Morning
Morning arrived as a shift in temperature and birdsong.
The forest didn't wake so much as tilt toward brightness; dew evaporated in thin curls, and the biolights dimmed to a shy hum beneath the leaves.
Valinor brought Ruhr to a low pavilion grown from braided roots. Racks of cups and instruments had formed from the same structure; they looked carved, but Ruhr could feel a slow pulse when he touched them, like a sleeping animal.
"This is where you'll learn to listen," Valinor said.
"To the Lace?"
"To everything that answers when you ask."
A tray grew from the counter with a soft creak. On it waited two cups—thin as shells—and a kettle whose skin shivered with heat.
"Tea?" Ruhr tried. It came out as more hope than question.
"Closer to a dialogue." Valinor tipped the kettle; liquid the color of spring moss streamed into Ruhr's cup. Steam rose—sweet, mineral, with a faint green bite.
"What's in it?"
"Your night," Valinor said. "The Lace read your cortisol drift, your micro-tears from yesterday's travel, the mineral deficits from Consortium food. The leaves know how to answer."
Ruhr sniffed it again, suspicious. "You made a drink out of my problems."
"We invited the garden to solve a puzzle," Valinor said. "Drink."
He did. The first sip uncurled something behind his sternum. Calm arrived without heaviness. He didn't feel drugged; he felt… correctly assembled. When he swallowed, the heat settled in his stomach and spread outward like a tide.
"Stars," he said softly.
Valinor's smile was quick. "Good. Now we walk."
Ecology and Appetite
They followed a living path through orchards braided with wind-harps. The instruments made no melody Ruhr would have recognized—tone more than tune—but the breeze thrummed through them and the trees seemed to straighten in pleasure.
"So," Ruhr began, emboldened by the tea and the morning. "Are you vegetarian?"
Valinor's brows lifted, amused. "Because we sing to crops?"
"Because you're… good," Ruhr said, wincing at how childish it sounded. "And good people in Consortium stories don't eat anything that bleeds."
"Hm." Valinor touched a branch; a pair of glass-winged insects lifted and drifted after them like lazy sparks. "Our word for good is closer to fitting. Predators fit."
"You eat meat."
"Sometimes," Valinor said. "We hunt less often than we harvest, but the forest requires teeth. When we take an animal, we take the ones who falter—the lame, the sick, those who would soon poison the ground with their rot. Wolves did this before we remembered how. Humans broke that rhythm—chasing trophies, selecting strength, thinning the line of resilience. We aim our hunger at failure, not excellence."
Ruhr pictured Consortium hunts: the biggest horns on the wall, blood on ice, men laughing too loud. "So you leave the strongest."
"We leave the shape that can endure," Valinor said. "The Lace won't let us pretend necessary harm is virtue, or deny that harm is sometimes necessary. We put the cost back into our bodies where we can feel it."
The Nursery
They crossed into a clearing roofed by translucent leaves. A ring of consoles stood at the center. Above them hung a slow storm of light: dots, lines, moving lattices that rearranged themselves in gentle spirals. Ruhr squinted. The patterns felt oddly familiar—numbers he could almost add, equations he could almost balance if he could just remember the rules.
"Simulation nursery," Valinor said. "A rehearsal before breath."
"For… babies?"
"For offspring," Valinor corrected, kind but firm. "We check the weaving before it's born."
Ruhr drifted closer. At first the lights were just lights. Then he made out motions—patterns that could be limbs, gestures, the angle of a head turning toward a sound. Not images, but probabilities—thousands of possible selves exploring thousands of possible days.
"How many are there?" Ruhr whispered.
"Eight current batches," Valinor said. "This ring hosts two."
The lattice folded; one potential walked into a beam of golden points and paused—as if listening. Another leaned toward a ripple, then retreated. A third repeated a small, precise motion until a gate of green lights opened.
"What are they doing?"
"Learning the village," Valinor said. "Learning us. The Lace offers puzzles—social, ecological, moral. They practice making choices. We watch for patterns: overconfidence, timidity, cruelty disguised as charm. If a weave risks pulling the village apart, we adjust."
Ruhr swallowed. "You… edit them?"
"We correct the loom, not the cloth," Valinor said. "We adjust the conditions—the prenatal songs, the nutrient balance in the gestation pool, the social mix they'll meet on day one. We don't erase will. We tune context so that will can mature toward coherence."
"And if you miss something?"
"Then we apologize," Valinor said. "And repair in community."
Ruhr watched a lattice choose a path that folded in on itself. It hesitated, selected again, and this time the fold unfurled. Relief prickled his arms.
"They feel that," Valinor murmured. "Your relief. The Lace lets them taste the weather of the village." He tilted his head, listening inward. "They like you."
"That's not possible," Ruhr said, startled.
"They like that you like them," Valinor corrected. "Affection is a nutrient."
