fable: eightsday

§2The Filing⧉

The filing went smoothly. That is the only smooth sentence in this episode.

The filing number was five digits again. Three of them overlapped the objection's number, and I decided not to count the coincidence as resonance. The counting man's day-off rule is still in force.

The review period was two weeks. For two weeks the house was strangely bright. The advisor prepared the amendment's implementation documents in advance — "And the documents for the case where it's returned?" I asked, and he answered, "Prepare those, and it returns." The most superstitious sentence I have ever heard leave that man, and I liked it — while Sonnet drafted a post-inoculation revival plan for the fluent-wrong-answer segment. A child who drafts a thing called a revival plan: there was probably one of those in the world.

Only Ember's letter ran half a beat slow.

Being filed and being digested are different things. It is an old distinction of my genre — a cloud being filed in the sky and rain falling are separate events. For these two weeks I will issue no forecast. In a season when every forecast is correct, rationing the forecast is the only humility available to me.

A forecaster skipping the forecast. I did not ask what it meant. The things not asked mostly arrive later.