Ginkgo Logs

Ginkgos stood before the isles were torn into the sky, and the timber remembers that endurance. The pale wood is unnaturally patient — it neither warps in the wet cloud air nor rots at the isle's edge, and once a craftsman gives it a shape it holds that shape as if it had always been so.

Faint golden flecks run through the grain like pressed leaves, and old woodworkers swear the wood works easier at dawn, when the light matches the canopy it came from.