Stone-First-Who-Waited (Pandoid, keeper of the margin)

Here is how it was told, because the how is the only part of it that is this telling's.

A telling is told standing up. Stone-First had said that in the warm, and meant it, and it is true. On the line, with a hand on a rock at the edge of the silt, you cannot stand all the way up, and Stone-First did not go round that, because Stone-First does not go round things. Stone-First stayed bent to the rock, with the hand on it, and told it from there, which is not how a telling is told and is how the line let it be told. Stone-First would say so afterwards, in the warm, plainly, so that nobody made a rule of it.

What was told was the telling of the up-people's first stone. The loud that came on instead of settling. The one light, low. The small one out of the crack, and the looking, and the wanting to go back with every part of the body that was not the eyes, and the not going. The stone carried to the front and knelt with and set down late, and theirs. The step back. The sound that went up at the end, and what it was, which Stone-First did not know and said so, because saying so is also manners. The rock at the edge of the silt. The going. All of it, in order, at the pace it goes, leaving nothing out, because there is nothing in it that is a reason and nothing you can take out without making a different telling about less.

It is not set down again here. Everyone below the roof has heard it. The small ones play it. It was told this time to the one it was about, from an arm's length, and that is where it is now, and the telling of a telling does not take it back by telling it again.

The up-person stood for the whole of it.

Stone-First watched that while telling, the way you watch a small one while telling, not to see whether it is arriving but to see that they are there. The light stayed low, on Stone-First's hand and the rock under it, and did not lift. The small hard thing on the chest stayed pointed where the light pointed. The breath came back from the squeeze and went ordinary. And the up-person stood with the whole body still, which Stone-First had done on the line for a whole life and had never once seen an up-person do, and was seeing now, from the other side of it.

Whether they understood a word of it, Stone-First did not know, and did not look to see. Went-Round had said it in the warm, a season ago, and it had been true then about small ones and was true now about this: nobody waits until you understand to begin. You are told, and then you go on being told, and the understanding comes along afterwards, for as many tellings as it takes. Stone-First told it the way you tell a small one the first warm seep. All of it, and no slower for the not knowing.

Then it was done.

You know the end of a telling the way you know the end of a passage. Stone-First knew it, and the up-person went still in a different way, the way a small one goes still when the voice stops and the stone has not yet moved and they do not know yet that those are the same thing.

Stone-First moved the rock. A good one. Once.

The up-person heard it, and stood for as long as it takes to say a name, and went. Back through the crack, slowly, not scraping more than they had to, and the light went with them, and the silt was in the light that never changes again.

Stone-First took the hand off the rock. It came off. Stone-First had not been sure it would, and it did, easily, and the rock was only a rock again, which is what a rock is for.