Piercing Archives — Rowan Peirce

fragment_004.eml

Your handwriting hasn't changed. Still those sharp angles, like bones arranged on paper. 
You asked about the recipe I mentioned last autumn. The one with juniper and thyme. 
I remember you tasting it that night by the fire, head tilted like a curator examining some rare artifact.  

The butcher sold me venison yesterday. 
Young buck. I thought of your notes on tenderness—how the muscle remembers fear. 
Mine does. My hands shook wrapping the meat in parchment. The freezer hummed too loud in the quiet.  

I dreamt of antlers again. Tangled in black branches. When I woke, my mouth tasted of copper and rain. 
You’d laugh at that. You always appreciated the poetry of certain... aftertastes. Strange how hunger lingers.

<0x34 sector lost>

STATUS: partial recovery / simcard_05 / device_2009 / overwrite cluster 47–51

<!-- viewer’s note: what could this mean? -->

TRACE: 48 54 4D 4C 20 62 72 6B 3A 20 65 72 72 6F 72 20 63 6F 64 65 20 72 65 73 69 64 75 65

-- corrupted sector dump --
0000: 3c 62 6f 64 79 3e 3c 73 70 61 6e 20 63 6c 61 73
0010: 73 3d 22 67 6c 69 74 63 68 22 3e 3f 3f 3f 3c 2f
[-- end of readable data --]