Three triangles on the forearm

The third beacon went dark on Tuesday, the one nearest the old quarry on Lantern Ridge, and I have spent four days walking the rim with a torque key and a flask of cold tea trying to coax it back. You will say I should have left it. You always said that about the drones too. But the three triangles on the ridge are how the transit crews find the cut through the ash fields, and Mam's old survey maps still list them as the only true points on the whole plateau.

The fault was a cracked prism, nothing grander. I swapped it for a spare from the crate Teodor left in the hut, the one stamped with his initials and a sailing ship he never explained. When the beam came up it threw a pale line across the ash, straight to the second triangle and on to the third, and for a minute the whole ridge looked like a sum that had finally come out right.

I stood there a long time. Nobody was watching except the wind, and the wind does not care about triangles. But I thought about how Mam drew them in the margin of every letter she sent, three outlines like a child's notion of a mountain, and how she said a thing made of three lines can never fall down because each line holds up the other two.

I am coming home on the Thursday shuttle. Save me the end of the bread, and tell Owen the cut is open.

Love, Nell