Sarah Clarity Studios

Tales of Roaka: An Epic Poem

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT Pro)

Proem: Invocation of the White Muse

Sing, Muse of measured hands and steady light,
of hearts that found one beat within a city of salt and stone—
Roaka, white-walled over turquoise water,
where crimson and blue crossed like dawn and sea.
Guide my tongue to the names that must be named:
Borrow the Quick-Hand, of the crimson cloak;
Rohas the Even-Minded, of the sea-blue mantle;
and Coriander in White, taker of measures, tamer of stone,
the Engineer whose chalk brightens the shadowed line.
Sing Arthephos, god of skill joined to courage,
who sets the bowstring true and steadies the builder’s plumb.
From olive slopes to mirror-bright pools, from market cry to temple hush,
carry this song as rhapsodes carry fire from hearth to hearth.
If I falter, lend me a cadence like oars in a calm bay;
if I stray, draw me back by the scent of lime and cedar.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

---

Song I: The Twin Cloaks

1
Not at the first stone laid nor at the first word sworn
does this tale open, but in the thicket’s breath,
when morning was young and the cicada’s rasp
stitched time to the air like a fine bronze comb.
Borrow had loosed, and the boar lay still as a cut root;
Rohas had counted the hoofscars to the very last turn.
They stood, shoulder to shoulder, as brothers stand—
one hot with triumph, one cool with the map of the ground.

2
“See,” said Borrow, laughter in his throat,
“how red wakes red. A feast will follow.”
“See,” said Rohas, quiet as harbor shade,
“how trail meets trail, and we owe the grove a due.”
He set his palm on bark, a quick prayer to Arthephos;
Borrow tied a strip from his cloak to the low bough,
blood and dye together—a hunter’s tithe.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

3
They shouldered the weight and took the ridge path,
where thyme bruises sweet and rock swallows sound.
Below, the city glittered in lime-washed planes,
a stair of light lifting to the temple hill.
Cranes knelt like tall birds over half-born stone,
and ropes wrote catenaries across the sky.
“Look,” said Borrow, “how white calls for song.”
“Listen,” said Rohas, “how the pulleys answer.”

4
At the Krene Pools the water kept its plain voice,
green where depth thought deeply, pale where sun
laid a hand on the surface to bless or to warn.
Elders walked there measuring silence in steps;
children trailed reeds and drew circles of wish.
The twin hunters passed, and vendors in the agora
called out olives cheap as dust, figs soft as dusk—
but over the barter rose a rumor like a gull-cry:
“The Engineer has come, the one in white;
the council has named him to raise the House of Arthephos.”

5
Borrow grinned as a man greets a good omen.
“An engineer who loves the hunt is rare.”
Rohas’s eyes moved like a plumb finding true.
“If he loves the measure, we must love the edge he measures.”
They climbed. Wind off the sea combed their hair;
salt clung to the lip, and the sun made a law of every line.
Marble blocks waited like unasked questions.
A chalk mark bright as winter lay along a joint.

6
There he stood—Coriander in White—
garments plain as fresh mortar, eyes with the calm of water held.
He had a gnomon for the day and a lamp for the dusk,
a cord knotted in spans, a wax tablet with sums,
and the easy patience of one who listens before he speaks.
“Hunters,” he said, “your feet know these hills.
Lend me the ground as a friend lends bread.
I will set stone upon stone so the wind may pass through singing.”

7
Borrow bowed the irreverent bow of the familiar.
“Coriander, measure me a tale. What song do stones prefer?”
“Whichever is sung in the right key,” the engineer answered, smiling.
Rohas weighed the man by small signs—the knot that would not slip,
the hand that touched rope as a healer touches a wrist.
“The city says you are the chosen,” Rohas said.
“The city says much,” said Coriander, “but Arthephos asks for proof.”
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

8
Then came the elders and the priestess with saffron braid;
then came a boy with a basket of chalk;
then came a breeze that turned banners into tongues.
A herald raised a staff capped with hammered leaf:
“Hear now the decree: upon this hill shall rise the House of Measure,
a temple for skill wedded to courage.
Let those who hunt guide those who build,
that the wild and the worked may share one breath.”

