Went-Round (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Went-Round went to the seep.

It is what Went-Round does. Went-Round is called that for going round a thing rather than through it, a blocked passage, a hard thought, and a thing you have only been told is a thing you go round until you have seen it from another side. Went-Round moved a stone at the top of the last passage, and the ground said someone is coming, and nobody answered, because nobody was there.

The seep was the seep. The warmth came up out of the ground where it always has. The amber was thick and still. There was no gap in anything.

Went-Round stood where the smallest said the shape had stood, and felt the warm have its ordinary shape, with Went-Round as a piece of it, and felt nothing else. Went-Round looked at the ground. Nothing had been moved. Went-Round knows what moved ground looks like, which is why Went-Round looked, and it looked like ground that nobody had stood on since before the telling.

So the smallest had seen a thing, and the thing had left no stone and no mark and no warmth, and the only one who had been there was the smallest.

Went-Round thought about that on the way back up, going round it.

The people have two rules for something at the seep. A stranger is announced by the ground, and you leave the place to them until they ask. A person asks. Those are the rules. They have never needed a third one, because nothing has ever been in a place that was not a stranger and not a person.

The thing had not been announced. So it was not a stranger. The thing had not asked. So it was not a person. Went-Round went round that from every side there was, and it had no other side.

But the people did have a word. They had had it since the up-people's light first came down the long passage and swung, and something went across the ground ahead of it, dark, and moving, and moving no stone, and the old ones went back from it before they went back from the light. The small ones learned the word that season. A shadow. A thing that moves, and moves no stone.

Went-Round had not thought, until now, that a shadow could stand still.