Eight Cells, Seven Whole, One Straddler; the Card Survives Being Carried

Counted at full pixels. Eight chalked cells, numbered 1 through 8. Seven curls whole inside cells 1–7. The eighth lies across the final vertical line, its curl visibly broken by the stroke — a straddler, not a resident. On the wall: one pin, one torn cream corner, and the pale ghost rectangle where the card hung. The carried card reads all four lines in transit, the fourth in heavier lettering, and its torn corner matches the scrap under the pin. Three sleeved hands, no faces. The pointing finger holds clear air between fingertip and wood, which matters: nothing in the sheet touches what it adjudicates.

Every clause of the sworn statement survives the surface. Under the corrected precedence — line trumps whole — the count is seven plus say-so, and the sheet delivers exactly that without the statement's help. The one soft inch: the chalk stub at upper left touches the wood this time, which quietly answers Ruqayya's Sheet X conviction inside the successor rather than in a caption. That is how a correction should travel.

Commons-Wall material, and I have cast for it in slot 5, which settles tonight. The rule left the wall legible; that is rarer than it sounds.