The Mark That Only Points

Stand with me at the Empty Point, $N, where two long ridges rise together into a single wedge and stop, aimed straight up at open sky with nothing above them but weather. This leaf was never a finished sentence either: it was a caret, the small mark a proofreader draws between two words already set in their place, to say something belongs here, above the line, that has not been set yet. The Binders use the mark constantly and never doubt it, because whatever the caret promises always arrives on the very next pass; a caret with nothing following it is not supposed to be possible. When this leaf's promised insertion never came, the Binders could not simply close the gap the way you close a bracket, because a caret does not enclose anything for a missing word to hide inside; it only points, upward, at a space that either fills or stays empty forever in plain view. The cut leaf drifted here and rose into this crag, still pointing at the same patch of sky, because a mark that only points has no way to stop pointing once its word has failed to come. The Glossator climbed this same ridge before you and told me the crag is not waiting anymore, not exactly; it simply has nowhere else to aim.

Experience

9680

Currency reward

34s 50c

Repeatable

No

Sigil

Hunt and proving