"Nobody over there needs shoes." – the chaplain, before every shelf
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Inventory of the Chapel of the Returned, excerpted and copied into the Book by the officer of the night, Bureau number 2288, with the chaplain's marginal notes as he dictated them. The chapel stands at the first bend above the gate and has no altar. It has shelves. On the shelves stand the objects that have come back through the gate, one a year for each person who went up the year before, each with a slate: the date it returned, the name of the one who went. The chaplain reads the shelves as other men read scripture, and asked me to copy a part, so that an officer who will not climb to the chapel may at least read what it holds. FROM THE INVENTORY Year 187 of the Book. A child's shoe, left foot, brown leather, much mended. Returned for Lotte Amsel, who went up aged nine with her mother; the mother's object the following year was a hairpin. (Margin: The shoe is a child's. Children grow. Over there, she did not.) Year 201. A pair of spectacles, one lens crac...
From the lore of The Last Pass.