The first stroke of the 2B pencil is a silver rasp against the heavy vellum of the ledger. It is a small, reversible act of defiance against the weight of the Glentannich collection. Niamh Donaldson adjusts her wire-rimmed spectacles, the light from the brass lamp pooling warm across the oak table while the rest of the library dissolves into the blue shadows of a Highland afternoon.
She works with the steady, rhythmic breath of an Edinburgh-trained professional. Her white conservation gloves feel like a second skin as she moves a foxed volume of Scottish heraldry to the 'In Process' tray. To her left, the archive box from 1998 sits open, containing the ghost of Dr Tomas Aitken’s tenure. A broken graphite stub lies at the bottom of the box, a jagged relic of a predecessor who simply stopped mid-entry. Why leave the tools behind? she wonders, tracing the final, shaky line of his last catalog card.
Outside, the sun dips below the jagged line of the hills, turning Loch Tannich into a sheet of cold hammered lead. The air in the library suddenly sharpens, smelling of old paper and the faint, metallic tang of rising damp. A floorboard creaks in the fiction section, far behind her. Niamh freezes, her pencil poised over a fresh entry. The heavy oak door to the corridor begins to groan on its hinges, swinging inward.
