. . .

Tom staggers out of the hat cemetery like some awful warlock, or at least, cosplayer warlock; he wears ordinary clothes, for the most part, but they are tattered and covered in the threads and remnants of dead hats; he resembles a grave-robber with that layer of filth upon him, and atop him is an extraordinary thing.

What does it do for him?

Nothing.

No. Not nothing. Not quite. It does . . . a bit.

It is scarcely enough to refine him. It is a lump of dead hat-flesh. It is no work of genius, only the passing dream-wroth of a mediocre milliner — but it is not without some power.

He can feel it tuning him.

He closes his eyes and the weight of it on his temples, the spiral of power around it, the presence of death, the death of hats — he can feel his thoughts responding to it. It is tuning him. It is refining him, only a little, but it is refining him.

Where his thoughts flow in harmony with the science adventurer, the hat embellishes them; where he falls into discord with himself and his childhood dreams, the hat suffocates and drowns his mind.

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