“The house is clean.”
“The gym was answered.”
“The uniform held true.”
“The line holds true.”
Mounted in solid teak on the cedar wall of the pavilion behind our rocking chairs...
Beneath a clean pane of museum-grade non-reflective glass...
Was the Four-Inch Solid-Titanium Transponder Key.
Beside it, resting inside a velvet-lined rosewood shadowbox, was the broken gold nib of Chief Justice Arthur Vance’s Montblanc fountain pen.
And beside the pen, preserved in a miniature bronze frame...
Was that single, recovered sixteen-ounce leather kickboxing glove Blake Haron had thrown, stamped VOYD AB INITIO // COVENANT REDEEMED, resting alongside Arthur Mercer Senior's original handwritten 1944 sovereign survey patent:
THE MERCER HOMESTEAD // PARCEL 10
ACREAGE: 40 MILES OF SUBTERRANEAN BEDROCK
STATUS: SOVEREIGN & UN-ENCUMBERED
HELD IN TRUST FOR THE LINEAL HEIRS // AD INFINITUM
INSCRIPTION: BUILT PLUMB. HELD TRUE.
BALANCE DUE: ZERO.
And resting on a pedestal of hand-carved Wisconsin greenstone beside the garden gate...
Polished until the scarred leather and oil-rubbed steel eyelets gleamed beneath the morning sun...
