23:15 · night
All fifty-five walk back out into the dark, up the lit lane, to the Wheel. Rainbow sets the new cloud on it. The Wheel turns for the first time since the spring.
5 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
Fifty-five fluffs standing in a cold lane watching a wheel start to turn does not wait.
I came within about forty minutes of not being in that lane, and I would not have been sad about it at the time, which is the frightening part. I would not even have known.
The part I would keep is the end. All fifty-five of us walking back up the lit lane to the Wheel in the cold dark, and the tunnel glowing out of the roots where Cloudy said to put them, and everything smelling properly of night. There were moths at the lanterns. There are always moths, and nobody but me ever seems to notice them.
I would not have swapped that walk for three hours of the front room.
We did the cloud. All fifty-five of us walked back out into the dark, up the lit lane, to the Wheel — and it turned for the first time since the spring.
Then we all walked up the lane to the Wheel, and stood in the cold and watched it turn for the first time since the spring, and nobody said anything at all for about a minute, which was the best minute of the day.
And the Wheel at the end. All of us up the lit lane in the dark and Rainbow setting the cloud on, and the whole thing starting to turn for the first time since spring. I got there first. Obviously I got there first. Then I had to stand and wait for fifty-four fluffs to catch up, which took a while, and I watched them come up the lane in twos and threes with their lanterns behind them, and I was not bored for a second of it.
