The page is not a tablecloth. It is a back that remembers.

Your sleeve finds wet ink that was becoming reed. Your smear finds a line that wants to be Brask’s. The Atlas does not wait to be corrected by a kid in a hurry. It sheds a flake, snow-quiet, onto the rose. The flake is a wren that will not be.

Tansy makes a sound like a hinge. Keeper Sable, if Sable is near, does not shout. Shouting is for fires, not for shame.

Quill is suddenly at the edge of possible, paper feet whispering. “Wait. The mouth is the unknown. Don’t feed it a blank.”

The book’s next breath is a shiver. You can freeze and let Quill redraw from what you actually saw in the fen—boardwalk, pools, hide—while you keep your sleeve to yourself.

Or you can decide that maps are won by finishing, and go push Brask’s stakes farther into the peat so the world matches the smear.