Kunoichi of the Two-Held Ink-Table — a shadow-blade of a folding calligraphy hall whose one great low writing-table holds, in the same lacquer surface in the same instant, two incompatible states of the same brush-stroke: the wet black character she is drawing DOWN onto the mulberry paper, ink still pooling and bleeding into the fibers, is in that same grain in that same breath already the dry, cured, centuries-old stroke risen back UP from the wood — so the fresh mark ahead is the finished scroll behind, and the table has no wet and no dry, only the seam where the brush touching down is the ink long-set — and this Kunoichi has learned the table cannot be written across or read, only INHABITED: she kneels at the fold with one bare palm flat where the lacquer runs cool and the ink still runs liquid and the other palm pressed where the same board stands cured and hot from the lamp, holding both truths of the one stroke open, choosing to remain at the seam rather than lift the brush for either scroll before the two-held table decides which stroke the night will let her finish