Dawn put a finger to its lips. Oakwatch blinked — . (ready); Millcross, Knoll, and Turnstone answered — . / . — on the hour; four Stable Fields purred; markets remembered their beat. The cairns along Founders' Way hummed one clean syllable when Jory tapped them—ready. 🙂
— Morning Brief — Corners & Type• Work: pad river corners (reed-felt Softeners) at third bend; renew Hush Boards; paint footprints on wharves• Civic: found Guild of Honest Type (press/clerks) to certify Pact print• Security: rumor broadsides (conscription lies); "hymn" reprints; Moth optics; lacquer loyalists (small)• After-Sight: Ready (0/1)• Morale: Ledger-bright, corner-wise 🙂
"Corners first," Elara said. "Soft corners hush violet more than loud walls."
Ansel and Hadrik loaded reed Softeners—long, felt-faced frames to hang at river elbows like polite sponges; Kessa tied jars for drips on their top slats; Émile muttered about copper lips and no flour near any of this. Mara nodded theology and forbade pastry again. 😑🍲
Bryn took the skiff—Hale, Ras, Lute—white-to-go posts, Hush Boards, rope stems. Aiden thumbed After-Sight—chalk tried to draw sideways where water wanted to write normally. He kept it blunt and called the lies:
"Reverse in mid-channel just at the bite. Taste wrong in eddy. Echo under clay bank. Softeners at two and four; Hush at clay; rope stem between the honest roots."
"Good arithmetic," Bryn said, and went to love corners until they behaved.
They hung Softeners where the river wanted to keep a secret; drips kissed felt; the hum at the elbow became a nap. Hush Boards drank the mutter under the clay lip. A willow rope stem taught boots where to say sorry.
On the way back they met a coracle with three people who had never owned a sermon: riverfolk from upstream—two old, one small—hands the color of habit. The old woman had a mouth like a rule. "Water is wrong at night," she said. "We don't drink the corners anymore. We walk to you because your white has posts we can see."
"White-on-a-handle," Tavi said at the Parley Box when they arrived, palm on hollow. "Stall/edge—you're inside. Eat first." His voice was a policy as much as a welcome. 🙂
Lia's cousin stamped rope tokens and loop cards with solemn delight. "Work is after soup," she told the small one, and then gave the small one ladle duty for a quarter hour because authority should be shared. 🍲🙂
— Refuge Intake — Riverfolk (Pilot)• Number: 3 (elder pair + child)• Flow: soup → ropes → loops; quarter-days at Grass & White; bed lists posted• Note: water from corners avoided; violet = taste wrong/night hum
While corners got softer, type got honest.
Varlo's shunned circle had left a litter of rumor broadsides last night: crisp paper, conscription talk in tidy fonts, Pact seal convincingly wrong. It smelled like money and ignorance.
Turnstone's press master rolled the big press into the square as if to dance. "If they will fight with letters," he said, "we fight with type." He set a board: P vs. P: How to See a Fraud. He printed side-by-side letters, arrows pointing to rakes and roofs and stems and grace. He wrote "Not Our P" in red and the crowd laughed without cruelty, which is the right flavor of laughter for law.
Venn founded a thing because he likes nouns: Guild of Honest Type—members: Turnstone press, child-sun clerks, Venn himself, Ana (because needles), and Lucien (because money). Charter:
Only white may bless Pact print.
Serifs tell the truth (ours); rakes confess the lie (theirs).
Counterfeit toll papers = work days under white; presses used → confiscated and taught better letters.
Ana rapped the plank with a needle like a gavel. "Fabric tears," she said. "So does paper when you lie with it." The crowd cheered two short.
Jory added a flourish to the hour's Sync—— . / . — followed by . . (clerk signal) so child-suns could stamp open and close together. The towns clapped with mirrors like polite metronomes.
Moth optics blinked once from the north spur; a boy in polished boots tried to hand out hymns again; children recited loops at him so earnestly he forgot how to be elegant and became a broom handle with legs for five days.
Midday, After-Sight asked to be useful. Aiden let it in. The chalk line behind his eye drew letters on the road: thin lines of rumor unraveling toward Grass & White. He followed them with his finger.
"Voice at Knoll bakehouse," he told Elara. "Says rope is conscription. Same font as the broadsides."
Elara and Mara walked with bowl and law. In the bakehouse shadow a woman with a careful bun and a trembling mouth whispered to three neighbors because she had been taught to be generous with fear.
Mara put a bowl in her hands. "We take days, not sons," she said. "We give work, not drums. If you are scared, carry ladle for one hour. It will introduce you to neighbors you forgot you had."
The woman breathed. "I can stir," she said, and discovered that stirring makes the lie dissolve. 🍲
— Civic — Guild of Honest Type (Founded)• Certifies Pact print; posts Not Our P sheets; stamps legal broadsides• Enforcement: counterfeit → work days; presses "rehabilitated" (members teach)• Signal: . . (clerk call) appended to hour Sync
In the afternoon, the Drum-man finished day 27 of 60 without theater. He swept latrine paths under white while Calder counted breaths. Tavi stood with palm on hollow and said nothing. After, the man put the broom in the corner and did not look up for applause—the kind of progress that matters.
He stepped into Grass & White and stared at the ledger like a door. Lia's cousin held up the stamp. "Loops, please," she said. He recited his days—eighteen lines in a voice that wasn't the one he used to talk to rain.
"Days," he said at the end, and the word wasn't a curse anymore.
Evening drifted gentle. Softeners at the third bend drank violet until the hum forgot how to be a sermon; Hush Boards listened; rope stems pointed polite. Refugees three became five as a pair of cousins arrived with a bundle and honest eyes; the intake line stamped rope and loops and put soup before explanations in the order of the world.
Clove's leaf slid under the Guild board like a footnote that wanted to be the first line.
You padded corners and taught letters to tell on liars.Soon the Moth will offer a quiet you didn't build.It will be expensive and fast and wrong.Teach people to like slow that arrives.— C.
Rowan Three-Slash watched the Softeners from the west with two lies and a smile that knew it had been tamed. "You're upholstering the world," he called.
"Cheaper than replacing it," Venn replied, pleased.
Two short closed each post; ladles tuk'd bowls into hands; the hour shook hands with itself. The Moth mirror blinked once and looked away to find a hill that claps for lies. The violet sulked in corners and paid rent to felt.
Aiden pressed palm to oak. Ache: blunt. Letters: honest. Corners: soft. He let the chalk behind his eye draw a neat P the way Turnstone taught him and, for the first time in days, he felt like a book you could keep open in the rain.
Elara bumped his shoulder with a gauntlet that had learned to carry boredom like treasure. "Corners padded. Type sworn."
"Brooms heavier than lies," he said.
"Good arithmetic."
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the planks that held both law and soup, "we softened corners, certified letters, and taught a rumor to stir its own bowl. Violet sulked; Moth blinked; roads stayed open. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Corners & Type• Softeners hung at third bend; Hush Boards renewed; rope stems set; wharf footprints painted• Guild of Honest Type founded; Not Our P sheets posted; counterfeit tolls → work days• Rumor defanged (ladle duty); refuge intake (pilot) working (5 arrivals)• Drum-man: day 27/60; no theater; ledger honest• System: Stable Fields steady; Sync + clerk . . call; seer-ache tolerable• Morale: Quiet-proud; soup excellent; roads open 🙂