The chairman wanted stone for posterity. (posterity: future generations, generations to come, people of the future) The sculptor preferred something ephemeral: a tower of ice against the dawn. (ephemeral: fleeting, transitory, short-lived) Its gradual evanescence would be the subject. (evanescence: transience, fleetingness, disappearance) A fugacious reflection on running water might hold a visitor as surely as a perpetual inscription. (fugacious: fleeting, transient, ephemeral; perpetual: continual, unceasing, ceaseless)
The committee was awestruck by the model but divided about its fate. (awestruck: awed, wonderstruck, amazed) Why spend weeks on a transitory monument? (transitory: transient, temporary, fleeting) The sculptor invited them to see what time could do. As the sun rose, pink light began to suffuse the hollow stair. (suffuse: pervade, bathe, imbue) A tiny trapped feather moved up through the ice and came free.
Nobody filmed that moment. For the chairman, who had spent years trying to venerate his brother with a permanent statue, watching the feather sail away was transcendent. (venerate: revere, honor, esteem; transcendent: surpassing, extraordinary, beyond ordinary limits) He returned the next day for a handful of water for his garden.