The Survey

They went in together on a morning when the air tasted like iron, which Vera said meant the Margin was in an attentive mood.

Senna had learned, in three days of conversation with Vera, that the Margin had moods the way weather had moods — not feelings exactly, but tendencies, pressures, inclinations. When it was attentive it noticed your intentions. When it was generous it made offers. When it was still it was doing something she hadn't yet been able to identify.

Today it was attentive.

"Draw what you observe," Vera said. "Not what you expect. The instinct you have — the gift — it will try to complete things before you've seen them. Resist that. Make it show you."

Senna kept her pen capped. She noted landmarks in pencil first, which felt like mapping with one hand tied behind her back. But the pencil lines stayed true. When she uncapped the pen to go over them, the ink followed without amplifying.

The village had twelve houses. She counted. She'd assumed more — the accounts from people who'd been inside always described it as larger than it turned out to be. Grief made spaces feel expansive.

The figures moved between the houses in their usual half-present way. She looked at them with the peripheral discipline Vera had reinforced: not direct, not avoidant. Observed.

Two of them paused and looked at her.

That was new. The figures she'd seen before had never looked directly at anything. They moved like furniture that had learned to walk.

These two were still. One raised a hand.

"They can see us," Senna said.

"They can always see the keeper." Vera didn't look at them. "They don't usually acknowledge it. The ones who can usually have more... continuity. More coherence. They've been here longer than the others."

Senna looked at them directly — broke her own rule.

One of them had her nose. The other was wearing Luca's coat.

Not Luca. She could see that immediately — wrong height, wrong posture, the coat too large for the shape wearing it. But it was his coat, the green one he'd bought in the market at Drenfall, with the frayed left cuff he'd never repaired.

"That coat is Luca's," she said.

"Yes," Vera said. "The Margin collects things."

"He left with his satchel. He left with everything."

"Things leave and their impressions stay." Vera touched her arm. "Don't engage. We have a survey to finish."

They finished the survey.

When Senna reviewed her map that evening, she found she had drawn, in the upper corner, in her own hand:

There are things here older than you.

She had not written that.

The ink was still wet.