The Map That Drew Itself

The assignment was simple: draw a continent.

Professor Vane had given them each a blank sheet of cartographers' vellum, a set of iron-nib pens, and exactly two hours. "A continent of your invention," she said, in the dry tone that suggested invention was the least interesting part of the exercise. "Any size. Any climate. I am looking at your lines, not your imagination."

Davi finished in forty minutes. She drew something roughly diamond-shaped, with a mountain range along the northern spine and river deltas fanning out to the south. She was pleased with the coastline on the eastern edge — convincingly jagged.

Then the river moved.

Not much. A centimeter, perhaps. Just the left-most tributary, curling slightly further south than she had drawn it, as if correcting her.

She stared. She looked around the classroom. Elio was still hunched over his map, tongue pressed between his teeth. Soshi had already filled half her sheet with improbably dense forest.

Davi looked back at her map.

The river had moved again. And now, in the delta, there were markings she had definitely not drawn: three small circles arranged in a triangle, the traditional cartographers' symbol for a settlement.

But the settlement had a name.

In handwriting that was not hers, in ink that was already dry, it read: *Thornwatch — pop. 1,200. Est. next spring.*

Below the name, in even smaller letters: *You'll want to warn them about the flood.*