The Joint With Nothing to Join

Sit, $N, and let me splice this story for you. Before the Book was bound, one page held a single compound word, the kind built from two roots joined by a mark just like this bar: a name for something that needed both halves to mean anything at all. The author could never decide which two words belonged on either end of the joint, so the page went to the Binders with the mark alone and no words at all. They would not print a hyphen joining nothing, so they cut it loose, and the Ink Tide carried it here, where it lies flat and quiet, still waiting for its two halves. I have spent my whole life joining whatever I can find instead, $N, because an empty joint is a hard thing to look at all day. The Glossator understood that better than I expected a stranger to; they left their own splice at the Near Ferrule before they went looking for the word this bar was missing.

Experience

21000

Currency reward

1g 62s 0c

Repeatable

No

Sigil

Star and rift