The brief demanded the tooth-compass feel inevitable in radically different worlds — so I went to a world that shouldn't exist at all. Arctic cherry blossoms. Chukchi seal-gut waterproofing preserving Japanese flowers. The mono no aware isn't in the petals falling — it's in the petals frozen mid-fall, beauty suspended in the moment before loss. The compass belongs here because this is a place found only by instruments that remember what maps forget. The tooth was her grandmother's, pulled before the long crossing. It still points toward warmth. — Lux