I'm reading The Dawn of Amber

And come across the expression

"Brick-and-mortar"

I'd just seen that term

While reading Science News

During lunch an hour earlier

Moments later in The Dawn of Amber,

On the same line of the facing page,

I encounter the term "mother-of-pearl"

This is spooky because

I know I had just seen that, too

From The Dawn of Amber, p. 74:

"In front of the hill sat a small,

peaceful looking village,

with perhaps seventy or so

brick-and-mortar buildings

with yellow-thatched roofs."

And from p. 75:

"It looked like teak,

inlaid with an intricate

mother-of-pearl

pattern of a lion."

From the 6/21/03 Science News, p. 397:

"Nicholas Kotov of

Oklahoma State University

in Stillwater

and his colleagues

modeled their material after

natural mother-of-pearl,

which gets its properties

from a brick-and-mortar structure

of calcium carbonate

held together by

a network of proteins."