A Writ of Sealing

An Iron Cantor's formal order to seal away a child carrying an unclosed ending — drawn up for Sela Othrenni, unsigned, waiting on a vote the Choir cannot reach.

By the authority of the Sealed Choir and the keeping of the Hush: be it set down that the subject named below is Unclosed — an ending never properly finished, lodged in a living child and walking about in her skin — and is, in the judgement of the Iron Cantors, a doorway and not a person, her own self already crowded out by what she carries. Let the Binding-Song be raised over her at the next dark of the moon, that the ending she carries be closed the only way left to close it — sealed, and the vessel with it, under a stone bearing no name, that the Hush be kept and the vale not learn what can walk in a child. Subject: Sela Othrenni, of the eastern Vale, eight years. This writ wants but one throat more to pass. The Soft Choir withholds it. So the child carries what she carries, and the ink dries, and the dark of the moon comes around again, and again.