"The Abbot gently stroked the supple leather of the book he was reading. He fancied it yielded beneath his palm like the flank of some peaceable grazing creature. Could leather be cured of its curing? Could the sightless hides be reassembled, clasps turn to bells, the branded spines grow tails again?
"He would lose first those books bound in vellum, for the bindings would turn back to stomachs and digest the contents. Or the shelves would grow into a hedge and keep out the hand that reached for knowledge.
"He replaced the book while he still had access to the shelves, before its covers might twist from his grasp with new-born awkwardness, trailing from embryonic gums a voided spittle of silent language."
--John Fuller, Flying to Nowhere, p.76
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