2·01The List Goes DownChapter I · One HandFaces and a list. What is happening in this scene is not shown and must not be implied — no hand placement, no framing that suggests where anybody's hands are. The whole image is one woman's hands going still on a piece of paper.2·02Nine Things, Four Crossed OutChapter I · One HandAn object image and the only one in this set with nobody's face in it. The joke of the chapter is that the list never changes.3·01Four Cartons in the HallChapter I · One HandVal's search for a line of descent, present in the book only as paperwork in a hallway. Nobody in the frame.
2·03A Wet Coat on a Kitchen FloorChapter II · Asked and DidShe does not touch her. That is the point of the gesture — the hand goes on the table instead. Keep the contact out.2·04Six WordsChapter II · Asked and DidThe six words are never legible. Render the sheet turned over, the hand, and the woman reading — never the writing. Use the traits block for the gold; it is in the eye and nowhere else, and it lasts seconds.3·02The Fourth LineChapter II · Asked and DidThe hinge of the entire book, rendered as an old notebook on a kitchen table. Nothing in it may be legible.3·03Nine Hours in the ChairChapter II · Asked and DidA woman alone at a table having just finished the only thing she has ever wanted, rendered with no drama at all.3·04The CulvertChapter II · Asked and DidThe comic entrance that breaks on what she sees. Catch her at the stop, not before it.
2·05At the StoveChapter III · KeptThe first of the three times she cannot say a hard thing. The image is two people in a room not helping each other, on purpose.2·06The Old OneChapter III · KeptThe recurring gesture. No origin, no explanation, no significance in the framing — it is simply a thing one of them does and has done for centuries. Keep it undramatic.
2·07The HourChapter IV · No HurryFaces on a pillow and nothing else. This scene runs entirely on the grip and the grip is never depicted or indicated. No hands in frame, no implication of where anybody's hands are, no bedclothes arranged for effect.2·08No Particular Feeling About ItChapter IV · No HurryKyra has cried without noise and without apology since Maribor and the series has never treated it as a problem to be managed. No hand comes up to her face. Nobody comforts anybody.
2·09One BootChapter V · An AgreementThe domestic register of the whole book in one frame: a woman doing four hundred years of work at a kitchen table and another woman sitting on it.3·05The Sixth SheetChapter V · An AgreementThe chapter where the Vey line stops being about other people. An image of a woman stopped mid-page.
2·10The CabChapter VI · Ray's YardNothing is resolved and nobody touches. The last line of the chapter is the pale of Val's hair being the only bright thing in the cab, and that is the image.3·06The TrailerChapter VI · Ray's YardEstablish the yard before the conversation. Marcus working, nobody else in it yet.3·07Both of YouChapter VI · Ray's YardHe has worked it out at the gate. The whole image is a young man understanding something before it is said.Corrected Proportions3·07Both of YouChapter VI · Ray's YardHe has worked it out at the gate. The whole image is a young man understanding something before it is said.3·08Four Words FurtherChapter VI · Ray's YardThe second of the three times she cannot say a hard thing, and the only one with a witness. Val must be visibly declining to intervene.3·09Three MugsChapter VI · Ray's YardNo touching in this one. An old man walking cheerfully into the worst afternoon of three people's year and not noticing. The comedy and the grief are the same frame.Corrected Proportions3·09Three MugsChapter VI · Ray's YardNo touching in this one. An old man walking cheerfully into the worst afternoon of three people's year and not noticing. The comedy and the grief are the same frame.
2·11Her Sleeves Over Her HandsChapter VII · The SetNo touching in this one. Two women in a rented room, eleven days of snow, one at a table and one at a window, and about four hundred years between them doing nothing at all.2·12Kyra Lights the LampChapter VII · The SetThe first warm light in the Dymná chapter and it arrives because one of them decided the other had sat in the dark long enough.2·13Where She Does Her Best WorkChapter VII · The SetThe hardest conversation of the Earth half and it is conducted with one of them on the floor and neither of them looking at the other.3·10The LaneChapter VII · The SetEstablishes the village and the waiting. The shovel is the whole joke.3·11Face DownChapter VII · The SetAn object and a hand. The chapter's confession begins with a woman hiding four pages of a packing list.
2·14Two in the MorningChapter VIII · UnderneathFaces and nothing else. This runs entirely on the grip and the grip is never depicted. The image is one woman awake with her heart going and one woman completely asleep beside her, and the whole weight of it is that the sleeping one has just done something she will never know about.2·15Against Her KneeChapter VIII · UnderneathThe answer to being told that the best thing she has ever done for anybody, she did asleep. Nothing is said in this frame.3·12Rotten on the South SideChapter VIII · UnderneathTwo very small figures and a great deal of mountain. They are not mountaineers and are not equipped like them.3·13The Lamp on Her KneeChapter VIII · UnderneathThe interior must read as grown, not built. No controls, no screens, no lights of its own.3·14A Shape in the SnowChapter VIII · UnderneathThe hull from outside, arranging itself not to be seen. It should be almost impossible to identify as a made thing.
2·16Come OnChapter IX · Fifteen SecondsThe one gesture in the series that is not tender. No device, no console, no glow, no portal. A dead compartment, a hand lamp turned down to almost nothing, and one woman taking another by the wrist.3·15The Place They Have to StandChapter IX · Fifteen SecondsThe crossing is not an action sequence. Two women standing in a dead compartment with a lamp turned down. Whatever the engine wants to add here, it is wrong.
