Carried-It-Sleeping (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Nobody could tell it.

That was the problem, and here it is, kept for the end as promised. A telling is from the one who was there to the one who was not, until the one who was not can tell it too. That is the whole of what a telling is. Everyone had been there. There was nobody in the warm who had not seen it. So there was nobody to tell it to, and a thing nobody can be told is not a telling, it is just a thing that happened, and the people did not have a way to hold one of those.

The small ones did not care. The small ones were pleased with it, in the way small ones are pleased with a thing that happened to everyone at once. The smallest, who had been quiet since the seep, was not quiet.

"It was the same one," said the smallest. "The same as at the seep. The same gap. The same size." And then, going round it, because the smallest had been listening to Went-Round: "No. It was the same, but it had light in it."

"Was it kind?" said one of the others.

Carried-It-Sleeping did not know how to answer that, and did not have to, because Stone-First did.

"It did nothing," said Stone-First, from the edge of the amber, where Stone-First had been standing with the whole body still since coming down. "Nothing is not kind. Nothing is not unkind. Do not give it a thing it did not do."

The warm heard that.

"You were all wary of the dark one," Stone-First said. "At the seep. You were wary of the stone that nobody moved, and of the thing in my place. And you were not wary of this one, because it was light. I saw you not be. And the dark one did nothing, and the stone did nothing, and the thing in my place did nothing, and this did nothing. They have all done the same thing. You have done four different things about it. Think about that. I am not going to make a rule tonight, and I am not going to let you make one either, in either direction."

The warm thought about it. Carried-It-Sleeping could feel it think, and could feel that the warm did not altogether believe Stone-First, because the light had been beautiful and the small ones had looked up at it, and you cannot tell a people they did not feel a thing they felt.

"Then who tells it?" said the smallest. "If we were all there."

"The ones who are not born yet," said Went-Round, from the ring, where Went-Round was still standing. "They were not there. You tell it to them. It is the first thing we have ever had to tell down before anyone needed telling."