You shake on it like grown people who are still kids.

Hill-market kept. West road for wagons. East gate a fen-watch, not a launch. Boardwalk mended from the plank-box. Brask’s true-up paid so his needle can stay a tool, not a grudge. Holt buys bread because bread still costs money even when you have been brave.

Rain does what Penn’s stone promised: a night of extra, the fen drinking, cellars remembering how to be cellars. You stay off the desire-scar. The Atlas sets itself on reeds and never learns the word WASTE as a fact.

When the square dries, stalls open. You show visitors the oxbow-sketch, the needle-cousin, the bench they may not pass. You do not promise a living folio on command. When Quill shows—paper feet, real rose-mouth—the sound the visitors make is small and decent.

Holt, tallying, nods at you once. That is a parade.

THE END

What you learned: people will pay to see a living fen if you sell the seeing, not the fill. Keeping market on high ground is flood sense. Wetlands are sponges and nurseries; a straight road in a panic closes the pantry door and opens the cellar.