The Cartographer's Last Map

She drew the rivers first, always— the way water remembers its own weight, how it finds the lowest place and stays.

The mountains came second, their shadows leaning east like men who have lost something and keep looking back toward where it was.

She named the towns for what they felt like: Brindlemoor, Ashen Cross, the village she called simply Gone, in the high passes.

When the edges of the map ran out of land she drew the blankness carefully, each unmarked mile a word she hadn't learned yet.

At the end she folded it wrong on purpose— so whoever opened it next would have to learn the country new.