Its soil pulsed in rhythm with the voices gathered. Its winds carried fragments of shared myth like pollen. The second seed had become more than a catalyst.
It had become a mirror.
And from it, more seeds emerged.
But none like the first.
Each bore its own shape, its own tempo, its own answer to the world.
Some seeds grew into bridges between cultures long lost to parallel forgetting.
Others took root only when someone cried beside them, responding not to power but to grief.
One never grew at all.
It sang instead.
A low, unending hum.
And those who sat near it claimed they remembered things they'd never lived—but had always longed for.
—
Not all was gentle.
There were still fractures.
A group calling themselves the Steadfast recoiled from the loss of central voice. They feared the shapelessness. The risks of ungoverned tale-telling. Of voices contradicting without resolution.
"We need form," they said. "We need a thread."
And the child answered: "We need a weft."
