pre-caveman wip

chapters/book2/ch01-final.md

@@ -100,9 +100,9 @@ I was starting to suspect this was the pattern that would be established.
 
 * * *
 
-The courtyard behind the chandler's shop was empty when I arrived at fourth bell — Leon was late, which meant Leon was exactly on time and would claim otherwise. The flagstones held the cold of the season, scorch marks from months of daily training darkening the pale stone like a record of improvement written in carbon.
+Fourth bell. The flagstones held the cold of the season, scorch marks from months of daily training darkening the pale stone like a record of improvement written in carbon. Leon was late — which meant Leon was exactly on time and would claim otherwise.
 
-I did warm-up forms while I waited. Fire-weave through the ring, low intensity — the focusing matrix channelling what would have been scattered heat into a directed thread. Twelve seconds was the current ceiling for integrated casting, meaning fire and movement and targeting operating as a single system rather than three processes competing for attention. Thirteen was the goal. Thirteen had been the goal for two weeks. That ceiling is a bastard.
+I did warm-up forms while I waited. Fire-weave through the ring, low intensity — the focusing matrix channelling what would have been scattered heat into a directed thread. Twelve and a half seconds was the current ceiling for integrated casting, meaning fire and movement and targeting operating as a single system rather than three processes competing for attention. Thirteen was the goal. Thirteen had been the goal for two weeks. That ceiling is a bastard.
 
 Leon appeared from the alley, coat collar turned up against the cold, hands already producing small flickers of heat that he extinguished and reignited in a rhythm that was half warm-up and half fidget.
 
@@ -146,11 +146,11 @@ Normal. Comfortable. Two people riffing the way people riffed when the shared la
 
 The light was fading by the time we finished. Winter afternoons in Drenwick surrendered early, the grey sky compressing toward a horizon that was already dark by fifth bell. Leon put his coat back on, brushed soot from the collar, and made his standard departure. A nod, a half-wave, gone — an hour of his Godsday spent standing in the cold getting scorched, and he'd call it leisure.
 
-"Same time tomorrow," he said.
+"Sixth bell tomorrow," he said.
 
-"Fourth bell."
+"Sixth bell."
 
-"Fourth bell. No Godsday rules."
+"Weekday hours. Try not to be late."
 
 I watched him go. Filed the training data the way I always did — reserve cost, technique assessment, slow progress measured in half-seconds and corrections that shouldn't have been necessary if I hadn't let the skills atrophy. The noise processed it. The noise processed everything.