Pigments of Omission

[Entry 42b] The drawer still hung open when we stepped in, fumes of chalk and something faintly metallic curling against the sunlight. Whoever set out those jars favored precision; every pigment lined like a forced confession, Aureolin paling near Prussian Blue as though one might bleed into the other given time. I traced the edge where someone, bold or desperate, carved *Where Vojta?* into the grain—a question etched so hard the splinters bristled. A warning or plea, I can’t decide. The air tasted of crushed petals and old varnish, a sweet-sour ghost mixing with dust, and I kept thinking of hands rearranging colors to mask a code. That trick of reversal again—pull out one shade, replace it with absence, and watch the pattern speak backwards. This room whispers metamorphosis: hues becoming messages, drawers mutating into vaults. And Vojta? Every smear of blue suggests he slipped between names the way pigments slide in water. Even here, saturated with secrets, he remains unreadable and gone.