Osoliths

While people lived inside their communal and geometrically pleasing box, large fragments of bone descended from the sky. No, the bones showed no movement—they appeared to have been there already, superimposed on the air above the quadrangle, or appliquéd somehow.

One person opened their window and became incensed. Why have I never noticed this before? These bones are nonscalar. Another peeked through their blinds—This is not rational. Where is the spatial integration? The balanced distribution of flow?

But the bones—perhaps the size of a single passenger hot air balloon, and not complete bones, but seemingly part of a jaw and high cheek if they could be interpreted as human at all—remained on their own morphological terms, which meant motionless and non-communicative.

A meeting in the commons was held that night over tumblers of spirits and a mahogany conference table. The first issue—the word was probably embarrassment, but visibility limitations was used instead—was how no one had noticed these . . . what did you call them? Osoliths someone said.

Yes, ora of some kind, and now they were here, right outside and suspended and they must mean something or indicate something, and the meeting went on and it was difficult to resolve the matter let alone propose action. In the hallways, later, was when the real conversations took place and the murmurs began—censorship said one party, something's being suppressed, while a dissenting faction pointed toward the symbolic—there's something we haven't done, something to be guilty for.