Extracts from the Private Field Diary of Edgar Wick

Senior Lecturer in Papermancy and Applied Fibrous Studies

(I made this diorama from bits of Bristol board paper glued together to form a box. I then drew on sections of it to create an inner woodland, doors that open, and steps and wooden beams, and lit it from within with a blue LED light. -Chaiga T. Cheska)
~~~

Entry One: Concerning the Glen and Certain Unhelpful Remarks

I visited the glen again this morning, and I am pleased to report that the new trees continue to grow at a rate the Department describes, with what I consider inexcusable imprecision, as “vigorous.” I have asked twice now for a proper classification. Vigorous is not a category. Vigorous is an adjective one might apply to a healthy radish. No ordinary sapling glows at twilight. No ordinary sapling drops twigs that hum faintly when placed in a coat pocket, a fact I can confirm from personal experience, having walked the length of the east corridor yesterday with a small, contented buzzing coming from somewhere near my left pocket.

I collected three branches and returned to the workshop, where I found several colleagues gathered in the corridor in the hushed, huddled manner they reserve for gossip and funerals. I heard my name, followed by the word “delusion”, followed by a remark about the inevitable march of baldness. I noted this with interest rather than injury; male pattern hair loss is a legitimate field of study in its own right, and if my colleagues wish to conduct an informal survey of my scalp from a safe distance, that is their own concern. I did feel my forehead prickle rather promisingly, which I attributed to the tonic finally beginning to dry, and made a note of the timing.

The tonic itself is a pale green solution, faintly minted, faintly despairing, and it has left a most encouraging streak across my brow. My colleagues, when they notice it, call it a stain. I call it early data.

I spent the afternoon pulping the new wood samples. The fibres are unusually lively, more so than any I have handled before, and one sheet glowed quite clearly when I pressed it flat with the heel of my hand. It stopped the very moment I called Dr Pargeter over to witness it, which I have recorded as an unfortunate, though not statistically alarming, failure rate.

Entry Two: The Bird Incident

A most instructive event occurred today. I had been reading an article in the MirMarnian Herald concerning a hair-restoration remedy involving crushed moonflower petals and a period of sustained chanting, the details of which struck me as methodologically sound, if underexplained on the matter of pitch. I began the chant at my desk, adjusting for what I judged to be a more resonant register, when a sheet of paper beside my elbow folded itself, without any assistance from me, into the neat shape of a small bird, and departed through the open window at a respectable altitude.

I did attempt to retrieve it, but the tonic chose that precise moment to drip again, and I did not wish to be seen crossing the quadrangle with a green trail running the length of my nose. There are appearances to maintain, even in pursuit of scholarship. The bird is, as far as I can determine, still at large somewhere on the academy grounds. I hope it has the sense not to nest above the Bursar’s office, as he has already written to me twice this term regarding unrelated matters he insists on calling “disturbances.”

I have written to the Herald’s editor to point out that their remedy, whatever its effect on hair, produces excellent and immediate results on paper, and that this strikes me as the more publishable finding.

My colleagues have taken to closing their doors as I pass, which I attribute to the tonic’s smell, now considerably stronger and, in my view, verging on the invigorating. I have offered to bottle it for general departmental use. The offer remains, as yet, untaken.

Entry Three: A Moment of Reprieve

I did not feel inclined to lecture this morning, the question of scalp regeneration currently occupying rather more of my attention than the causes of the Third Riverlands Schism, so I retreated to the workshop and occupied myself with something more productive. I cut scraps of the new paper into small, precisely measured squares, numbered each one in the corner for reference, and glued them together into a modest box. On a separate sheet, I drew a woodland scene, competently if not artistically, and placed it inside.

On a whim, I added a pair of French doors to the front of the box. This is not, I should note, standard laboratory procedure. It occurred to me only as I was finishing, and I record the detail here for the sake of rigour, though I cannot presently account for the impulse.

