diff --git a/css/style.css b/css/style.css
index b0e1183..8f75498 100644
--- a/css/style.css
+++ b/css/style.css
@@ -189,8 +189,10 @@ button {
 
 /* ── side art ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    Full-height sakura in both margins: ANSI art (inc/art/sakura.ans, `cat`
-   it), turned into HTML by inc/art.php and mirrored for the right side so the
-   branches hang in from the outer corners. Hidden when there's no margin. */
+   it), turned by inc/art.php into one text layer per color, served as
+   sideart.php's ::before content on the empty <b>s and mirrored for the right
+   side so the branches hang in from the outer corners. Hidden when there's
+   no margin. */
 
 /* The art is drawn for .6em-wide characters; system monospaces range from
    .5em up, which squashes it. So it gets its own: JetBrains Mono's printable
@@ -217,7 +219,7 @@ button {
 }
 /* the art comes as one layer per color, stacked */
 .side { display: grid; }
-.side > span { grid-area: 1 / 1; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: isolate; }
+.side > b { grid-area: 1 / 1; font-weight: normal; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: isolate; }
 .side-left { left: 0; }
 /* rtl only so the right panel clips on its inner edge; the layers stay ltr
    (above), or the bidi algorithm reorders runs of punctuation */
diff --git a/inc/art.php b/inc/art.php
index 80fd093..b3f8a13 100644
--- a/inc/art.php
+++ b/inc/art.php
@@ -1,9 +1,15 @@
 <?php
 /**
- * ANSI art (a .ans file you can `cat` in a terminal) to HTML for the side
- * panels. Understands foreground colors: truecolor (38;2;r;g;b), 256-color
- * (38;5;n), the 16 basic ones, and resets; everything else is ignored.
- * $mirror flips it left-right, swapping /\ () <> [] {} so shapes still read.
+ * ANSI art (a .ans file you can `cat` in a terminal) for the side panels.
+ * Understands foreground colors: truecolor (38;2;r;g;b), 256-color (38;5;n),
+ * the 16 basic ones, and resets; everything else is ignored. The right panel
+ * is the left mirrored, swapping /\ () <> [] {} so shapes still read.
+ *
+ * The art ships as a stylesheet (sideart.php), not HTML: one full-size text
+ * layer per color, each the `content` of a ::before on an empty <b>, stacked
+ * by style.css. It's render-blocking and cached, so the first paint already
+ * has it; inline, it made the page too big for one network round trip and
+ * Firefox painted the page half-arrived (a dark empty flash) on cached loads.
  */
 
 function ansi_color(array $p, ?string $cur): ?string
@@ -38,35 +44,55 @@ function ansi_color(array $p, ?string $cur): ?string
     return $cur;
 }
 
-/** ansi_html(), cached on disk until the .ans file changes (parsing costs ~30 ms a side). */
-function ansi_html_cached(string $file, bool $mirror = false): string
+/**
+ * The stylesheet for both panels, cached on disk until the .ans file (or this
+ * file) changes. Returns [path to the css, layers on the left, on the right].
+ */
+function ansi_css_cached(string $file): array
 {
     $dir = (defined('DATA_DIR') ? DATA_DIR : sys_get_temp_dir()) . '/art-cache';
-    $base = $dir . '/' . md5($file . '|' . (int) $mirror);
-    $key = $base . '-' . filemtime($file) . '-layers.html'; // bump the suffix when the markup changes
-    if (is_file($key)) {
-        return (string) file_get_contents($key);
+    $base = $dir . '/' . md5($file);
+    $key = $base . '-' . filemtime($file) . '-' . filemtime(__FILE__);
+    if (!is_file("$key.css") || !is_file("$key.json")) {
+        @mkdir($dir, 0755, true);
+        array_map('unlink', glob($base . '-*') ?: []); // every deploy bumps the mtimes
+        $css = '';
+        $counts = [];
+        foreach (['left' => false, 'right' => true] as $side => $mirror) {
+            $layers = ansi_layers($file, $mirror);
+            $counts[$side] = count($layers);
+            foreach ($layers as $i => [$color, $text]) {
+                $css .= ".side-$side > b:nth-child(" . ($i + 1) . ')::before{content:' . ansi_css_string($text)
+                    . ($color !== '' ? ";color:#$color" : '') . "}\n";
+            }
+        }
+        foreach (["$key.css" => $css, "$key.json" => json_encode($counts)] as $path => $data) {
+            $tmp = $path . '.' . getmypid();
+            if (@file_put_contents($tmp, $data) !== false) {
+                rename($tmp, $path);
+            }
+        }
     }
-    $html = ansi_html($file, $mirror);
-    @mkdir($dir, 0755, true);
-    array_map('unlink', glob($base . '-*.html') ?: []); // every deploy bumps the mtime
-    $tmp = $key . '.' . getmypid();
-    if (@file_put_contents($tmp, $html) !== false) {
-        rename($tmp, $key);
-    }
-    return $html;
+    return ["$key.css", ...array_values((array) json_decode((string) @file_get_contents("$key.json"), true))];
 }
 