Fairy Moths and Forgiveness
A soft turbulence brushed Ruhr's cheek. He turned. A moth hovered near his ear—if moth was even the word. It was the size of his thumb, six-limbed, its forearms jointed like tiny hands that balanced it against the air. Its wings were as thin as soap film, veins running through them like script, each beat spelling a different color. Luminescence rippled along its body in pulses of rose and silver.
It looked, absurdly, like a person made of light.
"What—" Ruhr began, squinting. "That's— that's not an insect."
"Fairy moth," Valinor said, voice warmed by affection. "Pollinator, messenger, gossip."
"Gossip?" Ruhr echoed, still following the creature's orbit. "It looks almost… human. Why? Why do so many things here look like us?"
Valinor chuckled softly. "Because Grayson wanted the world to forgive itself."
Ruhr blinked. "What does that mean?"
"When he began restoring the planet," Valinor said, "he realized humanity had stopped recognizing beauty that didn't resemble its own reflection. So he gave nature familiar shapes—faces, hands, posture—echoes of the myths humans already loved. He wove those stories into the design. It was easier for your kind to accept change when it looked like something you had always wanted to believe in."
Ruhr watched the fairy moth alight on Valinor's wrist, its wings folding into a cape of translucent fire. "So elves weren't an accident."
"No," Valinor said. "We are his olive branch. His way of making evolution look like a story humans had already told themselves."
"That's…" Ruhr searched for a word. "Manipulative."
"Merciful," Valinor countered gently. "He knew humanity would fight what it didn't recognize. So he gave it recognition first. He made the future look like hope wearing an old costume."
"It worked," Ruhr whispered.
Valinor smiled. "It still does."
The Body of the World
"It tracks emotional gradients," Valinor said. "They carry news between gardens and people. If a section of the root-net is stressed, the moths learn it first—they taste our worry." He held out a finger. The moth landed, weighing almost nothing, and fanned its wings until a small pattern formed—green, then blue, then a shade Ruhr had no word for. Valinor's smile tilted. "This one thinks you're hungry."
"I just drank a plant that knew my cortisol."
"Tea answers chemistry. This answers appetite." Valinor set the moth gently aloft. "Come."
They reached a small dining hollow grown into the side of a hill. Benches had formed from root ribs; a table rose as they approached, pushing up through moss. Platters unfurled from the surface—fruit split along natural seams, thin sheets of something like bread with a sheen of oil, translucent slices of a root that smelled faintly of smoke.
"Eat," Valinor said. "We tuned this to you at dawn."
Ruhr hesitated. "You… tuned breakfast."
"Food is instruction," Valinor said. "Today you need iron, glycine, and comfort."
Ruhr bit into a slice of the smoked root. It crunched like an apple, tasted like roasted chestnut and something cured over fire. The bread melted on his tongue into warmth that ran down his arms. With the third bite he realized he was ravenous. He ate until his hands slowed on their own.
"Not a crumb left," he said, a little embarrassed.
"Nothing wasted," Valinor agreed. "What you don't use, the Lace will route elsewhere. We don't hoard. We circulate."
Ruhr leaned back, pleasantly stunned. "Everything here makes me feel… accounted for."
Valinor considered him. "Accounted-with," he said. "The preposition matters."
Listening Practice
They walked again, and Ruhr found that walking felt different—no heaviness at the joints, a new ease in his breath. They passed a water-garden that stepped down a slope in terraces; in each pool, plant roots drank impurities while fish grazed the algae, and dragonflies stitched air to water with bright seams.
"You run this whole place like a body," Ruhr said.
"We learned from bodies," Valinor replied. "They don't waste. Every failure is feedback."
A rustle cut left. Valinor lifted a hand, stilling Ruhr. Through the brush came a lean shape: a deer, or something like it, though its forelegs were jointed differently and its coat threw off a low biolight when it exhaled. It paused. One ear rotated toward them; the other tracked a fly.
Ruhr didn't breathe.
"There," Valinor said under his breath. "See the hitch? Left hind. Parasites or a tendon scar."
The animal moved on, weight favoring the sound limb. Valinor's gaze softened with respect.
"We'll cull it tonight," he said quietly. "Fast and clean. Its life feeds the soil; the soil feeds us. The Lace will carry the cost. No trophies."
Ruhr thought of hunt rooms, gleaming knives, men measuring virility in antler spread. He felt suddenly, impossibly tired for every time he had laughed without thinking.
"That's what we do wrong," he said. "We take strength to prove we have it."
"You take symbols," Valinor said. "You forget the systems."
The Transducer
A bell thrummed from somewhere deeper in the village—not metal, but something resonant grown for that purpose. Valinor's eyes unfocused; Ruhr felt the brush of a question along the Lace, a communal nod as an answer.
"Training," Valinor said. "Ready?"
"I've been ready since the tea."
Valinor led him to a glade floored with springy moss. The air smelled of crushed mint and cool stone. A low ring stood at the center—no bigger than a fountain—filled not with water but with clear gel that trembled at their approach.
"Place your hands," Valinor said.
Ruhr knelt. The gel was cool; it clung to his palms as if deciding whether to trust him.
"What is it?"
