Morning came like a squared ledger. Oakwatch blinked — . (ready) from its glass eye; the river shouldered past Glass Isle with manners; the horn cairns along Founders' Way hummed the same note when Jory tapped them—each a syllable in ready. 🙂
— Morning Brief — Novaterra• White-Cut (Day 5/6): allow 10–12 Fort foragers (no drums) at left bank (mid-sun)• Exchange: teach sedge-bite salve to 2 Fort cutters at aid plank• Strings audit: child-sun "count the strings" demo; check bead-lanyards• Hollow drum: first knock; no tassels/weights; no drums otherwise• Cordon: arcs steady; sand lines refreshed (non-white)• After-Sight: Ready (0/1)• Spawn Window: 3–7 days (watch)• Morale: Work-bright, watchful 🙂
Ansel cut white posts lean and straight. Garran and Orla planted their semicolon standards where the bank began to lie about its edge; Fen stood the middle like permission; Reeve Piet tucked the reserve under shade with the patience of a door leaned on. Jory hooded the gourds and set the hollow drum on the table, open back daring the world, then ticked angle marks on the mirror shelf just because order is a hobby.
Mara slid a water bucket beneath the awning and nothing else. "Soup after," she reminded, ladle cocked like punctuation. 😑🍲
Calder laid out salves and glazed jars; Ameline (Duvall's binder) set neat cards with little drawings: rinse → bind → reassure. Ras ran a rope along the slickest lip, knotting it where tired ankles would confess early and be forgiven. Bryn placed herself where hills and water both fit inside her eyes.
"Two short opens help, one long ends day," Elara told the line. "Hands visible. Tongues polite."
Aiden tapped the Green Terms board Venn nailed at the shrine: Cut tops, not roots. Eight mats full; two back early. No mats across white. Hollow drum for parley only. Two short opens help; one long ends day. "We keep yesterday inside today," he said. "Good arithmetic."
Lia's cousin arrived with the child-sun and a fistful of cord. "We're learning strings," she announced gravely. 🫡
They came quiet and on time.
Eleven goblins: Mokh at point, lacquer peeled and eyes like rules; Tavi with the rope token visible; two paint-striped foremen; eight with mats. No drums. The palisade behind them wore a man like a bright bruise—the lacquered Drum-man—half-hidden above the gate, watching white as if he meant to teach rain how to lie.
Elara raised white to waist—parley posture. Two short, soft—space, not theater.
"Hollow," Aiden said, tapping the rim.
Mokh knocked: clean ponk. Tavi tapped stall/edge the way a man clears a throat; the air gave back air.
A cutter tried to bring something extra—knife-strap tassel with a bronze bead the size of a tear, "decorative." He set it on the table by the drum, casual as bad arithmetic. The bead clicked against the ash rim once, twice: short-short-long.
Ras's head tilted. Jory's mouth tightened.
"Peg," Ras murmured. "On a string."
Elara didn't look at the wall; she looked at Mokh. "No weights or tassels at white," she said, even.
Mokh did not glance back at the palisade. He took the cutter's bead-strand, wound it around his fist, and snapped it once. Beads fell like ideas that had discovered they weren't original. He laid the cut braid on the open back of the hollow drum where all could see the nothing it had wanted to hide.
The Drum-man's lacquered shoulders twitched on the palisade. He said something to no one and smiled the way weather smiles when it has a plan.
"Grass," Tavi said, as if embarrassed to be good at diplomacy.
"Grass," Elara agreed.
Cutting began with the right verbs. Reeds gave; sedge argued; mats filled. Two cutters handed themselves over to Calder and Ameline at the plank without dramatics. Ameline showed the rinse, the bind, the mint-smelling salve; Calder demonstrated the thumb press above a bite, the little sentence to calm lungs in any language. Tavi leaned close—eyes greedy for useful things—and said "Hurt ends" to his own men, as if he'd invented the phrase. 🙂
Lia's cousin set a basket on the plank and held up a string with three loops. "Count the strings," she said, voice solemn. "One loop is a finger. Two makes a question. Three is work." She passed the string to a cutter; he looped it and nodded—bundle-tick in cloth instead of drum. The foreman smiled, then pretended he hadn't.
Jory watched the foreman's bead sash—not the broken one, the other—click softly as the man shifted the weight from hip to hip. Long-short-long when he looked toward the left bank; short-short when he checked mats. Not loud enough to be sound, just touch. Tactile code.
Ras tracked it with two fingers on the table. "Back-edge," he breathed, certain. "Long-short-long. And the double short is their bundle reminder when they're pretending not to drum."
Jory's slate filled itself: String Lexicon—touch codes → horn shade equivalents (never blown in public).
The Drum-man leaned out over the palisade with lacquer bright enough to sneer without a mouth. He thumped his rain drum once with two fingers—not a beat, a promise. Mokh did not turn. He adjusted a mat frame until a young cutter's pride sat inside the rules.
A knife slipped; a thumb nicked; two short called space. Calder rinsed and bound, Tavi said "hurt ends," and work swallowed drama.