The moment I completed the shading on the hinges, a faint blue light appeared among the drawn trees. It twinkled gently, as though the paper had taken a breath and rather liked the sensation. I watched for several minutes. The trees swayed. A small creature, no larger than a thumbnail, ran between them and vanished behind a paper root.

I felt a curious sense of peace, which I have recorded in my log as “promising,” and returned to my tea.

Entry Four: Expansion of Experiments

The paper woodland continues to thrive, and I have expanded my methods accordingly. A paper fox now sits upon the shelf beside my inkwell and occasionally flicks its tail with what I can only describe as satisfaction. A paper star drifts near the ceiling, rotating with quiet dignity. Above the workbench I have constructed a paper solar system; the planets circle in good order, whilst the third wobbles slightly as it goes, on account of what I now believe was a minor error in the glueing, an error I have chosen to regard as a permissible margin of variance rather than a flaw, in keeping with established cartographic standards.

I have taken to naming my specimens with a suitably classical nomenclature, for the sake of professionalism, though I confess Vulpes Papyrus lacks a certain something the fox himself does not seem to mind.

My colleagues have started lingering outside the workshop door. They pretend to be discussing departmental matters, timetables, the Bursar’s disturbances, that sort of thing, but I can hear their astonished murmuring quite clearly through the wood, which is, I note with some pride, considerably thinner than it used to be, on account of how much of it I have used. None of them enters. They appear to believe I am behaving strangely. I believe they lack imagination, and possibly courage, though I have not tested the second hypothesis.

Entry Five: Concerning Hair

Today I completed my most ambitious creation to date. I fashioned a full head of paper hair: a delicate structure of fine fibres, curled and layered with considerable care, each strand cut and shaped by hand over several evenings. When I placed it upon my head, it settled at once, as though it had always belonged there, which I found gratifying, given the trouble it had taken.

It moves like real hair. It rustles softly in a breeze that, as far as I can determine, does not exist anywhere in the workshop, a phenomenon I intend to investigate further once the more pressing matter of the wobbling planet has been resolved. The sound is rather pleasant, somewhere between a whisper and a held breath. I walked the length of the corridor in it this afternoon. My colleagues stared. Nobody spoke. I have recorded this as a successful field trial, and written a second letter to the Herald recommending Applied Fibrous Studies as a considerably more reliable remedy than moonflower petals, whatever the state of one’s chanting.

Entry Six: A Question of Endings

The workshop is, by any reasonable measure, no longer a workshop. It is a small universe. Paper creatures wander amongst the shelves with the unhurried confidence of creatures who have somewhere to be and no particular urgency about getting there. Paper stars drift overhead. The woodland in the box continues to grow, and I notice, on close inspection, that it has begun to grow rather faster than the box itself, which raises a structural question I have not yet had time to address.

I have begun to suspect that the glen trees are not merely magical, but purposeful; that they wished, in whatever manner trees wish for things, to become something more than trees; and that I am, for reasons I cannot yet establish, the means by which they intend to do it.

I do not know what the Department will make of any of this, when at last they enter the workshop instead of merely discussing it through the door. Perhaps they will call it unsafe. Perhaps they will confiscate the solar system. Perhaps they will insist I remove the hair.

I shall not. I feel more myself than I have in a very long while, and I see no reason to apologise for it to anyone who has not first tried it.

If the glen continues to grow, I shall return tomorrow. I believe the trees have more to offer. I believe the paper world is only beginning.

Entry Seven: On a Certain Recognition in the Glen

I returned to the glen before dawn, partly for fresh branches and partly, I admit, because the workshop had grown a touch crowded for comfortable pulping, what with the fox, the solar system, and a small paper owl that has taken to watching me work with what I choose to interpret as professional interest rather than judgement.

The trees had grown again overnight, considerably, their new branches reaching in directions I would ordinarily call unlikely for wood of any kind. I set my hand against the nearest trunk to steady myself whilst examining a particularly promising fallen bough in the underbrush, and felt, quite distinctly, something answer beneath the bark; not a pulse exactly, closer to the settling hum of a well-tuned string once the note has already passed.

