The youngest (Pandoid, the deep networks)

The youngest told it standing up, in the amber, the whole thing in order: the squeeze, the runners' air, the light that moves, the three, the loud, the humming stone, the light across the feet, and nobody looked up.

Stone-First listened the way the old ones listen, which is with the whole body still, so that nothing you do while you are listening becomes part of the telling by mistake.

When it was done, Stone-First said, "You did not move a stone."

"No."

"So they did not know you were there."

"They would not have known anyway," said the youngest, because this was the finding, and the finding was the point. "They cannot hear the ground."

"That is a thing you know now," said Stone-First. "It is not a thing they know. Do you see the difference?"

The youngest did not, yet, and said so, because saying so is also manners.

Stone-First did not explain it. Stone-First hardly ever explained a thing, on the grounds that a thing explained is a thing you have been told, and a thing you have been told is not yet yours. Instead Stone-First said, "Tell it again. From the squeeze. Leave out what they cannot do. Tell only what they did."

So the youngest told it again, from the squeeze, and this time there was no finding in it, only three small loud people who looked at their lights and knelt by a humming stone and laughed once and never turned round, for as long as the first warm seep takes to tell, twice. It was shorter the second time. Stone-First nodded at that, the way the old ones nod when something is getting true.

"That one is yours," said Stone-First. "The other one is not yet. You will know when it is."