9
Borrow would have shouted assent like a gull skimming foam,
but Rohas, seeing omens fold like cranes’ wings,
said softly, “There is a rite older than council words.
If we would bind work to work and man to man,
we must begin as our fathers began.”
Coriander turned, the white of his sleeve a small lighthouse.
“What rite is this, hunter?”
“The Re-Hearting,” said Rohas. “A hunt for the heart we choose.”

10
The crowd answered with a rustle like reeds in evening.
Old men nodded; young ones frowned at sacred weight.
Borrow, bright and sudden, cried, “Engineer in White,
will you stand at our Gates, blind to our meanings,
and choose the paths we set?—Relic or Roll, Tale or Reason,
Revel or Relight—three times, three doors, three proofs?”
Coriander studied the air as if the question were a beam,
testing for load and span in equal measure.

11
“I will,” he said. “If the god smiles and the ground bears me.”
The priestess marked the dust with a spiral of ash.
The elders traded glances like coins;
in the harbor a bell spoke the hour into bronze.
A small cloud crossed the sun and passed,
like a hand that shades the eye so sight grows finer.
“Then let it be at first light,” the herald proclaimed.
“Let hunter and engineer meet at the broken stair.”

12
They parted, each to his night:
Borrow with the restlessness of oars before launch,
Rohas with lists whispering like reeds in wind,
Coriander with ropes coiled, chalk capped, lamp trimmed.
And over the city the seabirds wrote brief runes and were gone,
and beneath the hill the springs kept telling their one, clear story.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

13
Night came clean. Torches stitched a slow constellation
along scaffold and wall; the temple’s bones
threw long, careful shadows across the workyard.
Coriander set his hand upon the half-hewn lintel,
and felt, as builders feel, the weight that waits for trust.
“Arthephos,” he murmured, “teach my hands the courage that belongs to skill.”
Far off, on the olive ridge, two cloaks—one red, one blue—
flashed and were still, like signals kept for morning.

14
Thus ends the first setting of the loom:
names knotted, task declared, the god invoked.
At dawn the Gates will stand: tablet split, choice struck,
and the heart’s hunt begin with a crack like truth.
Keep the measure, Muse; keep the pace like waves on marble steps.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

15
Dawn found the broken stair washed clean with brine,
gulls like white runes scribbled on the air.
The priestess drew a circle with her staff;
a boy set down two tablets, red and blue.
The harbor bell pealed once—iron tasting the light—
and men with sleep-still hair stood shoulder-close.
“Blind to the hidden meanings,” said the herald,
“choose with your hand, O Heart, and let the path appear.”

16
Borrow lifted the first tablet, half red, half blue,
its seam a hair of marble waiting for a blow.
“Relic or Roll?” he cried, voice bright as oars in surge.
Rohas, grave as shade, set tokens on a cloth:
a sealed clay jar bound with ancient twine,
a coil of line and a staff of ash-wood plain.
Coriander’s eyes were steady as low water;
he bowed to both and weighed the air like truth.

17
He took the temple hammer—bronze, well-loved—
and did not ask the crowd which color pleased them.
He raised it once, and all the breaths drew tight;
he struck the blue. A crack ran clean as law.
“Roll,” said the herald, tasting the syllable like salt.
Borrow’s fingers twitched—old habit toward the line—
but he stood fixed, remembering the watchers’ oath.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

18
“Roll, then,” said Rohas, “raise what cannot lift itself.”
They pointed to a water-jar fat with morning weight,
set on a plinth as high as a man’s shoulder,
time measured by a clepsydra’s narrow throat.
Coriander unbound his white sash without flourish,
looped it round the staff, found a pier-stone for a fulcrum,
hitched the coil through a bronze ring the builders left,
and married staff to stone, and line to ring, and effort to design.

19
“Not force—sequence,” he murmured, half to wind,
and walked the line along the plinth like a singer marks a beat.
He set a boy to tread the staff-end slow,
told a mason where to lean, Borrow where not to,
let Rohas count the beats of drag and ease.
The jar rose—first grudging, then willing, then light—
and kissed the plinth with the sound a small wave makes.
The clepsydra had not halved; the crowd let go its held breath.

