Juno began with the wrapper.
The fragment lay untouched while she checked the moisture stain on the cloth and asked which marks had been present at recovery. Mira answered until she reached a detail she had not seen herself. Juno left that question blank for the scout who was still resting.
“The cloth isn’t the record,” Mira said.
“It tells me what happened to the record after you found it.”
“I know.”
“Then let me ask.”
Mira moved her hands off the table. Eli sat where Tessa had told him to sit, away from the active equipment, with his own notes in reach. It was ordinary research work he could help with under the inherited stop. There would be no sensing through a talent to give Juno a more compelling answer and no test of the new Load Share because the fragment mentioned collapsing machinery.
Juno compared material first, then signatures, then the wear around the surviving edge. An independent crafter repeated a narrow comparison without being given Mira’s proposed translation. The fragment was old and consistent with related documents they already held. That supported its place among the reservoir records. It did not authenticate every interpretation attached to it.
