For the first time this season, the beaver pond freezes over. Transparent, fractally tessellated ice coats the water.
The finer approximation of flatness, the greater the surface area we specify, the rarer it becomes.
Sublimated water crystals have the greatest chance maybe. The problem: only two dimensions make flat real, three end it.
Colder. The clarity of peri-freezing ice solidifies translucent, that impossible frictionlessness now gone.
A beaver swims under thickening ice. Head bumping the underside, breathing the air pockets there, the thump thump, thump echoes.