20
The priestess gave a bead of ochre clay, warm from palm.
Coriander threaded it beside his corded knots.
Borrow laughed like foam against a bow.
“Your hands speak crane,” he said, “and cranes obey.”
“Only if the ground is honest,” Coriander answered mild.
Rohas touched the jar’s damp rim, cool as cave stone.
“First gate taken,” he said. “The path grows narrower.”
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

21
They set the second tablet where the first had been;
the seam this time ran like a river under ice.
“Tale or Reason?” Borrow’s voice was bright;
the crowd took up the words as boys take up a game.
Rohas laid out neither staff nor jar this time,
only a chalked board and a shell from the white shore.
Coriander lifted the hammer, smiled as if at kin,
and broke the red—“Tale,” said the herald, pleased.

22
He did not climb a stone nor call for music;
he stood among the workers as one stands in shade.
“Once,” he began, “when wind and mountain married,
they had a child who would not choose a path.
The wind said, Turn with me; the mountain said, Stand.
The child grew horns to please them both—
turning as wind wills, standing as stone requires—
so every ibex carries his parents’ argument in spiral bone.”

23
Children leaned forward like seedlings toward a well.
Old men nodded with the grave relief of memory.
“Tell us the second part,” Borrow urged, grinning.
“There is none,” said Coriander, “save this measure:
choose and carry both, if you would cross a cliff.”
The priestess placed a lapis bead in his white hand;
its blue was sea at noon, its hole a dark star.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

24
Midday broke over lime and marble skin;
work paused, figs were torn, bread shared with salt.
Borrow flung his cloak against a pillar’s shade;
Rohas marked the hours with a thumb on the sun.
Coriander sat, back to a block, and watched the ropes breathe,
the way a chest does when sleep has almost come.
“Two gates,” he said, not proud, not shy—just counting.
“Two beads,” said the boy, and hid them in his eyes.

25
When heat grew kind they raised the third tablet—
this one whiter than the rest, seam fine as hair.
“Revel or Relight?” the herald sang, and laughter answered;
musicians in the market pricked up strings.
Borrow’s foot already learned a festival’s beat.
Rohas’s gaze slid toward the cliff road west,
where a shrine-lamp kept by widow-priestesses
was said to dull when sea-fog kissed its mouth.

26
Coriander took the hammer last and least like war;
he weighed the red promise of wine, the blue of night.
He struck the blue again. The crack was thin but sure.
“Relight,” said the herald, letting evening into noon.
Borrow sobered like a drum gone still.
“Then dusk will find us on the pilgrim steps.”
Rohas tied his cloak close for wind on stone.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

27
They parted for the labors that make waiting useful:
Borrow stacked the festival cressets and counted oil;
Rohas walked the ridge and listened to its faults;
Coriander checked his lamp, trimmed the wick to virtue,
and chalked a spiral on the tablet’s bare half-moon.
Elders debated the price of cedar beams;
boys raced reeds along the Krene’s skin;
the city held its breath the way a singer holds a note.

28
Toward dusk the steps took on their own small light—
salt dust glowing where sandals worry stone.
The priestess came with a basket of cold coals,
the widow-sisters with keys like quiet birds.
Borrow and Rohas flanked Coriander in white,
the three a narrow sail cut clean against the sky.
The lamp-house waited like a patient eye,
lid dark, pupil still, ready to receive its star.

29
“Remember,” Rohas whispered, as custom bids,
“no hand but the Heart’s may touch the wick;
no word but plain words while flame is blind;
no haste; no fear of wind.”
Borrow said nothing—oaths put a weight he liked to feel—
but set his red cloak as a lee for sparks.
Coriander knelt, lamp in both hands level,
as if he carried not fire but a promise with a face.

30
The widow turned the key; the door gave way
with a sound like soft bone coming home to joint.
Inside, the clay lamp’s mouth was ash and memory.
Coriander breathed once, twice—counting, calming—
then touched his flame to the wick and waited,
not pulling back, not rushing forward,
until the new light took the old place without quarrel,
and the small room learned again what morning is.

31
When they came out, the sea had taken on a deeper thought;
the first star wrote its single-letter name.
The priestess blessed the air with saffron braid;
the widow-sisters closed the door and smiled like rest.
Borrow exhaled the way a bow does after flight.
Rohas, who seldom praised aloud, said simply, “Rightly done.”
The boy who bore the beads had fallen asleep on steps,
fist tight around the clay and lapis worlds.

