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

The small ones played it for the rest of the telling, in the warm, in front of everyone, which was allowed now, and the old ones watched, and one or two of the old ones, when they thought nobody was looking, put a hand to a stone and moved it once, to see whether the hand still knew.

Carried-It-Sleeping lay in the middle, with all the pieces back in the shape, and listened to the ground say someone is coming more times in one telling than it had said it in the whole of the smallest's life, and nobody came, and that was the game.

Nobody had made a rule, in either direction, because a rule you make from one telling is a rule you go round later. The line at the top of the margin was still Stone-First's, and the four stones on it were still not anybody's to move, and the small ones knew that, and had not asked, and Carried-It-Sleeping was ready for the time they did.

The smallest knocked again. The hand on the stone, and the waiting, and the warm going still for it, old ones and all, longer each time, because the smallest had found out that the waiting was the best part and that it could be made longer. And the small ones below the line, who were not supposed to know who it was, said it anyway, every time, before the stone moved.

The one who keeps a hand on it.

They said it the way you say a thing about someone. Not a name. Carried-It-Sleeping had heard a thing go by twice and three times until it was worn smooth, once, lying in the warm, and knew the sound, and this was not it yet. The small ones said it. The old ones did not. It had not gone round the warm.

Carried-It-Sleeping let it go by, and did not say it, and did not tell anyone not to.

The stone moved. The ground said someone is coming. Nobody came.