Four Tongues of the Loamrun Run Clear for the First Time Since Thaw

By Selka Marrow, Chief Correspondent

Four days the silt held, and on the fourth day it dropped. Surveyors at the Loamrun's mouth report the river running clear from bank to bank for the first time since the year turned, and clear water means four things worth counting: four fords now passable on foot, four fish-runs already thickening with spawn, four lineage-parties readied at the bank since dawn, and four separate accounts, none disagreeing, of the Crucible's pillar burning a shade brighter than usual against the morning cloud.

The clearing was expected by no one in particular and welcomed by everyone at once. Elders of the settling houses walked the ford twice before trusting it, which this correspondent counts as sensible; a door not opened twice is a door not known. Four survey stakes now mark the safe crossing, driven deep, painted white, and readers travelling toward the eastern settlements this sweep are advised to look for them.

What caused four seasons of silt to drop in a single night, the surveyors will not say, and the temple has not yet been asked. The Lighthouse will watch the ford, and count again in four days.

The Lighthouse№ 1 · Verdant, Year 9 · dispatches

The Expedition Logs

Fowrydras Census-Takers Walk the Forest Road Once More

By Bramm Odyl, Keeper of the Expedition Ledger

The ledger notes that a party departed Fowrydras on the nineteenth, bound along the forest road with counting-tablets and no stated return date. Their charge, as given to the ledger by the temple steward, is a plain census of the outlying households between the city and the tree-line — a task the almanac favors this house of the Whale, being a season for gathering-in rather than venturing-out.

The ledger records eleven walkers, two wagons, and one dog of unrecorded lineage. It does not record why the dog was permitted. The ledger does not opine.