🧺the yard

I sat with Sharey for an hour while the oil was divided.

That is the whole of my morning and it does not look like much written down. A third of a can, fifty-five lanterns, a spoon, a great many small dishes, and Sharey working out that the dark places want more and the moonlit places want less.

My job was passing dishes. My other job, which nobody gave me and which was the actual one, was not hurrying anybody.

You would be surprised how much of that there was to do. Fluffs kept putting their heads round and asking how long, and I said "she's doing it properly" about nine times, and they went away again. If any one of them had stood there and watched, Sharey would have gone faster, and gone faster is exactly the thing you cannot do with a third of a can and no second chance.

So I sat down in the middle of the yard with the can and a spoon and a great many small dishes, and worked it out.

Not equal shares. That was the first thing I threw out, and it took me about a minute to be sure of it, and I want to write down why, because "half for you, half for me" is the thing I am known for and I abandoned it before breakfast was cleared.

Equal shares would have been fair to the lanterns. It would have been no use at all to the path.

A lantern in the hedge tunnel has to burn for five hours in proper dark with nothing else near it. A lantern on the bridge has the moon doing half its work. The three steps by the gate only need lighting from the moment the walking starts. So: deep in the dark places, thin where the moon helps, and nothing wasted at all on the stretch that Winky's own windows were going to light anyway.