Morning came exact and unsentimental. 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 6/6): final day; hollow drum check first, then cutters (no drums)• Optics Watch: triangulated mirrors (west = Pike, north = unknown) — shadows set• Clinic: Tomas (Millcross) stable; steam & broth regimen holds• Cordon: arcs steady; sand lines refreshed; knee-teeth reset (non-white)• After-Sight: Ready (0/1)• Spawn Window: 2–6 days (watch)• Morale: Work-bright, wary 🙂
Ansel set white posts lean and true. 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 in shade with the patience of a door leaned on. Jory hooded the gourds, set the hollow drum on the table with its open back daring the world, and slid the Green Terms board a finger-width straighter because compulsion is not a sin when it helps.
Mara put only a water bucket under the awning. "Soup after," she said, ladle at parade rest. 😑🍲
Calder and Ameline laid out salves and a stack of neat picture-cards (rinse → bind → reassure). Ras ran a rope where ankles would lie; Bryn put herself where hills and water shared a single frame.
"Elbows down, tongues down," Elara told the wall. "Two short opens help. One long ends day. Hands visible. No theatre."
Aiden nodded. "Good arithmetic."
They came as if the line lived in their bones now—twelve goblins: Mokh at point, lacquer peeled, eyes like rules; Tavi with the rope token visible; two paint-striped foremen; eight with mats. Behind them, high on the palisade, the lacquer Drum-man watched white with a smile rain wears when it thinks it knows your roof.
Elara raised white to waist—parley posture. Two short, soft—space.
"Hollow," Aiden said, tapping the rim.
Mokh knocked: ponk—clean. Tavi tapped stall/edge; air gave back air.
Then the palisade grew a trick.
Two porters tramped forward with a sealed drum—hide scraped whitish, rim bound with wax and twine, tassel tails down like a courtier. The Drum-man spoke from his fence, lacquer bright. "Ceremony," he said in their tongue, letting the word travel. Tavi translated, careful: "They say it is for honor, not for count."
Elara did not move her face. "The hollow goes first," she said. "Then your ceremony—with the back open or not at all."
Mokh spat into the reeds and eyed the tassels. Pride tried to hang a thesis from them. A small person—child-sun height—stood where she could be seen and could not be ignored. Lia's cousin tilted her head, frowned at the tassel's fall, and said loudly enough for pride to hear: "That tail is too heavy."
Jory's brows twitched. Ras's fingers tapped the hollow rim short-short-long—is a peg.
Elara didn't look at the palisade. "Cut the tails," she said to Mokh.
Silence cracked. The Drum-man's smile said don't you dare. Mokh's jaw said watch me. He took a knife, sawed wax cord, and flayed the tassel: beads spilled like bad ideas, a thin strip of lacquered wood slid out of the plait like guilt. He laid it on the open back of the hollow drum where all could see there was nothing it could hide in.
The Drum-man's hand tightened on his rim. His lacquer clicked like teeth.
"Grass," Tavi said, voice small on purpose.
"Grass," Elara agreed.
Cutting began because rules are better than pride. Reeds gave; sedge argued; mats filled. Two of yesterday's trainees taught a third the thumb press to tame panic after a nip; Ameline checked the wrap, nodded, and pointed at the picture-card (hurt ends). Tavi said the words to his own men with the air of a man collecting useful tools.
A cutter drifted toward the white line with a looped sash of beads—not tassels, not decoration, pride. Lia's cousin hoisted two strings and spoke her audit where men could hear and not pretend: "One is a finger. Two makes a question. Three is work." The foreman listened with his face; his hip shut up.
Up on the palisade, the Drum-man drummed once with a knuckle—no map, just menace. Mokh did not turn. He shifted a mat frame until a young cutter's want sat inside the rules.
Bryn breathed in like a cat reading a new stove. "West mirror," she said, soft. "Pike." Hale's gourd kissed two short out of habit; Pathfinders folded the canvas and sent the boy to Mara for broom. 🍲🙂
"North mirror," Ras murmured. "Our unknown."
"Leave it," Elara said. "We don't teach our feet chase. We teach our feet work."
One knife slipped; two short brought Calder; water, bind, mint paste; Tavi's hurt ends; work resumed. The bead sash did not click again.
— White-Cut (Day 6/6)• Foragers: 12 (no drums) → 9 mats (3 back early)• Incidents: 1 thumb nick (treated); sealed drum denied; tassels cut; 1 Pike mirror cleared; north mirror observed (unknown)• Conduct: hollow respected; no stones (ours); finger/cloth counts used
Before dismissal, Mokh stepped to the Green Terms board and touched roots again. "Roots, not," he told his foremen. Then, after a breath, in their tongue, a word that means even when it rains.
Elara nodded a finger's height. "One long," she told Jory.
He breathed the note. Mats tilted for show, not steal. Tavi lingered. "Your white is loud," he said, which from him was praise.
"It should be boring," Aiden said.
"Boring is loud," Tavi answered, unexpected smile. He tapped the hollow once and went.
Optics and law met in hard light.
Venn convened a Bridge Law hearing at the shrine with Duvall, Ana, Marta, and the Turnstone press master. Jory laid the hollow drum on the plank; Lia's cousin held up loops like commandments with edges.
