All That I Have Written Is Straw

Coming to Wonder Philosophy on 24 November 2026.

Naples, December 1273. A ship unloads fresh parchment on the quay at Santa Lucia with Vesuvius smoking across the bay, and a crate bursts — sending the blank pages of the last part of the Summa Theologiae flying. Nine-year-old Nuccia, the convent cook's daughter, helps giant Brother Thomas and tiny, scurrying Brother Reginald rescue every sheet. But back at San Domenico Maggiore, in the middle of dictating one more line, Thomas sets down his stylus, lets the ink tip, and will not write another word: after morning prayer in the chapel of Saint Nicholas, he tells them that beside what he has seen, everything he has written seems like straw. Reginald fears the great book is doomed. Through a tumbling kitchen, a pigeon-filled bell tower, a collapsing straw loft, a broken cart wheel on Spaccanapoli and a rainy scramble at the Porta Capuana, the four of them — joined by Pippo the donkey boy and grey Fagiolo — carry the unfinished manuscript safely out of the city to the copyists at Fossanova, where the harvest stubble and the straw-stacks blaze gold at sunrise, and Thomas smiles: straw shelters, straw shines, and straw is what you build a nest from.

About this story

Length

10 illustrated pages

Who appears

• Brother Thomas — The great silent writer who lays down his pen
• Brother Reginald — His secretary, who worries about every page
• Nuccia — The convent cook's daughter, nine, quick fingers
• Pippo — Lanky donkey boy who drives grey Fagiolo

What happens on 24 November 2026

This story is finished and scheduled. On 24 November 2026 it opens here in full — every page illustrated — as part of Wonder Philosophy. Nothing on this page is a placeholder: the story exists, it has been reviewed, and this is its address.

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