While beating dust out of Fern's threadbare carpet on the boardwalk, Viv discusses Heart's Blade with Fern, admitting she finished it and was won over by the protagonists' bond, particularly during the Red Rule House sequence. Viv reluctantly pays Fern the four five-bit pieces from their wager, blushing as she confesses the book made her believe a meaningful kind of love might be possible.

The two clean the shop together, with Potroast the gryphet underfoot. Viv suggests Fern move the unshelved 'floor books' and the hated sea charts into the back room to make the storefront less claustrophobic. Fern resists at first, then becomes upset with herself, wondering if she's been avoiding the work and needed a 'chaperone' to act. Viv reframes it: maybe Fern just needed someone back-to-back with her, like the characters in the novel.

After tidying, the shop feels airier. A sleepless gnome sailor wanders in not for charts but for a distraction; Viv immediately recommends Ten Links in the Chain, and he buys it. Encouraged, Fern proposes Viv spend her days at the shop in exchange for borrowing books like a library, with Fern recommending titles. Viv accepts but counters with her own proposal: rather than just reading, she wants to help Fern actively turn the failing shop around. Her one condition is that they find somewhere to sit.