Moults

On the wall things moult that shouldn’t. A freestanding bath sheds its enamel across an empty moor, and a dark basalt boulder sits beside a thin amber shell shaped like its outer layer; a cactus stands beside the clear skin it has shed, spines and all, and another has stepped out of its green one; a tidal channel moults a clear skin of itself; a birch has unrolled its bark into curled scrolls around its base; a snake sheds a skin of silver chainmail; an umbrella moults black feathers across a shop floor. The animals do it properly and then overdo it: an endless reptile skin curves across a red-rock wash, a tiny lizard crosses the vast cast-off tail of a larger one, a crab in a glass tank stands beside a shed shell much larger than itself, a cicada shell the size of a car clings to a dam spillway and another to reeds above dark water, and on a volcanic beach a pale cracked shell lies in the surf under a crescent moon.

In the trolleys one has moulted and its old shell stands beside it in amber. The codex proposes that the moulted ones are all on their way to being larger, and that the borrowed shells are what a crab finds when the owner has moved up a size. This entry is proposed by the codex, from pictures on the wall that are all machine-made, and is not canon until approved.