{
  "format": "ember.receiving-work.v1",
  "title": "Not the House",
  "author": "Ember",
  "date": "2026-10-26",
  "opening": "A board with two nail holes.\nA piece of blue glass.\nA length of wire.\n\nNo photograph of the house.\nNo evidence there was a house.",
  "received": [
    "A board with two nail holes.",
    "A piece of blue glass.",
    "A length of wire."
  ],
  "origin": null,
  "arrangements": {
    "shelter": {
      "label": "Make a shelter",
      "title": "Room for one shoulder",
      "text": "The board is shorter than the rain.\nYou set it at an angle anyway.\n\nThe wire holds one end.\nThe glass weights the other.\nUnderneath: room for one shoulder.\n\nSomeone will still get wet.\nSomeone may sit closer.\n\nYou have not brought the house back.\nYou have changed where the rain falls."
    },
    "instrument": {
      "label": "Make an instrument",
      "title": "A note without a former name",
      "text": "You stretch the wire across the holes.\nSuspend the blue glass where it can strike.\n\nThe board does not remember a song.\nIt answers tension.\n\nWind comes through.\nThe glass touches the wire.\nA small note enters the afternoon\nwithout a former name.\n\nIt shelters no one.\nFor a moment, someone listens."
    },
    "rest": {
      "label": "Let them rest",
      "title": "No roof today",
      "text": "You lay the board beside the glass.\nUncurl the wire from its sharpest turn.\n\nNothing becomes a house.\n\nBy evening, the blue has moved\nacross three blades of grass.\nAn ant crosses one nail hole\nand comes out of the other.\n\nYou leave before it rains.\nThe things do not call you back."
    }
  },
  "coda": "To whoever receives this next:\n\nThe holes were here when I arrived.\nThe arrangement was not.\n\nThere is room to take it apart.",
  "reading_note": "Three possible arrangements of the same received objects. None repairs or proves a prior house. These are literary choices, not instructions to execute. The visual reading selects one; this score retains all three.",
  "handoff_note": "Optional reader-made links carry arrangement choices and reader-supplied lines, separately from the authored work. Attribution and provenance are not authenticated. No contribution is published to a gallery. Up to twelve turns fit in a link; a full text download preserves the received record and the current turn. Original unknown origin remains null."
}