-function ansi_html(string $file, bool $mirror = false): string
+/** A CSS string literal; newlines become \A (the space after it ends the escape). */
+function ansi_css_string(string $text): string
+{
+    return '"' . str_replace(['\\', '"', "\n"], ['\\\\', '\\"', '\\A '], $text) . '"';
+}
+
+/** The art as [[hex color or '', text], ...]: one full-size layer per color. */
+function ansi_layers(string $file, bool $mirror = false): array
 {
     $raw = (string) file_get_contents($file);
     if (!preg_match('/[\x80-\xff]/', $raw)) {
-        $html = ansi_html_bytes($raw, $mirror);
-        if ($html !== null) {
-            return $html;
+        $layers = ansi_layers_bytes($raw, $mirror);
+        if ($layers !== null) {
+            return $layers;
         }
     }
-    return ansi_html_cells($raw, $mirror);
+    return ansi_layers_cells($raw, $mirror);
 }
 
 /**
@@ -112,7 +138,7 @@ function ansi_parse_bytes(string $raw): ?array
  * color layer is cut out of the whole art with bitwise string ops, which run
  * in C. Returns null if there are too many colors to index in a byte.
  */
-function ansi_html_bytes(string $raw, bool $mirror): ?string
+function ansi_layers_bytes(string $raw, bool $mirror): ?array
 {
     static $from = null, $to = null;          // byte 0 -> 0xff, anything else -> 0
     $from ??= implode(array_map('chr', range(0, 255)));
@@ -139,21 +165,19 @@ function ansi_html_bytes(string $raw, bool $mirror): ?string
     $blank = implode("\n", array_fill(0, count($chars), str_repeat(' ', $width)));
     $n = strlen($all);
 
-    $html = '';
+    $layers = [];
     foreach ($index as $color => $k) {
         $sel = strtr($mask ^ str_repeat(chr($k), $n), $from, $to); // 0xff where this color, else 0
         $layer = ($all & $sel) | ($blank & ~$sel);
-        if (trim($layer) === '') {
-            continue;                                             // only blanks in this color
+        if (trim($layer) !== '') {                                // skip colors that only touch blanks
+            $layers[] = [(string) $color, $layer];
         }
-        $style = $color !== '' ? " style=\"color:#$color\"" : '';
-        $html .= "<span$style>" . htmlspecialchars($layer) . '</span>';
     }
-    return $html;
+    return $layers;
 }
 
 /** General path: a [char, color] cell at a time, so multibyte characters work. */
-function ansi_html_cells(string $raw, bool $mirror): string
+function ansi_layers_cells(string $raw, bool $mirror): array
 {
     static $flip = ['/' => '\\', '\\' => '/', '(' => ')', ')' => '(', '<' => '>', '>' => '<',
                     '[' => ']', ']' => '[', '{' => '}', '}' => '{'];
@@ -183,9 +207,6 @@ function ansi_html_cells(string $raw, bool $mirror): string
     }
     unset($cells);
 
