Stone-First (Pandoid, keeper of the margin)

The up-person stood, and took one step back, toward the crack. Away from the stone. Leaving the place.

And then said a thing.

It went up at the end. It was said to Stone-First, not to the dark — the light was low and the face was turned and there was nobody else on the silt to say it to — and Stone-First heard it and did not know what it was, and this telling does not say, because the one who was there does not know, and a telling that says more than the one who was there knew is not a telling.

The up-person waited. With the whole body still. The way the small one had waited on the line, the way you wait for a hand to be filled.

Stone-First had been asked. Whatever the words were. Stone-First had stood on the line for longer than the small ones' whole tellings so as to be there on the time when this happened, and it was happening, and there is only one thing the Told do when a stone has been moved for them, and it is not to speak, because a stone is not answered with a word.

Stone-First bent, and put a hand on a rock at the edge of the silt, a good one, and moved it.

The ground spoke. The up-person heard it. Stone-First saw them hear it: the whole body went still in a new way, the way a small one goes still when a sound they did not know turns out to mean something. They stood like that for as long as it takes to say a name.

Then they went back through the crack, slowly, with the light held low, not scraping more than they had to, and up.

Stone-First stood on the line with two stones on it, one on each side of the place where the feet had stopped, and did not go after them, and did not go down, and stayed, for a while, in the light that never changes, so that the telling would have an end.