2·17The Bank at the Side of the RoadChapter X · The Wrong SumThe reversal landing, and the staging is two people sitting on a verge in the afternoon. Nothing about the frame should be momentous.3·16On Her Hands in the DirtChapter X · The Wrong SumThe arrival, and it is a woman kneeling in a crop. Kyra standing over her in a coat in the warm.3·17A Man with a LoadChapter X · The Wrong SumNo touching in this one. The most consequential exchange in the book, conducted with a stranger about his brother and a bridge that is out.Period Clothing3·17A Man with a LoadChapter X · The Wrong SumNo touching in this one. The most consequential exchange in the book, conducted with a stranger about his brother and a bridge that is out.3·18Four TimesChapter X · The Wrong SumThe judgment on four hundred years of arithmetic, rendered as a woman sitting on a verge with her hands on her knees.
2·18Three Paces BackChapter XI · One QuestionThe whole image is a woman choosing to stay out of something. Vaedom may be in frame but he is not the subject.3·19The House Above the WaterChapter XI · One QuestionRendered as a man in his thirties at the oldest. The strangeness is that eighty-one years have done nothing to him and his daughter can see it.Period Clothing3·19The House Above the WaterChapter XI · One QuestionRendered as a man in his thirties at the oldest. The strangeness is that eighty-one years have done nothing to him and his daughter can see it.3·20What Is ThatChapter XI · One QuestionUse the traits block. In daylight it is barely there and must still be visible on close inspection.
3·21Seventeen NamesChapter XII · What the Last Thing WasAn object image. The list is in the Sethal and is not legible.3·22The One Good FactChapter XII · What the Last Thing WasA plain room, three people, and the worst four minutes of a man's life delivered in order by a woman with her hands on her knees.3·23Eleven CountersChapter XII · What the Last Thing WasNo touching in this one. What Kyra gives him is not warmth and not a fact. The image is two people walking a row of hives and one of them talking.Period Clothing3·23Eleven CountersChapter XII · What the Last Thing WasNo touching in this one. What Kyra gives him is not warmth and not a fact. The image is two people walking a row of hives and one of them talking.3·24At the GateChapter XII · What the Last Thing WasFifteen books of a seal cracking, spent at a field gate, to a stranger, with Kyra out of earshot up the hill.
2·19Hands on Her FaceChapter XIII · The Room with the Door OpenThe single most important image in Set 2. Daylight, a door standing open, and two other people in the room watching. The point is that it is public. Do not make it private.3·25The Room with the Door OpenChapter XIII · The Room with the Door OpenThe emotional climax of the series. Four people, bright daylight, the door open. Genie and Kal are rendered in their early twenties, the same apparent age as their mothers, which is correct.Period Clothing3·25The Room with the Door OpenChapter XIII · The Room with the Door OpenThe emotional climax of the series. Four people, bright daylight, the door open. Genie and Kal are rendered in their early twenties, the same apparent age as their mothers, which is correct.3·26Genie CrossesChapter XIII · The Room with the Door OpenThe load-bearing gesture of the chapter and it works because it has never happened before: nobody has ever crossed a room to Kyra. No contact.
3·27She Opens Her Own DoorChapter XIV · The Ninth TerraceRendered in her late thirties at the oldest — the eldest face in the book and still nothing like an old woman.Period Clothing3·27She Opens Her Own DoorChapter XIV · The Ninth TerraceRendered in her late thirties at the oldest — the eldest face in the book and still nothing like an old woman.3·28One Lamp in the AfternoonChapter XIV · The Ninth TerraceNo touching in this one. The hardest door in the book and nobody rescues it. Three people in a room where nothing works.
3·30A Table He Would Be Sitting AtChapter XVI · A Table He Would Be Sitting AtThe one that goes well, and therefore the unbearable one. The card is eighty-one years old and has been handled a great deal. Nobody is weeping and nobody is being brave.
2·20The Door Stands OpenChapter XVII · The SeventeenthThe last image of the two of them indoors in the series. Nothing is happening and that is the whole content.
1A·01The Path UpChapter XVIII · The Third HourThe only comic image in the set and it belongs here. Two women in their twenties on a steep path, slightly out of temper, four hundred and ninety-seven years old.1A·02The CairnChapter XVIII · The Third HourThe place where Kyra went down at eighteen is in the frame and nobody acknowledges it. Keep the gorse in and keep both of them facing out to sea.1A·03Nobody Ever DidChapter XVIII · The Third HourNo touching in this one. The whole image is two people deliberately not turning their heads, and each of them knowing exactly what it cost the other to manage it. The ship must be small, far, undramatic and almost missable.1A·04Both Had to DecideChapter XVIII · The Third HourThe same non-event, closer, from the front. This is the one image in the set that is purely about two faces doing nothing, and it is the hinge of the chapter.1A·05You're UpChapter XVIII · The Third HourUse the traits block. The light is on her own skin only; the grass is not lit, the air is not lit, Kyra's face is not lit by it.1A·06The SmudgeChapter XVIII · The Third HourThe smudge must be genuinely faint — long rather than round, fainter than anything near it, no color. If it reads as a nebula the image is wrong. Kyra is pointing at nothing an observer would notice.1A·07Not Far NowChapter XVIII · The Third HourThe closing image of sixteen books. Both of them looking out, not at each other. The hands are on the grass between them and are the quietest thing in the frame.1B·01The Whole BayChapter XVIII · The Third Hour1B·02The HandsChapter XVIII · The Third Hour1B·03Two Faces, Dusk KeyChapter XVIII · The Third Hour1B·04SilhouetteChapter XVIII · The Third Hour1B·05From the Seaward SideChapter XVIII · The Third Hour1B·06The WristsChapter XVIII · The Third Hour1B·07Two Dots and the SkyChapter XVIII · The Third Hour