Downstream, Bryn sighed—another canvas hood in the reeds, another cheap mirror and a boy whose pockets smelled like walnut ink. Hale tapped the canvas's tell seam loose with two fingers; the boy watched water and chose broom instead of coin without being told twice. 🍲🙂
— White-Cut (Day 5/6)• Foragers: 11 (no drums) → 8 mats (3 back early)• Exchange: 2 cutters learned sedge-bite care at aid plank• Incidents: 1 thumb nick (treated); bead tassel cut/snapped (publicly); 1 mirror nest cleared• Conduct: hollow respected; finger/cloth counts used; no stones (ours)
Before one long could dismiss, Mokh stepped to the board and read the Green Terms without moving his lips. Cut tops, not roots. He tapped the word roots with two fingers hard enough to make the plank admit it had been taught something. "Roots, not," he repeated for his foremen, which is what leadership sounds like when it prefers bread to speeches.
Aiden slid a small vial of salve across the plank and drew a picture of a snake and a wrist with his finger. Mokh made a sound too practical to be a thank-you and pocketed the vial with the indifference of a man carrying a useful insult to someone he disliked.
One long, Jory breathed—end. Mats tilted—for show, not steal—and went home. The Drum-man's lacquer clicked once more on the palisade, then vanished from sight.
Afternoon turned to nouns that wanted doing.
— Drum/String Lexicon v0.5 (Draft)• Touch codes (bead/hip): long-short-long = back-edge; short-short = bundle tick• Horn shadow (never public): back-edge → 5 rising (correct) + 7 steady; bundle tick → no call (internal note)• White aura: Squire Radius +5 m while white active (standards planted)
"System likes honesty," Venn observed, tapping the new aura line. "Or maybe it just likes poles." He sounded pleased either way.
Jory penciled a touch → horn cheat into his pocket slate with wicked decorum. "I won't blow it," he promised Elara. "But I'll hear it."
"Good arithmetic," she said, which in her mouth meant you may live.
At Glass Isle, Kessa trimmed a lens hook so Jory's shelf could swap glass without touching edges; Émile checked crown temps; the bench stayed shy; the island smelled like heat doing its job. Calder approved water clarity with a smug jar. Hadrik ran a fingertip under the scorpion shed's roof seam and declared it un-leaky, which he insists is a word.
Tomas in Millcross ate broth, steamed his lungs under a cloth, and argued with Ana (kindly) about whether needles should cost more when the wind is rude. Her answer was yes, but also no, because river.
Clove drifted past the aid plank and set a folded leaf under the hollow drum like a man tipping a hat to a tool.
You caught a string peg. Next are sashes that look like pride.Teach children to count loops out loud where men can hear.Pride hates being audited by a nine-year-old.— C.
So Lia's cousin stood at the shrine, lifting loops and making the crowd repeat: "One is a finger. Two makes a question. Three is work." Watching faces, you could see a few proud necks confess to learning.
Near dusk, Rowan Three-Slash rode the western brow with two glass-eating lies and looked at white the way a cat looks at a new stove—curious, respectful of heat. Jory blew two short (polite compress); Rowan dipped his spear like a punctuation mark and let the ridge keep him. 😌
The Fort put up one sulk of smoke and let it collapse on itself. Somewhere under lacquer, someone practiced consonants.
Dusk folded the Flats into quiet edges. The air over the hills was clear enough for mirrors to gossip.
"Pretend thunder?" Aiden asked without looking up.
Jory's grin was a crime committed against boredom. "Pretend thunder."
He lifted the pane on the Oakwatch shelf and flicked dot-dot-dash-dash—the nonsense light-call—Oakwatch → Cairn #8 → back again, a little hop to Glass Isle for style. He waited, a man listening to a pond for secrets.
Two breaths. Three.
Wink.From the western shoulder—a hill without a cairn—dot-dot-dash-dash wobbled back, new hands on glass.
"Pike," Bryn said, already moving. Hale with her; Ras packing rope and that gentle smile he saves for knots.
Wink.From the northern spur, where no boy had any business, a second nonsense came back—steadier, cleaner, a beam that did not wobble.
Jory's face went still. "Not Pike," he said softly.
"Unknown," Bryn agreed, pausing just long enough to taste the direction. "And they practice."
Elara glanced at the Optics Addendum nailed under Bridge Law and then at the sky, which had the courtesy to be empty of rain for once. "We'll pull the western boy like a splinter," she said. "We save the northern one for tomorrow—teach our feet where not to chase in the dark."
Aiden felt After-Sight in his brow like a cool chalk that asked to be spent. He didn't. Not for light. Not tonight.
Mara hung Night Soup under the white awning and thumped the ladle once on the rim—the sound of a day ending on purpose. 🍲🙂
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the river that had learned to carry rules without dropping them, "we taught salve to hands that used to throw stones, made strings confess in public, and caught two winks of pretend thunder—one we know, one we don't. Tomorrow we'll sweep the hills with brooms and patience. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
The wind went down a gourd and came out two short—make way. Sleep stepped into the path; no one charged it a coin.
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Left Bank• White-Cut (Day 5/6): complete; 2 cutters trained in sedge-bite care; bead tassel cut/snapped; 0 stones (ours)• String Lexicon: bead/hip touch codes mapped (back-edge; bundle tick) → horn shadow (internal)• System: Squire White Aura (+5 m radius while white active)• Optics: Pretend thunder trapped 2 mirrors (west = Pike; north = unknown)• Cordon steady; spawn window 3–7 days; sally appetite low• Morale: Quiet-proud; curious; soup excellent 🙂