Went-Round (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Went-Round lay on the far side of the amber afterwards and went round the season, which is a thing you can do once a season has an end on it, and this one had.

A shape at the seep with no warmth. A stone moved by nobody. A shape in Stone-First's place. A light out of the wall. A shape in the squeeze where the rock is, seen by a small one the rock had closed on. And a shape on the line beside Stone-First, with the up-people's light poured round it, asked nothing, answering nothing, gone with no stone moved. Six tellings, and not one of them had a middle, and the people had held every one and dropped none, and had made no rule, and had made no word, and were still here, in the warm, with the amber on the one wall and the blue-green on the other and the shape of the warm whole, all the pieces in it.

Went-Round did not know what the five things were. Nobody did. Went-Round had gone round every one of them and found no other side, and had said so each time, and the warm had heard it, and that was the whole of what Went-Round had to give and it had turned out to be enough, which Went-Round had not expected.

Here is the other thing, and it is the one Went-Round will tell to the ones not born yet, since that is who the season's tellings are for.

For a whole life the people had known where the up-people were and the up-people had not known where the people were, and that was the shape of things. Then a stone each way, and the shape held, only closer. Then this season, and six things that neither people could hear or feel or ask, standing in both their places. And at the end of it, for the length of one knock, the up-people had stood on the line with their light and told the one who could answer from the one who could not, and the people had not been able to, and Stone-First had come down and said so, standing up, in front of everyone, because leaving it out would have been leaving out.

So each people had a thing the other did not. That had always been true. It had just never before been true about the same thing at the same time, on the same line.

Went-Round did not know what the up-people had made of the one not asked. That was not the people's to know. They had not been told, and they had not told, and the stone was where the up-person had set it, a hand from Stone-First's feet, and Stone-First would not move it, and the telling had an end.

Above, the amber was where it always was. Went-Round looked at it anyway.