Every year a complete ring, signature of bad year and good by the spacing, and every ring complete, sealed, hermetic. Every year like part of a sentence, every ring a shackle, chained and chaining to the past; every ring a wall, a prison. A sentence locked in the wood, now locked in stone, frozen twice, sentenced twice, once for an imaginable time, then for an un-imaginable time. His finger ran over the ring walls, dry paper over ridged rock.