"Transducer," Valinor said. "It translates the Lace's field into tactile signal and your intent into query. Think of a question and lean into it."
"A question," Ruhr echoed, overwhelmed suddenly by how many he had.
"Small," Valinor advised. "Begin at the size you can love."
Ruhr closed his eyes. Who is hungry? The thought surprised him; it came fully formed and childlike.
The gel warmed. A hum arrived at his wrists, then at the bones of his forearms: rhythmic, like a distant drum through a wall. Valinor's voice faded. The forest was there, not in pictures but in pulses—patches of soil that needed carbon, a pocket of air that lacked moisture, a bee line thinning near a slope where wildflowers had exhausted themselves. He felt—not saw—a cluster of roots signaling distress. Something had chewed a channel too deep.
His eyes flew open. "There—downhill, east by—"
Valinor's mouth quirked. "Two terraces."
"You felt it too?"
"I asked you to ask. The Lace answered us both."
"How do we fix it?"
"Apprentice's choice," Valinor said. "Tell me."
Ruhr returned his hands to the gel. The signal found him faster this time—like a friend recognizing a footfall. He pictured the slope, the roots, the pocket of air. Send moisture, he thought. Send sugar. And send… moths. He tried not to feel silly. They gossip fastest.
The gel cooled. A second tone braided the first. Somewhere, valves opened; he felt it as relief in his own chest. A cloud lifted off the terrace below—a living veil of fairy moths riding the new humidity like a highway.
He sat back, dizzy with delight. "It listened."
"It conversed," Valinor corrected. "We never command the forest. We improvise with it."
Ruhr laughed, a sound he almost didn't recognize. "Does it ever say no?"
"Often," Valinor said, pleased. "That's how we learn our limits."
Loneliness
They spent the next hours asking and answering. Ruhr found he could hold a handful of questions at once if he shaped them with breath: Where is heat gathering? Which roots are idle? Who needs iron? Who is alone?
The last pulled at him.
The signal was different, less crisp—loneliness translated poorly into minerals—yet he recognized it immediately when it touched him. Someone at the edge of the village sat with their back to a tree, and although three people were within fifty paces, the person felt like the last person on Earth.
Ruhr lifted his hands from the gel. "Can the Lace fix that?"
"It can announce the weather," Valinor said. "It can't walk your feet. Go."
Ruhr went.
He found her past a herb-terrace, where the path narrowed around a seed tower. She was young by human standards, older than the adolescents he'd seen—a new adult, perhaps. Her tracings were dim. She sat with her eyes on the ground, fingers pressed into the moss like a plea.
"Hi," Ruhr said, awkward. "I'm… Ruhr."
She looked up. Her grief was clean and wide. "I know," she said, as if the Lace had already introduced them. "I'm Vela. My companion took a long-term weaving beyond the valley. It's… good. Fitting. My body doesn't know that yet."
Ruhr lowered himself opposite her. "I don't know your rites," he said, "but I can sit."
She nodded. They sat. The moss cooled his ankles. A moth landed on her sleeve, reading the weather; her lips trembled, then steadied. After a while she said, "You did that slope thing."
Ruhr blinked. "You felt it?"
She smiled—just barely. "We felt you learning."
He felt his face heat. "Did I do it wrong?"
"You did it like someone who wants to do it right." Her smile widened a fraction. "That's almost always enough."
They sat until the bell thrummed again. When Ruhr rose, his knees felt steady in a way he didn't expect.
Valinor waited by the path. "Well?"
"I met loneliness," Ruhr said, surprised by the shape his voice made on the word. "It introduced me to someone."
Valinor's eyes warmed. "Good. Tomorrow we'll meet hunger and arrogance. They travel together."
Ruhr snorted. "I know those two."
"Then you'll recognize their footsteps." Valinor gestured toward the terrace where evening shades gathered. "One more lesson."
Evening Tea
They returned to the pavilion. The kettle had refilled itself from a vine that pulsed along the wall; the cups waited, still warm. Valinor poured.
"What is it this time?" Ruhr asked.
"Your day," Valinor said. "Translated into comfort. Glycans for your nerves; a bitter for your pride."
"I wasn't proud," Ruhr said, reflexive.
Valinor's mouth twitched. "You were proud you weren't afraid to ask simple questions."
Ruhr opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. "Fair."
They drank. The tea tasted like rain and cedar, with a heat that hung at the back of the tongue and reminded him not to talk too much.
When the cups were empty, the forest exhaled. Lights rose in the branches like far cities.
"Same time tomorrow?" Ruhr asked.
"Earlier," Valinor said. "The forest thinks best before it remembers it's beautiful."
Ruhr laughed again—easier this time. He felt the day settling into him, each moment finding its shelf. As he walked toward the guest habitat, moths drifted above the path in a slow procession. One landed on his shoulder and rode there, wings pulsing a color he was beginning to recognize as approval.
Behind him, the tea set absorbed into the counter like a tide returning to stone.
And somewhere beyond the horizon, the mesa breathed in time with the trees.