I understood then, in the plain and unremarkable way one understands the kettle that has boiled, that the glen was not being copied in my workshop. It was continuing there. The paper fox and the real fox that occasionally watches me from the treeline are, I suspect, considerably better acquainted with one another than either has let on.

I noted this in my log without further comment, having no comment adequate to it, gathered my branches, and went home to my paper trees, which seemed, when I arrived, to lean very slightly towards the door, in the manner of something pleased to see me.

I also observed, on washing my face this evening, that the streak across my forehead has taken on a faint and not unpleasant shimmer. I shall monitor this closely. It may simply be the tonic. It may not.

Entry Eight: Practical Adjustments

The workshop has become impractical for a proper desk, there being rather less floor than there was a fortnight ago and rather more canopy, so I have built a small platform among the upper branches of the largest paper oak, reachable by a ladder of my own design, with a reading lamp, a kettle, and a satisfactory view of the solar system from above, which I recommend to anyone who has not yet tried studying planets from a height. The light up here is considerably better for close work than anything the Department has provided at ground level, a fact I intend to raise at the next budget meeting, assuming anyone attends who is willing to climb up and hear it.

I gather, from the muffled conversation drifting up through the branches, that several colleagues have been asking after me, concerned, apparently, that I have not been seen at meals or meetings in some days. I find this thoughtful of them, though I confess I have not felt the absence, there being a great deal to occupy me up here, and the biscuits I keep by the kettle being quite sufficient for my needs.

I have not yet decided whether to come down before the fox finishes his current investigation of the root system. He seems close to something. I should hate to interrupt him.

The Paper Forest Waltz

(Poem/lyrics & song curation created by Chaiga T. Cheska via Suno)

Addendum

Appended by Professor Ambrose Kettlewell,
Head of the Department of Papermancy and Applied Fibrous Studies

I went to the workshop myself last Thursday, having received no fewer than six separate reports of humming, chirping, and, on one memorable occasion, rustling foliage, none of which struck me as sufficient grounds for alarm, Papermancy being a discipline not unaccustomed to peculiar smells, and Edgar Wick being a lecturer not unaccustomed to stranger sounds of his own devising.

Nothing prepared me for the door.

It opened onto a woodland. Not a representation of one, not a diorama, not a clever arrangement of folded paper meant to suggest the idea of trees at a respectful distance, but a woodland, full grown and breathing, the light through the canopy dappled and green and altogether convinced of its own reality, though every leaf, on closer inspection, bore the unmistakable grain of good workshop paper. A fox trotted past my feet and did not pause. Somewhere above, a great many small stars turned slowly in what I can only assume was a very small and very private sky.

We called for Wick some considerable time before he answered, and found him at last, seated on a platform some fifteen feet up in the largest of the trees, kettle beside him, a paper owl at his shoulder, quite unbothered by our arrival and mildly puzzled by our expressions.

“Ah,” he said. “You’ve come about the wobble in the third planet. I’ve been meaning to write to you.”

He offered us tea. Dr Pargeter, I regret to say, required a chair.

I am writing to propose, formally and with the full weight of my office, that Lecturer Wick’s private diary, extracts of which are appended above, be submitted complete and exactly as written to the Academy’s Board of Papermancy and Applied Fibrous Studies as a scholarly account of the most significant discovery this Department has produced in a generation. I make this proposal fully aware that the diary contains no fewer than four separate entries concerning Wick’s hair, and I have decided this is not a reason to withhold it, but rather evidence of precisely the kind of mind capable of making such a discovery in the first place; unhurried, undistracted by its own magnitude, and apparently unable to distinguish, in its own telling, between the birth of a new and living world and the successful cultivation of a decent head of hair.

Both, I am now inclined to think, were achieved through the same quiet, unbothered endeavour. It seems, on reflection, a perfectly reasonable way to change the world.

Author’s Note:

This one was fun to write because, obviously, you can tell I was directly referencing my little paper diorama that you see above, which I wish were a real paper woodland that I could walk through!
-Chaiga T. Cheska