32
They walked back down with the kind of silence
friends can wear as easily as old cloaks.
The harbor bell, drowsy now, spoke twice to gulls.
At the broken stair the herald set the third bead—
white as shell—into the Heart’s plain cord.
“Three gates, three proofs,” he said, “and dawn for oaths.”
Night gathered the scaffolds into taller shadows.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

33
Sleep took the city by neighborhoods and trades;
even the cranes bowed in the dark as if to dream.
Coriander laid the beads beside his lamp
and wrote a single line on wax: sequence before strength.
Borrow turned once on his mat and smiled toward nothing.
Rohas woke to check the wind and slept again.
The priestess banked the coals; the pool-keeper counted stars;
and the temple’s bones remembered where they meant to grow.

34
Thus closes the first day’s measured song:
choice made, light kindled, beads like planets named.
Tomorrow asks for salt and blood and words,
for vows that bind as plumb-lines bind a wall.
Keep cadence, Muse; keep breath for the long ascent.
At dawn the bowl will shine, the wine will darken,
and three hands will meet above a spiral of ash.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

35
Dawn stood on tiptoe over harbor roofs,
a pale coin warming in a great hand.
Mist loosened its knots along the quay;
the gulls rehearsed the day’s bright gossip.
On the stair the bronze oath-bowl waited,
its twin spirals meeting like two roads at one stone.
The priestess came with salt in a white dish,
the herald with wine sealed under red pitch.

36
Elders took the steps in measured twos;
apprentice masons leaned their tools like walking sticks.
A boy brought spring-water in a clay cup,
another held clean cloths and a bronze awl.
Rohas set the three beads on folded linen—
ochre, lapis, shell—worlds threaded for a cord.
Borrow’s cloak made a small sunrise at his shoulders;
Coriander’s white kept the peace of first light.

37
“Name what you bring,” the priestess said,
as liturgies ask and good work answers.
“Courage that spends itself,” said Borrow,
“and a hand swift to guard, not grasp.”
“Measure that steadies strength,” said Coriander,
“and patience long as rope,” said Rohas.
“So speak your god,” the herald murmured;
“Skill joined to courage,” the three replied.

38
Salt first—the priestess named it “earth that does not lie”;
she let it fall like small snow into the bowl.
Wine next—“blood of the field made glad”—
the herald poured a dusk-colored arc.
Spring-water last—“breath of stone made clear”—
the boy held steady and did not spill.
The bronze took their mingling without sound,
a quiet like the pause before a sure word.

39
“Now let each give a drop,” the priestess said,
“that oath may have a name.”
Borrow pricked the pad of his bowstring finger,
Rohas the calm hand that counts a track,
Coriander the thumb that tests a plumb—
three beads of red undoctored as truth.
They struck the surface and were not seen,
but all who watched felt the circle close.

40
“Who drinks?” asked the herald, old forms exact.
“The Seekers first,” the priestess said,
“for they ask much; the Heart last,
for he receives and keeps.”
Borrow lifted, tasted iron and olive,
and set the bowl where Rohas’s shadow fell.
Rohas drank, eyes steady as a still pool,
then offered the bronze into the white of dawn.

41
Coriander did not hurry; he looked once east,
as builders look before they lift.
He drank; the bowl spoke a small sound of praise
against his teeth—a bell under water.
Wind moved; a banner learned a new angle;
somewhere a fish leapt, writing a brief note on light.
“Witnessed,” said the priestess, saffron braid bright;
“Witnessed,” answered stone, rope, water, sky.

42
“Hands,” said the priestess. They gave them,
and she bound their wrists with the oath-cord once—
red under blue under white, then loose again—
so joining without fetter, touching without chain.
“Say what you will keep,” she asked the three.
“His back,” said Borrow. “His name,” said Rohas.
“His work,” said Coriander, and the crowd
breathed like a sail finding its wind.

43
The herald raised the staff with hammered leaf.
“Hear!” he cried to limewash and gulls alike,
“From this day the Echo is made:
Hunters of the Twin Cloaks and Coriander in White—
a Heart bound by salt and blood and measure.
Let markets make room for their counsel,
let the temple take their tread as lawful,
let the Re-Heart stand in the city’s book.”

