2026-09-02
User:
Run the pre-David pass exactly as specified in redacted/.claude/skills/pre-david-pass/SKILL.md (read it first, in full, and follow every part) on two freshly drafted scenes: draft/book-01/scenes/103-the-wrong-place.md unpublished and 104-ground-that-doesnt-answer.md unpublished (redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose Read draft/book-01/VOICE.md in full first, then draft/book-01/SCENES.md's act-three binding list (end of file), notes/canon/characters/ for redacted, Peri, Edwin, redacted, minor.md (redacted, the second-years), and scenes 101, 102 for immediate context. Warnings to police: the 'writing it down' motif (both scenes end on the attempts page / the facing page — flag, and propose which one keeps it; count instances); 'because' density (ration; propose reattachments); redacted's register; Peri's turn speech in 104 — is it hers (counts, checks words, no balanced antithesis, no aphorism) or composed? ('It's not absence... redacted sentence: unpublished prose Which is the most expensive kind' — canon phrase from magic-explained; 'a man who has been wrong four times in a row will try the thing he has ruled out'); openings (103 opens on Peri's line: fine? redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted, first person retired: flag); em dashes in the body (none allowed); negative parallelism ('It's not a spot. It's a step' is canon; 'It's not absence. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted running ahead, second-years, redacted 'from somewhere with his hat') is a device. STRICT: never read chapters/, rewrite/, draft/book-01/rejected-act2/, summaries/, or plans/book-01/arc-0*.md, unpublished or their git history. Report numbered findings with the quoted line, the fault, and a proposed replacement. Do not edit any file.
I'll start by reading the skill and the required context.
🔧 Read .claude/skills/pre-david-pass/SKILL.md
🔧 Read draft/book-01/VOICE.md
✅ 257 lines, 16258 chars
✅ 426 lines, 27364 chars
🔧 Bash: cat draft/book-01/scenes/103-the-wrong-place.md unpublished && echo "=====104=====" &&…
✅ 95 lines, 14887 chars
🔧 Bash: tail -80 draft/book-01/SCENES.md && echo "=====101=====" && cat draft/book-01/scenes/101-…
✅ 148 lines, 20332 chars
🔧 Bash: wc -w notes/canon/characters/*.md
✅ 10 lines, 399 chars — 826 notes/canon/characters/appearance.md / 2455 notes/canon/characters/redacted.md / 10613 notes/canon/characters/edwin.md
🔧 Bash: cat notes/canon/characters/redacted.md notes/canon/characters/redacted.md
✅ 41 lines, 2181 chars
🔧 Bash: cat redacted: private
✅ 41 lines, 2181 chars
🔧 Read notes/canon/characters/redacted.md
✅ 543 lines, 35998 chars
🔧 Read notes/canon/characters/peri.md
✅ 975 lines, 64406 chars
🔧 Read notes/canon/characters/peri.md
✅ 356 lines, 22294 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '1,40p' notes/canon/characters/edwin.md && echo "..." && grep -n "Voice — binding"…
✅ 341 lines, 22060 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; grep -rn "true answer to the wrong question" notes/ draft/ | head; echo --…
✅ 262 lines, 15922 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; sed -n '520,600p' notes/canon/world/magic.md; echo ---; sed -n '160,200p'…
✅ 163 lines, 9295 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
✅ 8 lines, 888 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; sed -n '35,70p;205,250p' notes/canon/world/magic.md
✅ 82 lines, 5218 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; grep -n "redacted" -A 25 notes/canon/characters/minor.md | head -80; ech…
✅ 47 lines, 3283 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; python3 tools/overlap_check.py draft/book-01/scenes/103-the-wrong-place.md…
✅ 2 lines, 165 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; for f in draft/book-01/scenes/103-the-wrong-place.md unpublished draft/b…
✅ 12 lines, 393 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; grep -n "—" draft/book-01/scenes/103-the-wrong-place.md unpublished draf…
✅ 11 lines, 763 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; grep -rn "church tower\|the tower" draft/book-01/SCENES.md notes/canon/wor…
✅ 41 lines, 3018 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; grep -n "four" notes/canon/world/silent-soil.md | grep -in "weave\|place\|…
✅ 7 lines, 500 chars
Both files changed on disk while I was reading canon (pump-handle simile, redacted's "I'd not", the cost/clock, redacted's spade). Everything below is against the current text.
