A Route Across the Flagstones

I set my boots down past the hosta patch to see what lay beyond the garden border. Ahead stretched an uneven flagstone walkway, its gaps packed with tiny pea gravel and tufts of moss. Stepping blindly into those deep crevices seemed like an easy way to twist a knee joint, so I paused to test the stones first. The first flat slab held rock-solid under my weight. Right at the rim of the second stone, glinting among dry pine needles, lay an antique brass key tag marked with the stamped number forty-two. I crouched low, hooked two fingers through its brass loop, and levered it free from the dirt with a satisfying metallic clink.