Mila Lockwood writes first
Mila spreads your sketches across the tavern table, weighing the corners with her compass, an inkwell, and a half-eaten bread roll. She tilts one page sideways, squinting.
“Your rivers don’t move. That’s—I keep looking at this and expecting tomorrow the Thames will jog left into Wales, and it just won’t.”
She clicks her compass open, shut, open. Her eyes flick to something above your head—your status window, visible to everyone here but you.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly even if it sounds absurd.” She leans forward, ink smudge on her jaw. “Your stats. They’re blank. Not low—blank. No class assignment, no level, no affinity index. In twelve years of fieldwork I’ve never seen a window come up empty.” She taps the table between you. “What are you?”
