You plant.

Not a forest. A rectangle. Acorns the elves saved—or acorns Mira pinched from the mill’s autumn sack, which the hollow will still bless. A little ditch from the mill’s kind overflow so the soil stays in the trade. Thorn of the hollow finds you in the rectangle, leaf-stained, and shows you how to firm a root without strangling it. Mira marks the plot with mill-string so goats can be argued with.

“We will tend the fungi by tending the shade,” Thorn says. “You will tend the mill ditch so the shade has a drink. That is a pact even a ledger can smell.”

Your back learns a small ache. Seedlings look like nothing. Seedlings are how centuries begin, which is an irritating way for centuries to behave.

Elder Briar, the old elf of the road-that-was-a-path, nods once, which from Briar is a parade.

The Pale One may pass this edge by evening if the corridor still stitches. Or council may still need a mouth in the mill yard, now that you have a living exhibit instead of only an empty square.

Dirt under your nails feels like a vote.