Panel 1 — At the window
Lower Cinder Basin, June 29, 2230, late afternoon on the second day of the six-day smell watch. An unnamed resident stirs a pot at home and speaks through the open ground-floor kitchen window to an unnamed watch collector. The resident reports an odor, not a diagnosis or an identified source.
RESIDENT: It came through this window.
COLLECTOR: Bring your report to the slate.
Panel 2 — A portable witness
The collector gestures along the lane toward the complaint slate. The resident looks back at the pot, still holding the ladle. No new prohibition on written reports is established; this collector has suggested an inconvenient way to submit one.
COLLECTOR: Can you come when it happens?
RESIDENT: Can the pot?
Panel 3 — A stationary instrument
The collector checks one existing treated-paper air clock outside near the window. The resident points to it. Its appearance supplies no new reading or source finding.
COLLECTOR: We collect their readings.
RESIDENT: They get to stay put.
Panel 4 — The same round
The collector agrees to pick up a written note at this window on the instrument round. The resident begins writing the observed time, location and smell on a plain scrap beside the cooking pot. The illustration's paper is blank; dialogue states its purpose.
COLLECTOR: Write when, where and what you smell. I'll collect it on my round.
RESIDENT: A home-working nose.
Panel 5 — One handoff
Later that afternoon, the collector takes the completed note at the same window. The resident remains by the pot. This is one actual collected report, not a count of new complainants or a confirmed recurrence of yesterday's odor event.
COLLECTOR: This doesn't prove the source.
RESIDENT: I didn't put a name on the smell.
Panel 6 — Supper
The collector attaches the resident's note beside the existing complaint slate, separately from the air-clock reading. No source verdict is added. The note is a resident observation, not an instrument result. The resident is no longer in frame and has not had to leave the cooking to submit it.
COLLECTOR: One report collected.
CAPTION: Supper kept its witness.