Mill yard. Late light. Grain dust. Elves at the edge because that is their rule: they will stand where the fern begins, not where the gossip does.

You lay out what this day actually put in your hands. It is not a prophecy. It is a table of true pieces—only the pieces you have.

A sample “horn,” if you have seen it, is a narwhal tusk; if you have not, you can still name the kind of cheat: sea-tooth, market-stitch, not Elderwood. Fence-tracks that pile and turn. A chewed seedling. A cup-story about shade and mud. White threads, or the dusty absence of them. A white hart—one antler, pale vine, astonishing, not a horse. You do not pretend to have seen everything.

Elder Briar stands at the fern-edge, the old elf who remembers the deer-path road. “We are neighbors. Neighbors do not harvest each other’s last keystone.”

Master Cole’s jaw works. Old Nan Reed holds up fingers for anyone still collecting stories.

Peddler Voss, if he is here, smiles with his mouth and not his prices.

You can keep the talk on a wildlife gate, no hunt, dawn-watch coin later—practical as a hinge.

Or the yard can tangle in fear, silver, and “what if we’re wrong,” and dusk will still come, and the corridor will still need bodies on it.