Went-Round (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Carried-It-Sleeping told it standing up, in the amber, and the old ones heard it the way the old ones hear a thing the small ones have done, which is kindly, and then not.

Someone said the line was not a thing to play at. Someone said the knock was the up-people's, and the up-people were not here to say whether they minded, and that was the whole point of the manners for a stranger. Someone said a stone is moved for someone, and the small ones had moved a great many for nobody, and the ground had said someone is coming over and over and nobody had come, and that was the sound of the season nobody could tell the middle of, and the small ones had made it into a game. Several people made the small sound at that, and Went-Round heard it and did not mind it.

Then Went-Round went round it.

"Show me," said Went-Round, to the small ones. "Here. In front of everyone."

They made a line across the open floor out of the stones that are always lying about the warm, and one stood on it, and the rest bunched below, and the warm went still to watch, the way it goes still for a telling.

A hand went to a stone. Went-Round watched the hand. It was a small hand, and it did the thing a hand does when it has moved a great many stones: it felt for the place where the stone would come away in one piece, and found it, and moved it, once, and let go. The ground said someone is coming. The small one stepped back. The one on the line answered, well, and then said who had knocked, and was wrong, and was pleased to be wrong, and stayed on the line.

Then the smallest knocked.

The smallest put a hand on a stone and did not move it. The hand stayed there. The small ones went still. The whole warm went still, without meaning to, the way you go still when a telling stops just before the part you are waiting for, and the smallest kept the hand on the stone and let everyone wait, for as long as it takes to say a name, and then for longer than that, until one of the old ones made the small sound by mistake, in the middle of nothing, which the old ones do not do. Then the smallest moved it. Once. So well that the ground said it the way it says it for Stone-First.

The one on the line answered at once, and said the smallest before the sound had finished, and was right, and everyone knew why.