The book has been waiting for years. It is a long-ago gift, from a birthday or similar occasion of which time blurs the specifics. The cover is a textured, marbled brown, like tightly compressed leaves. Around the protective flap wraps a sky blue thread, and tethered to it, a flat carved wooden fish to keep the book closed.

It seems a fitting home for the first and only edition of Jae’s collected Ficlys.

The pages are imperfect, yellow, flaxy, and feel entirely natural. They are thicker than normal, making you pinch the edge to make sure you aren’t turning more than one. When the book first came to Jae, it would have comfortably housed each Ficly written at that time. Since then, however, the numbers of Jae’s works increased manifold thanks to the brilliant inspiration of fellow writers and challenges that pushed the pen ever forward in motion.

So the book waits, blank for now, but one day filled and shelved with every future volume of Jae’s series of collected Ficlys.

Thanks everyone.