varga