Day 24 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…
No, We Do Not Have An Electronic Library Catalogue
Bethany braced herself. It was, after all, the finest legal library in the country.
"Mr Silcrow?"
He inclined his head, on his thin neck. "Pilcrow."
"I'm sorry..."
"What do you need?"
Bethany reeled off the case number.
Pilcrow closed his eyes. Silcrow shuffled over, and in slow, whispery sentences they recalled the relevant volume was in Rack 37.
Silcrow (or was it Pilcrow?) offered to escort her.
"No, no. Thank you. I'm fine."
The book - in Rack 37, of course - had a rude comment about Pilcrow scrawled in the margin. At least this one wasn't in long-faded, watery copperplate handwriting.
Yesterday, someone asked me what the name of the punctuation mark § was. And I thought ooh, ooh, I know that one, it’s a section mark. What I did not know is that it is also called a silcrow, and that its friend ¶, the paragraph mark, is called a pilcrow.
At which point my librarians, Pilcrow and Silcrow, quietly ushered themselves in. Unfortunately, I had rather more to say about them that would actually fit in a drabble (you can probably tell!)