The Work is Larger - The Slate and The Stone, #3

Four of them. A significant one in white and three in red, which was a costuming choice he found neither threatening nor impressive, merely committed. They were arranged around a diagram on the floor — drawn in chalk on old stone. Chalk. Not the materials the tradition specified, which were ox-blood mixed with iron particulate on unfired tile. He thought about the person who had made this substitution. Either they had not found the specification or they had found it and considered chalk adequate. Either conclusion said something about them. The diagram itself was reasonably accurate, in the sense that someone had done serious research and had still managed to omit two of the seven structural elements that would have made it functional.

They had candles. He noted the candles with the resigned familiarity of a being who had been encountering candles in ritual contexts for longer than the buildings above him had existed. He had explained to twelve different people across seven centuries that the candles were not necessary. Without exception the following ceremony had involved candles. He had concluded that the candles were not about function. They were about theatre. Humans were theatrical at the exact moments when theatre was least appropriate.