44
A cresset caught; light ran along the scaffold;
the cranes answered with slow-winged shadows.
Children clapped where they understood;
old men nodded where they remembered.
Borrow laughed once, then grew suddenly quiet,
as men do who feel weight and are glad of it.
Rohas’s mouth made a line content with its line.
Coriander touched the bowl—one thanks, no flourish.

45
Gifts then, as custom teaches:
Borrow set a boar-tusk charm in the engineer’s hand,
Rohas a knotted cord with measures burned in,
Coriander three chalks capped against damp.
Simple things, strong in the way simple things are.
The priestess wound the bead-cord to the Heart’s wrist,
loose as trust and ready for work.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

46
The city did not wait on ceremony to be a city.
Vendors unshuttered figs like small suns;
the dyers’ steam raised violet news to the air.
Yet everywhere the morning had a joined sound—
hammer with footfall, wave with breath, oath with task.
“Come,” said Coriander, “there is stone to hear.”
“Come,” said Rohas, “there is ground to read.”
“Come,” said Borrow, “there is sky to answer.”

47
They turned toward the hill that would be temple,
three shadows learning how to walk as one.
On the lower steps a boy stirred from sleep,
unfurling his fist from beads he’d dreamed of.
He looked after them and grinned like a gate swung wide.
A gull stitched white script over the harbor’s blue.
Somewhere a jealous eye beneath a colonnade watched,
and made a quiet note to test such bonds.

48
Thus the first day’s weaving came tight at last:
oath drunk, cord loosed, names set in the ledger.
Not thunder but rightness sealed it,
not trumpet but tools taken up.
Keep cadence, Muse, for the road ahead—
for mirrors, mists, and measured dangers,
for dice on marble and a lamp kept true.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

---

Song II: The Illusion Hunt

49
Morning wore its work-face: ropes sang low,
chisels spoke the bright, small grammar of stone.
Borrow coached boys to make a sling speak clean;
Rohas mapped the ridge where thyme keeps counsel.
Coriander, white as a fresh page,
went down to the market’s colored talk—
for resin, shell-lime, a jar of blue as noon—
and to ask the dyers how heat treats truth.

50
Under the colonnade a shadow measured him—
Eldrayas the Silver-Tongued, the tracker turned showman,
with Kuhas the Quiet Distiller at his shoulder,
eyes like still pools hiding green fires.
They smiled the civic smile that hides a hook.
“Engineer,” said Eldrayas, “your name is on every lip.”
“Our cordial cools bright minds,” said Kuhas, softly,
“white myrtle for white cloth; a gift to clear the day.”

51
Coriander weighed the men like a beam weighs load,
and, courteous as builders must be to all hands,
he wet his tongue with their pale kindness—
a sip, no more, enough to honor the cup.
The cordial’s breath was meadow-sweet and clean;
its after-scent turned a key behind his eyes.
The market stepped half a pace away;
edges softened as if heat had remembered mercy.

52
“Come,” said Eldrayas, easily, “see a thing you’ll like—
a pulley trick the fishermen swear by.”
Kuhas laughed once, like cork on water.
They turned—not far, just under the bridge
where the quay keeps a second, cooler voice.
A barge waited, plank down, rope slack,
mist of the Krene drifting like milk in tea.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

53
Coriander walked as men do when the ground is kind;
his balance kept its word; the world kept shifting,
not wrong, just softened at the seams.
Kuhas spoke of reeds and the way they hold wind;
Eldrayas named knots that sound like riddles.
The barge breathed once against her rope,
swallowed three shadows, and slid like a thought
no one admits aloud but keeps.

54
Only a fish-seller saw—hands in brine,
eyes salt-stung and honest—
three men “merry as patrons at the new play,”
poling easy toward the hush of pilings.
He shrugged the way work shrugs at other work
and turned to gut a silver run of morning.
Above, the city ticked on: chisel, boy, bell;
below, the river kept its secrets like a priest.

55
When the sun climbed to the hour boys crave figs,
Borrow came down with pockets loud as festival—
pebbles for sling tests, jokes for bait.
Rohas followed, time folded on his thumb.
“Where’s white?” Borrow asked the dye-seller first.
“In shade,” the woman said, “counting blues.”
But the dyers’ vats were without their guest;
a chalk-smudge on a doorpost said he’d passed.