The manuring books cannot contain redacted's plots. 103: "twelve volumes covering eight plots over sixty years" … "And then redacted, two springs back" … "Fourteen … Eleven, here … Nine this spring. Twenty-two this summer." Scene 101 unpublished's slip, two scenes back, reads "the manuring series, plots one to eight, all volumes." The scene's whole evidential spine sits in volumes that by canon-on-the-page do not cover plots 9, 11, 14 or 22. Fix one of the two: either 101's slip becomes "the manuring series, all volumes" (and 103 drops "covering eight plots"), or 103 makes the series redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
3. Edwin misquotes the Weave, and Peri had it right. 103: "'The Weave said redacted and redacted.' / 'The Weave said four places.'" Canon (silent-soil.md): Peri's question named four places; the answer was [redacted, and redacted.] As written, his framing correction is simply wrong, and he is the character who does not get facts wrong about a record. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted and redacted. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose He has four years; day-zero days come from redacted's converted registers, not from the manuring books. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Give them to redacted and get me the days."*
redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
6. Two day-counts on two different conventions. 104: Peri, on the 24th, "Six days and five wrong" (elapsed from the 18th); Edwin, on the 25th, "write under it that it took nine days" (inclusive to the 26th, which has not happened — the twelve walks are 26 Fal, scene 105 unpublished, and canon puts "built in nine days" in the note written that day). On the 25th the honest number is eight. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
7. "which was the arrangement" has no antecedent. 104: "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted wanted me to say that", which implies the opposite arrangement. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
9. The charm did not walk. 103: "It walked across the edge on redacted, at stake C." The antecedent of "It" is the charm; the walker is Edwin. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted, at stake C."*
10. Viewpoint knowledge on the buried boards. 103: "two iron plot-boards somebody had buried face down at a corner forty years ago." They dug only the sump; face-down and forty years are numbers nobody on the page has. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
13. 104's opening announces the turn. "Two more wrong directions, and then Peri said the sentence." Part 2's announcing fragment exactly: it tells the reader to be impressed before anything happens, and "the sentence" has no referent. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
15. 103's closing narrator flourish. "and Edwin saw that it was still blank, and knew what it was for, and did not know yet what would go on it." Portent with the content withheld — and it also spends the reveal that 104's ending needs. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
16. 104's last line is the third telling, and it is a bow. "he wrote it down first. E.M.'s book, 24 Fal. Before he built anything." The narration already said he wrote it in his book before he did anything else (line 25); Edwin then dictates that same fact aloud (line 47); the button says it a third time. Verdict: earned in principle, over-told in practice. Keep the button; cut the dictated clause "and that I wrote it in my book before I built anything" from Edwin's speech, and cut "I've written that." / "Write it again on the facing page." — which makes her writing it her own act rather than an order obeyed, which is what the scene is about.
17. The "writing it down" motif is the device a second round of comments would be about. Roughly ten instances in 103 and thirteen in 104, and both scenes currently end on the notebook. Proposal: 104 keeps it — the facing page is its payoff and the whole point of the pair. 103 gives it up: end on redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose They can have it. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted and it's no use to me."*
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Fences, drains, boards, a sump, a barn."* The paragraph above has just listed all five at length. Part 5's recitation-should-be-conversation. → cut the list from his mouth and let redacted, standing in the hole he dug, supply one: *"'It found the sump,' said redacted. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Two repairs: (a) "It's not empty." is a third negative-parallelism clause she wrote herself, on top of the two canon ones — cut it. (b) "Ask the ground a thing living ground always answers" is a generic habitual present about the material world, which peri.md 7f bans for her by name, ever. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
22. The seventh is named on day one, which spends 104's naming beat. 103: her page is headed "The seventh, attempts"; 104 ends on "'Seven,' said Peri. 'It's the seventh. It goes after the six. What do I call it.'" → head the page "Attempts" in 103 and let the number arrive with the thing.
24. The mechanism is explained twice. 103 glosses frost-sense and water-finding in full; 104 glosses them again ("Frost-sense for the shape … Water-finding for the walking"). Ruling on the amount: 104's is the right amount and belongs where the thing is worked; 103's is redundant once 104 exists. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Uninteresting. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose → *"…Uninteresting. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted came from somewhere with his hat."* The witnesses belong (the scene's premise is public work); the cute tag does not — redacted's hat has now been worked in 101 and 102 and it is doing the job of characterisation for a third time. → *"…and redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Clocks and viewpoint: four o'clock to five, an hour, a compost cantrip an hour — now all consistent with canon and with status-not-clocks. Edwin reading the manuring books and Peri reporting the twenty-second are both properly sourced. tools/overlap_check.py reports zero eight-word runs against the old drafts for both scenes.
The device a second round would be about: the notebook. Across 103–104 the page is where every beat lands — the attempts page, the facing page, the dictation, the button — and two consecutive scene endings on writing breach SCENES's one-in-three. Making it work costs one ending: give 103 to redacted's "in writing tonight" and let 104 own the page, or the pair will read as a story about stationery.