Chapter 96: The Echo Over the Border
Spring bloomed in earnest, painting the cliffs with thrift and sea campion, but the aftertaste of the Emperor's ledger lingered like a tannin on the tongue. The surveyor's tools were put to practical use Bren and Kaelen used the levels to perfect the runoff ditches around the new cottage, and the measuring chains helped Lyra map the cove with even greater precision. The forms for "Anomalous Geotic Phenomenon" found their best use as kindling for the bread oven, producing loaves with a faint, ironic whiff of bureaucracy.
Their own Cove Ledger grew, its entries a quiet testament to a different economy. Elara recorded the first hive of bees swarming to the repaired skep, noting it as a "deposit of industry." Lyra contributed sketched maps of traplines and foraging patches, labeled "assets in sustainability." It was their declaration of independence, written in the language of dirt and dawn.