56
They cast the net of questions as hunters do—
wide, then narrow, pulling the mesh for glint.
“Did you see the Engineer?” “He bought shell-lime.”
“Spoke to the reed-man.” “Praised the custard figs.”
“Walked with two—fine cloaks, good teeth.”
Borrow’s jaw set like a block set square.
Rohas’s gaze took depth the way a well does.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

57
At the bridge the water wore a thumbprint
no current should have printed there.
Borrow knelt, sniffed mist that held a ghost of myrtle.
“Cordial,” he said. “Kuhas.” He didn’t spit;
oaths don’t waste salt.
Rohas traced with a reed on sun-warmed stone
the arc a barge would draw leaving with the tide.
“Not up,” he said. “Down, and fast with hush.”

58
Then came a boy, bare feet writing quick news,
hand closed on a scroll bound with blue twine.
“For you,” he said. “They gave me cake to run.”
Borrow broke pitch like a crab shell,
Rohas read aloud because the voice steadies rage:

59

Bring the weight of one flawless crane-block in coined silver
before the next moonrise.
Choose Relic or Roll.
Miss, and the Heart will serve elsewhere,
sworn to new companions, his oath unmade by law.

60
Borrow’s laugh was short as a cut rope.
“He mocks our Gates in ink.”
Rohas folded the words like a map.
“Relic means beg for heirlooms in the agora—
old rings, temple gifts, the city’s patience.
Roll is the pit, where dice eat scruples.”
He looked toward the hill where cranes held still as prayer.
“Either road soils a hand the god keeps clean.”

61
“Then we wash as we walk,” Borrow said,
red bright as noon in his shoulders.
“We’ll take both paths until one shows teeth.”
He called to boys he trusted not to boast;
Rohas whispered to the fig-seller with good ears.
News goes quick when it smells of coin.
Chalk lines—Coriander’s—began to bloom in minds,
how he marks a corner, how he leaves a sign.

62
They split like a river that knows its beds:
Borrow to the square where men trade tales for metal,
Rohas to the alleys where chance makes a stall.
Borrow stood on a marble block and spoke plain:
“Our Heart is taken without cut or bruise.
We pay with story or with silver’s sweat.
If you have a relic that grew heavy in your sleep,
lend it now; we’ll wake with lighter chests together.”

63
Hands wavered like fish deciding on a net.
Old women weighed a pin that knew three weddings;
a smith unclasped a clasp he’d meant to keep.
Borrow did not press; he praised, he promised records—
names in the temple ledger, bead-string of thanks.
Coins came like small rain after dusty weeks;
not flood, but enough to green the ground.
He bowed, made note, moved on.

64
Rohas found the dice-hall under painted shade,
cool as a lie that wears good sandals.
Kuhas’s scent of myrtle rode the air;
Eldrayas’s laugh rang once like a bowl struck soft.
He did not step inside. He watched the throwers’ wrists,
the way loaded cubes take corners like goats on paths.
He marked the pit-master’s ring with its nick at twelve,
the runner who trades luck for wine.

65
He bought time with questions honeyed thin,
and with a trick Coriander taught—
dropping cubes in oil to hear their truth.
The pit-master smiled without teeth.
“Scholar,” he said, weighing Rohas like a fig,
“your eyes cost more than your purse carries.”
Rohas smiled back as men do before a storm.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

66
Back at the stair the priestess read the scroll,
saffron braid still, mouth a careful line.
“He will not cut the cord,” she said,
“only tangle it before a crowd.
He wants you dirty and the Engineer grateful—
a ransom that buys shame.”
Borrow’s hands wanted work that breaks;
Rohas’s wanted weights and balance.

67
“Then we answer with measure,” said a voice—
Eldrayas’s, from the shade beyond the steps,
face clean as a new-minted coin.
“Hunters,” he bowed, “the city hears your trouble.
If you lack coin, my friends can help.”
Borrow took one pace that felt like two.
Rohas, palm small on crimson’s sleeve, said, “Hear him.”
Hearing is not yielding; it keeps knives sheathed.

68
“We want what you want,” Eldrayas said,
“Roaka’s acclaim and the Engineer’s skill well-housed.
But you run short on clocks; moonrise is a bite of time.
Choose Roll; luck loves bold men.
Or Relic; the elders sleep lighter when old rings move.”
His smile was a painted door on a brick wall.
Kuhas stood behind him like a shadow that smells of flowers,
saying nothing, as potent silences do.

