At the Marked Point

YY was two-thirds through the west mapping run when the calls started. The direction was clear before the sound fully resolved — the migration line, east of the shade corridor.

The corridor midpoint was already on the map. YY went there.

The stag arrived from the west and slowed at the marked waypoint — the same pause-grade clearing where the seedlings clustered, the same convergence the migration column had used. It browsed for a time. A branch gave. Seeds fell in a small cluster onto the ground — narrow leaf-scar, nothing in the west range, nothing in the mapped territory at all.

YY waited until the stag moved on, then collected them.

The waypoint had been marked for drainage, and then for the migration column, and then for the seedlings. Now a creature from outside the known map had paused there for the same reason everything else had. The seeds were from wherever it had come from. The hazelnut was still in the fork. These were different — not evidence of range, evidence of something past the current edge of what was known.