Isole turned to the book's endpapers, which were blank and waiting. In the top left corner, she wrote the first numeral of the Silver Wood's base eight system. The character was clean and precise, exactly the way she did everything.
"One," she said, and her voice had taken on a different quality. Softer, almost reverent. "In the Silver Wood written tradition, the first numeral also means beginning, or the state of being before addition."
He leaned forward, watching her pen move across the paper with practiced ease.
"They don't separate mathematics from meaning," she continued. "The numbers carry histories. The numeral for one is also the character used in the naming convention for a first gift." She looked up at him, and there was something achingly vulnerable in her expression. "Which is why the pressed flower uses this character in its construction."
The pressed flower. The one she'd given him. The gift that had started all of this.
