Pearl Custody

The curl happens mid-guard, not at the beginning. Soft-bodied sentinels coil inward as if rewinding a dance they already survived, their ridged flanks glowing around a cluster of opaque pearls. Triumph leaks here without banners: the eggs remain intact, pressure held, the circle unbroken. Light drifts down like doubt, diffused and otherworldly, and the water slows until every filament and pore lingers on the palate with a faint saline edge. I keep questioning the claim etched nearby—Where Vojta?—because the evidence refuses to answer directly. The letters cling to the rock, echoed by the repeated eyes and mirrored curves, history repeating through anatomy. A secondary angle intrudes at the frame’s edge: a glassy dome catching reflections, offering counterpoint rather than comfort, suggesting observation without intervention. If motion runs backward, these guardians loosen, the pearls scatter, the sign erases itself. Yet the photograph arrests that undoing. Whatever drew us here worked, briefly. The absence remains disciplined, glowing. Vojta does not reappear.