The summary's opening sentence was shorter than Sera's yesterday. She read it twice for that reason. The received bundle named reference for selecting observation positions, together with the return-conditions enclosure. Which version had actually been used at which site remained unconfirmed.
It was the two hundred and first morning. Yesterday's permitted wording had arrived as a present summary. Sera first asked when Varen could read it with her. When he could sit briefly downstairs with his right leg comfortable, she brought her paper.
She did not first search for her own name. What they had read, and what they had not, was correctly distinguished. A separate line retained Varen's omission of movement conditions from his shortened copy. The new wording did not justify or diminish that omission.
He read and nodded.
“Don't make the sentence about actual implementation any smaller.”
It occupied the same size in the custodian's draft. Sera sent confirmation within that scope. This particular use-mark question ended there; no promise of another chest followed. Varen wanted to sort his memories, but he was not ready to offer a remembered image as a fact belonging to a particular day. What he would submit in his own name remained his choice.
She also checked yesterday's error of passing his private expression to Nume. His answer stood: ask first next time. She did not lengthen the apology until he had to comfort her. There was an actual next order of action for her to change.
The officer gave the summary's storage location. Sera filed the current observation drawing and the old received-bundle summary separately. Dealing with the same sea did not make them the same evidence. Whichever she reopened, she needed to find what had remained unknown.
While Varen drank, she looked toward the window. Morning light stretched across the table. Nobody mistook it for a lightstone signal. One sentence found in old paper had not made the water outside safer.
“I'd like to go back to the low groove now.”
“Which end?”
“The upper edge the two eyes read two days ago. How much of it can be distinguished at today's higher water?”
She could choose a question's size before choosing a line. She asked the land officer for a brief shape check from the existing permitted position. There was no request for a departure or paired scale reading. After examining present work and equipment, the officer offered a short available time.
Her knee did not carry her down new steps to become the reader. An adult observer checked equipment and actual view; Sera would receive the explanation from below. She kept her pencil from drawing ahead into somebody else's eyes.
First came the long branch and horizontal fissure. Water had risen; beneath the vertical mark the darkness ran together. The part identified two days ago as the hollow's upper edge overlapped the water's face and could not now be separately distinguished. The observer read no value for it.
Sera started to draw a waterline across the new diagram. Then she realised that no precise present sea height had been supplied to her. In place of a line, she wrote the tide time and the description. The picture had less in it, but it had acquired a time.
The earlier visible edge and today's indistinct edge belonged to different instants. Nothing filled all the moments between. She did not join them into continuous visibility followed by one sudden disappearance. Waves and light differed too.
The officer confirmed the scope: one land observation had failed to distinguish the same upper edge at high water. That neither invalidated the earlier limited two-position reference nor extended it to other times. It gave them a more exact reason to ask about the time boundaries of that reference.
She was disappointed. Part of her had expected an edge agreed upon two days ago to stay clearly available. As if the sea owed them the object once it had let them match it. No such promise had been made. Today's hold was no fresh betrayal.
She asked what comparison might be useful next. Instead of forcing single-view darkness into the name of a shared end, they could ask at which tide times the same actual edge remained, using descriptions from both positions. Operating conditions and people would need fresh agreement then.
After lunch Nume visited. She told them that higher water had prevented the upper edge from being separately distinguished.
“Does that mean keeping the next boat in the same place longer?”
“No. I want to ask about the span in which it can be seen.”
Span had no number yet. It said nothing about a safe duration for holding a boat. Nume explained that their operating end and the possible observation time had to fit separately. Sera put them on different lines in the next question.
They promised no departure tomorrow. The fleet had existing work; this visit was not a place for accepting the candidate. She understood. She could make her reason for asking clearer without obtaining a promise that a boat would go.
They rested briefly where the sea was visible. Her pencil kept wanting lines, she said. Sometimes writing only figures and times made her feel less like a cartographer.
“If the return time belongs on a map, I'll look at that part first.”
The answer pleased her. One sentence liked by a captain could not set the direction of an entire map, but it could sit beside her question. Today's sheet had more time than line, she said.
“Some days a boat spends longer waiting than moving.”
They let the comparison end there. Sera told Nume she had informed Varen about repeating his private words. They acknowledged it, maintaining that they would ask no further. They did not ask whether Varen had been all right with it, drawing her into passing on his feelings again.
She thanked them for that.
“My hands often go to the wrong knot. Then I have to undo it.”
“I'll borrow that one today.”
“The rope owns the knot originally.”
She laughed more loudly. When Nume asked whether she wanted to hold hands, she said yes, but asked them to come to the side that would spare her knee. They shifted their chair. She took the offered hand and rested it comfortably. Tenderness did not require another painful step.
A greeting sounded near the pier. Sera almost turned, thinking someone had called her. It was meant for somebody else.
Nume asked why she was smiling.
“Not every wave is mine today either.”
That afternoon Miran came to collect belongings. Sera did not begin a long report about high water covering the groove. The resident asked whether there was a new notice concerning home.
“No return date or new transport permission.”
Miran understood. The mark on the eaves photograph still had no known date; they would keep their inquiry at its existing desk. Sera did not volunteer to gather every answer for them. They found the clothes they wanted.
Before leaving, Miran asked what had been established at sea today. She described the single land observation: the edge read two days earlier could not now be separated at higher water.
“So you're writing down when it can be seen too?”
“Yes.”
That made sense, they said. A wet doorstep looked different from an ordinary one. Then they corrected themselves: that was an old experience used as a comparison, not something they had seen at their own house today. Sera smiled and heard it within that extent. Miran went their way.
Beside his boat's support, Tio set a little notice: Table Again Today.
“No date?” Sera asked.
“It might be here tomorrow. Why change it every day?”
“That would cause trouble in a real observation record.”
“This boat carries no people.”
He was keeping his finger's work short and had folded no new vessel. Sera did not leave her diagram spread indefinitely beside his. During meal preparation, the table belonged to other hands.
Before evening, confirmation came that the present summary had been stored. Varen would neither discard his shortened copy nor write the new words over it. The omission would stay as it had been, with the newly confirmed explanation in a separate bundle. Sera accepted that to the extent she could actually see it done today.
Whether he asked about another part of the implementation record would depend on his body and the permitted scope. He was fetching no new original now. She too would hear the present conditions before choosing another sea candidate. Their questions remained; so did their separate ends.
The late record held eleven departures and ten limited round trips. Twenty residents stayed at Roan. Both clear reserve lightstones were unused, the clapper still unattached. No new lane or resident transport authority had appeared. Two additions occupied the day: the closed summary of a recorded reference purpose, and the time when the upper edge could not be distinguished. An old implementation site and the groove's lower end remained different unknowns.
At night she spread the diagram with her knee comfortable. Beside the sight lines two eyes had directed at one edge stood today's time of not seeing it. The earlier lines had not vanished. More conditions now told the next reader when and how to ask about them again.
She wrote a heading: When the Upper Edge Remains, and When We Can Return. One fit alone would not send the boat. No departure was settled. Yet she knew more clearly whom to ask what. Outside, the sea was dark. She imagined no lower end into it. Before lengthening tomorrow's line, she would ask whether two actual people could return within the same actual time.
