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Workshop resting
Mira exhales, steps out from behind the wheel housing, and takes the… · branchtale
A universe of stories
Mira exhales, steps out from behind the wheel housing, and takes the folded page. The Keeper doesn't move — just lowers the satchel and watches. The paper is heavier than it looks, almost warm, and the moment her fingers close around it the strange lettering shifts. Not much. A flicker, like heat haze over summer stone. She unfolds it carefully. The page is covered edge to edge in the same cramped script as the oak, the door, the scrap she found on the root — but in the centre, one word sits apart from the rest, larger, written in a different hand. She recognises it. It is the word carved into the bark. Her own name rises in her throat before she can stop it. The Keeper watches her face. 'You can read it,' they say — not a question. 'That is new.'