For one quiet meal, the mission smelled only of crushed pond greens. 🌿
THE BOOK OF TAD
PAGE 31
WHERE THE FACTS END 🍃
Pip made each traveller cross a short gap, turn and hold steady before allowing anyone near Finley’s chart.
“Out and back without rest,” the Medic said. “Eat. Then one stripe of daylight doing nothing heroic.”
Zale lifted a mouthful of greens. “At last, treatment suited to my talents.”
“Quietly.”
“There it is.”
When Pip released them, Finley unrolled his chart between two roots. “I can add the old bed’s bearing. Beyond that, the page becomes uncertain.”
TurboTAD glanced at the open blank. “How do we stop guesses filling it?”
Glint set down the last of his meal. “Give the edges to me.”
Finley tilted his head.
Glint touched three places along the margin. “Seen. Reported. Supposed. I mark which is which.”
“You are volunteering to correct us for an entire journey,” Zale said.
“I was doing that for free.”
Finley’s laugh faded when Glint did not join it. The clearer trail around the pale shoulder still pulled at him; accepting this work meant being the swimmer who might have to close the most tempting lead.
TurboTAD understood that cost. “Even when you want us to continue?”
“Especially then.”
Finley turned the chart margin towards Glint and offered him the marking reed.
Glint took it slowly. He drew a clean end beneath the evidence they possessed, leaving the blank untouched beyond it.
The field account now belonged to the swimmer least willing to make it exciting.