Joyous Hunting

The Inspector brings his stamp down on the final page with a dull, official thunk. The petition is complete now, clean enough to file and hard enough to ignore at a cost.

The Clerk flips through the secondary ordinances too fast, papers whispering in her shaking hands. Hunter stands firm at the desk, ink dark on his cuff, while Joy leans in to watch the panic in the Clerk's fingers.

Elias lets out a short breath beside the doorway, and Mrs. Gable's shoulders loosen at once. The Clerk still searches the stack, but the room has already turned against her loopholes.

For the first time, the office is not deciding the vendors' place, only recording it. Hunter can see the shift plainly, the challenge has landed, and the market's autonomy is now on paper.

Hunter slides the validated petition flat across the desk, planting it where the Clerk cannot pretend it is misplaced. The paper stops with a soft scrape, and the ink on his cuff flashes as proof of who brought it here.

She takes the page with both hands this time, thumb still marked by the smear she made earlier, and sets it into the proper tray instead of the reject stack.

That lands harder than the stamp. The Organizer straightens near the wall, watching the Clerk write the routing note, and Mrs. Gable lets the flowers in her hand dip with relief.

The Clerk closes the folder and pushes it toward the outgoing stack, the implementation notice already clipped to the front. Hunter has it filed, and the office must answer it now.