-    // One full-size text layer per color, holding only that color's
-    // characters; CSS stacks them. A few dozen elements instead of a span per
-    // color run (thousands), which is what made the art slow to lay out.
     $colors = [];
     foreach ($lines as $cells) {
         foreach ($cells as [$ch, $color]) {
@@ -194,7 +215,7 @@ function ansi_html_cells(string $raw, bool $mirror): string
             }
         }
     }
-    $html = '';
+    $layers = [];
     foreach (array_keys($colors) as $color) {
         $rows = [];
         foreach ($lines as $cells) {
@@ -204,8 +225,7 @@ function ansi_html_cells(string $raw, bool $mirror): string
             }
             $rows[] = $row;
         }
-        $style = $color !== '' ? " style=\"color:#$color\"" : '';
-        $html .= "<span$style>" . htmlspecialchars(implode("\n", $rows)) . '</span>';
+        $layers[] = [(string) $color, implode("\n", $rows)];
     }
-    return $html;
+    return $layers;
 }
diff --git a/inc/footer.php b/inc/footer.php
index aeaa67d..b33411e 100644
--- a/inc/footer.php
+++ b/inc/footer.php
@@ -10,8 +10,7 @@ $build = preg_match('/[0-9a-f]{7,40}/i', $build, $m) ? $m[0] : ($build ?: 'dev')
   </div>
   <small>&copy; <?= date('Y') ?> · build: <a href="<?= htmlspecialchars(REPO_URL . ($build !== 'dev' ? '/src/commit/' . $build : '')) ?>"><?= htmlspecialchars($build) ?></a></small>
 </footer>
-<?php require_once __DIR__ . '/art.php'; ?>
-<pre class="side side-left" aria-hidden="true"><?= ansi_html_cached(__DIR__ . '/art/sakura.ans') ?></pre>
-<pre class="side side-right" aria-hidden="true"><?= ansi_html_cached(__DIR__ . '/art/sakura.ans', mirror: true) ?></pre>
+<pre class="side side-left" aria-hidden="true"><?= str_repeat('<b></b>', $artLeft) ?></pre>
+<pre class="side side-right" aria-hidden="true"><?= str_repeat('<b></b>', $artRight) ?></pre>
 </body>
 </html>
diff --git a/inc/header.php b/inc/header.php
index 2d9adf8..7c04493 100644
--- a/inc/header.php
+++ b/inc/header.php
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 <?php
 require_once __DIR__ . '/../config.php';
+require_once __DIR__ . '/art.php';
+[$artCss, $artLeft, $artRight] = ansi_css_cached(__DIR__ . '/art/sakura.ans');
 ?>
 <!doctype html>
 <html lang="en">
@@ -10,6 +12,7 @@ require_once __DIR__ . '/../config.php';
   <title><?= htmlspecialchars($page_title ?? SITE_TITLE) ?></title>
   <link rel="icon" href="/img/favicon.ico" sizes="any">
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css?v=<?= filemtime(__DIR__ . '/../css/style.css') ?>">
+  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/sideart.php?v=<?= filemtime(__DIR__ . '/art/sakura.ans') . '-' . filemtime(__DIR__ . '/art.php') ?>">
   <script src="/js/htmx.min.js" defer></script>
   <script src="/js/idiomorph-ext.min.js" defer></script>
 </head>
diff --git a/sideart.php b/sideart.php
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4676b5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/sideart.php
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+<?php
+// The side art as a stylesheet (see inc/art.php). The URL carries ?v=, so it
+// can be cached for good.
+require_once __DIR__ . '/config.php';
+require_once __DIR__ . '/inc/art.php';
+
+[$css] = ansi_css_cached(__DIR__ . '/inc/art/sakura.ans'); // render (or fail) before the headers
+header('Content-Type: text/css; charset=utf-8');
+header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable');
+readfile($css);