Went-Round (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Stone-First told it standing up, in the warm, and said the light went round it three times, and said nothing else three times, and the warm did not make the small sound, and Went-Round had expected that and went round it anyway.

"It was beside you," said Went-Round.

"On the line. An arm's length."

"Facing the squeeze."

"The way I face it."

"And it moved no stone, and it did not answer theirs, and they put the stone down by your feet and not by its."

"Yes."

"Then they asked you," said Went-Round, "and they did not ask it. They had two to ask and they chose. Think about that. We have been saying since the seep that we have no word for a thing that is neither a stranger nor a person. They had a thing to do with it, and they did it: they did not ask it. That is the nearest anyone below the roof has come to a word. The one not asked."

The warm thought about that. Went-Round felt it think.

"That is not a word," said Stone-First.

"No. And I am not making one. A word you make from one telling is a word you go round later; that is your rule and I have kept it all season." Went-Round let the warm settle. "But it is a thing to call it by, until there is a word or there is not. They did it to it, and we saw them do it, and it is theirs and we can say it."

The smallest, in the middle, who had the first telling and had been quiet since the light in the warm, said: "Was it the same one? As the seep?"

"Nobody was at the seep but you," said Stone-First, "and nobody was on the line but me, and neither of us can say. You know that. You said it first."

The smallest knew it, and did not mind, which Went-Round noticed. The small ones had learned, this season, to hold a telling with no middle and not drop it. They had learned it faster than the old ones. Went-Round put that aside to think about on a time when nothing happened.