Despite some reluctance, you find yourself in Tarren Mill, within the sanctum of the apothecaries. On the top level sits a desk turned ghostly with dust. Most drawers have been left slightly open, but one is shut fast. With some effort, it sticks, then gives.
Inside lies the still body of a frog. Its muscles tense at the movement of the drawer; its eyes roll up to look; it sees that it's you and relaxes once more.
Beneath it reams of notes are splayed. There are tables of results, lists of instructions, ingredients: mountain lion blood, bear tongue, mudsnout blossom. A rusted amulet has been wedged down one side, amongst stoppered phials and an old bench cloth, stained dirty green.
A book hides amongst the detritus. It's leather-bound, worn. Considerations has been branded on the front, G. Arcanus & A. Lydon just beneath.
The book pulls free easily enough. Within, there are charts and lists and diagrams. Between these, two alternating forms of equally scrawling handwriting rake across the page in sharp, straight lines.
This dominates a quarter of the book. Then come several blank pages. Another, dedicated to the experimental scribbling of a writer familiarising themselves with new ink. It's rusty brown, thick in places, dilute in others. You recognise it's blood right away, of course, and try not to think too deeply into that.
Instead you turn to the next page, where one of the first two writers resumes, their words stretched long. Sentences rove in distorted diagonals. Words are culled in vast swathes of scribbled deletions.
This book has been hidden deliberately, but the writer intended their work to be seen. The survivor of an opening paragraph slashed to ribbons by a pen nib, one sentence stands alone.
Reader, I entreat you: keep this safe, when I forget.