11:00 · morning
Wondy sees a hole in the bank, wants to climb in, and stops to look and listen instead — something inside is dripping. Puzzly asks dripping what. It is the oil can, gone over the edge that morning and wedged under a root, with about a third left. They get it out with a stick and Newby's scarf.
3 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
There was a hole in the bank, half behind a root, and Wondy saw it about a second before I did.
"Ooh," said Wondy. "What's that?"
And I want to be fair here, because Wondy did the good thing. Wondy stopped. Looked. Listened. All of it, properly, the whole routine, standing at the mouth of that hole absolutely vibrating with wanting to go in.
But I still did not like it, and I said so.
Then there was the hole in the bank. Wondy wanted to go in and Newby wanted to fetch somebody and they were both extremely certain, and they had been at it for a minute or two when I came along and asked the only question neither of them had.
Dripping what?
And that was the oil — the can, gone over the edge that morning, wedged under a root, emptying quietly into the bank for four hours. A third left. It is a perfectly good example of the thing I am for, and I did not notice at the time that I was doing with a hole exactly what I had failed to do with a sunset.
There was a hole in the bank, half behind a root, and everything in me wanted to be inside it.
That is not a figure of speech. My feet had already turned. My head was already in there, in the interesting dark, finding out.
And then I did the hard thing, which is the same hard thing every single time: stopped. Looked. Listened.
Looking: the hole went further back than a rabbit needs. Listening: something in there was dripping.
