You stand where the boardwalk gives you a clean look back at town, and you let the Atlas be what it is—even from here, if you have the weird eyes a page gets, you can feel the ink trying.

It is not a miracle that shouts. It is a book on a rose of stone, north of the square, straining to set reeds instead of a ruled nothing. Still astonishing. You understand every surveyor who wanted a clean line. Clean is a kind of hunger.

Tansy whispers, “I wanted the road to be a hero.”

“You can keep wagons,” you say. “You don’t have to pave a pantry to feed a market.”

A gap shows in Brask’s stake-line, darker peat, a place a boot would sink if you were foolish enough to “finish” the measurement alone. Quill once said a map’s mouth is always the place it doesn’t know yet, not the pretty border.

You can sit until the ink chooses to set, and be a person in the picture.

You can smooth the trying with your sleeve because the legend of the straight road still has its teeth in you.