"Addendum," Venn read. "**Light within two bowshots of white is logistics only—no mirrors during parley hours. Strings used for signal count as weapons when they shape movement. Tassels with hidden pegs are drums in skirts." He chalked the fines: coin to Widows' Rope, work-service: brooms/latrines.
Lucien added, smooth as a whetstone, "Credit officers who violate white will have their ledgers shunned a season in my markets."
Marta's mouth made a line that meant my grandsons will not try you, and Ana rapped the plank with a needle like a judge's gavel. "We keep roads open," she said.
— Bridge Law — Optics & Strings (Expanded)• Mirrors: two bowshots exclusion during white; violations → fines/work• Strings/Beads: counting sashes = signal weapons; confiscate/log• Tassels/Weights: treated as drum pegs; must be cut/snapped in public• Reputation: Law Kept Under Pressure (+small trust bonus regionally)
Clove appeared the way a conclusion arrives after numbers. "Your unknown mirror is north spur, stone lip like a bite," he murmured. "Not Pike work. Better glass. Better hands. Two operators."
"Tomorrow," Bryn said. "We sweep with brooms, not with feet."
"Good arithmetic," Elara approved.
At Glass Isle, Kessa polished a thin lens and muttered about "quiet bands" as a hobgoblin she intended to beat later; Émile tended crown heat like a librarian tends rules; the latrine lids wore their usefulness without shame. Rinna walked her crews through silent reload again and painted a fresh NO GREEDY SHOT because faith is a habit.
Tomas in Millcross sat at the door, drank broth, steamed his lungs, and argued gently with Ana about needle prices. He breathed better while he argued. His wife plaited reed with hands that now had time to be tender.
Rowan Three-Slash showed on the west brow with two glass-eating lies and watched white as you watch a bridge become reliable. He saluted once with his spear to the Parley Box and once to the Fort—an etiquette that promised trouble for someone else later. 😌
The Fort smoked, swallowed, tried a knuckle on the rim of its rain drum and—this time—the ground answered.
It came as a feeling before it had the courage to be a sound: a soft, low tremor that walked up shins and into jaw hinges. Water in the bucket trembled; Oakwatch's panes ticked in their cradle; the hollow drum on the table hummed without fingers.
Jory's head snapped up. "Consonants," he whispered. "He's found new teeth."
Ras laid pebbles in a shape that wanted to be a triangle and then moved one to make it wrong. "Not calling bodies," he said. "Calling weather. He'll ask rain to be a messenger."
Elara didn't look at the sky. She looked at men. "Pack white," she said. "Plant standards where they breathe best. Two short ready; one long only on my palm."
Aiden thumbed After-Sight and let it bite. The world admitted fresh geometry: the left-bank false shelf re-laid with reeds; a rut at the ford's lip deepened by idle feet; a string web half-strung on the market road where Pike boys liked to be clever. Numbers ran to the line and stood still.
"Left shelf lies; we stand on sand, not shape," Aiden said. "Rut at ford—fill with brush now. String web on Knoll road—sweep it clean and nail the backs."
Elara held up a hand. Jory sent 2 short in a tone that made carts polite and spines ready. Garran and Orla's semicolons dug into the turf like punctuation committed to grammar. Fen became a stone under skin; Reeve Piet put reserve in the seam where sense and breath meet.
The tremor rolled again, shyer, then brave. The hollow drum sang once—ponk—without a knuckle. On the palisade, the Drum-man laughed with his lacquer mouth and held his stick as if it had written the day.
Mara, who had a theology for weather, tapped the rim of the soup pot once. "Eat before the sky gets ideas," she advised. 🍲🙂
— System: Weather & Spawn• Rain-Drum Tremor detected (new cadence)• Spawn Window compresses → 48–72 hours• Trait unlocked: Stand Tall (Wet) — panic resist +10% in rain (line units)
Venn wrote 48–72 in chalk under brief and boxed it like a name.
Clove's note slid under Aiden's palm like a thought someone else had already finished.
The unknown mirror will sell timing to the highest bidder.Pull the string web tonight.Nail the backs of every board.— C.
"Brooms," Elara said.
"Boards," Aiden said.
"Good arithmetic," they said together, and that counted as courage.
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the river that had learned the grammar of waiting, "we kept white honest when pride wore lacquer, cut tassels that pretended to be honor, and wrote law where rain could see it. The ground is learning consonants; so are we. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
The wind went down a gourd and came out two short—make way. Sleep stepped into the road, wary but welcome.
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Left Bank / Regional• White-Cut (Day 6/6): complete; sealed drum denied; tassels cut/snapped; 0 stones (ours); 1 nick treated• Bridge Law expanded (Optics & Strings v2): mirrors two bowshots; strings as signal weapons; tassels = drum pegs• Reputation: Law Kept Under Pressure (+small trust regionally)• Optics: Pike mirror cleared (west); unknown mirror observed (north) — sweep deferred (no chase at dusk)• After-Sight used (left shelf, ford rut, Knoll string web)• Spawn Window compresses → 48–72 hrs (Rain-Drum Tremor)• Trait: Stand Tall (Wet) unlocked (+10% panic resist in rain)• Morale: Tight, ready; soup prudent 🙂