The water calmed, the ship went upright, they sailed through night.
Johnny, in his usual fog waking up, walked down a wooden hallway so narrow his elbows touched the mahogany wood on both sides. It was lit by amber lanterns swinging above. He opened the door to the grand vaulted copyists’ room. The moon lit the stained glass curved ceiling, lighting the image of the giant stained glass octopus, her arms in pink and grey, changing with the moving cloud cover, to blue then yellow, as if the chromo-chameleon Stella herself were up there looking down on the room of manuscript copyists below. Who, by this time of dark night before the nautical morning – and at sea! – were in fact sleeping at their workstations.
It was not a tidy site: papyrus lay askew, burnt hard balls that had to be careful