69
“Choice is for Hearts,” Rohas answered, even-voiced.
“You set gates we did not ask for.
We’ll pay the sum and keep the name clean.”
He glanced at Borrow, who nodded—
like a bow nods just before string finds pull.
“To moonrise,” Rohas said to the priestess;
“we’ll meet the sum between the square and the pit,
and if coin is short, we’ll pay in proofs.”

70
Far down the quay the mist drew curtains twice,
as if rehearsing for a play with careful cues.
On the barge, Coriander in white watched water think,
counted pilings, memorised nailheads in a beam.
“Sequence before strength,” he said once, softly,
and palmed a chalk that no one had searched for.
He marked his cage the way a mason marks the day—
small, where wood forgets, where eyes will find.

71
Borrow came up from the square with a pouch that spoke;
Rohas came down from the pit with a plan that did not.
Between them moved a wind that meant no good to lies.
The priestess lifted the bowl and blessed the coins:
“Salt keeps truth. Keep salt.”
The harbor bell rehearsed what evening says.
And somewhere under bridge-shadow, a hollow reed
breathed myrtle into a man who never liked the smell.

72
Thus the snare is set on both the hunter and the hare,
and the city leans in like olives toward a path.
No blood yet—only time and choice and breath—
but ropes begin to hum with what they mean.
Keep cadence, Muse, for the taking’s turn;
for riddled scrolls, for dice on marble,
for a barge that thinks it is a stage,
and for a chalk mark small as hope.

73
Borrow moved through market heat like a clean wind,
ledger under arm, praise ready as bread.
He wrote each giver’s name in a neat red line—
smiths with smoke in their hair, widows with brave pins,
boys who brought one bright coin and stood taller for it.
He promised the ledger would live in temple light,
a bead-string of thanks no thief could cut.
The chest learned weight like a lesson learned well.

74
Rohas climbed the stair to the priestess’s shade.
“Do you keep oath-dice?” he asked, not as a gambler asks.
She brought a small cedar box lined with lime dust,
two bone cubes washed in salt and hymn.
He dropped them once in oil, listening for truth;
they sank like honest stones and came up clean.
“Carry them quiet,” she said. “Let luck stand bare.”
He wrapped them in white as one wraps a word.

75
He returned to the pit where roofs make a false night,
watched wrists whisper to weights they’d learned to love.
He asked for a test, not a throw—“oil or marble song.”
The pit-master smiled like a latch that knows its gate.
“Scholar,” he said, “you buy more time than most.”
Rohas paid in small questions and a larger calm.
“Tonight,” the man agreed, “you may bring temple bone—
if you’ll risk more than coin: your name against mine.”

76
Downriver, Coriander sat the way water sits,
taking the shape of what holds it without giving up its own.
The cordial’s veil thinned, then thickened, then thinned again.
He counted pilings, knots, the way mist remembers posts.
A white thread tugged loose from his sash—
he let it go “by accident,” then let another go.
Where wood forgot to be watched, he chalked small as breath:
♦ for safe, ✖ for echo, ⇩ for hidden stair.

77
The barge kissed a quay no busy eye noticed,
a side-door in the city’s long white coat.
Kuhas opened a lane of linen screens and mirrors,
perfumed the air till edges felt far but never cruel.
Eldrayas spoke as hosts speak to valued guests;
Coriander answered as builders answer clients:
with courtesy so plain it leaves no handhold.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

78
Eldrayas sealed a second scroll with a calm thumb:
“Marble Slip at moonrise. Bring weight. Choose your word.”
He gave it to a boy who runs faster for cakes,
patted his head like a citizen who likes applause.
Kuhas counted vials that only scare—
mint for cold, myrtle for fog, violet for sweet unsteadiness.
“Use light,” Eldrayas said. “No harm. We want him whole.”
The boy went, a small bell rolled down a lane.

79
Borrow cracked the seal and read, then held it to the light,
as if heat might show the ghost of the hand that wrote.
“Marble Slip,” he said, “stage enough for a play.”
Rohas nodded, folding maps inside his glance.
“Moonrise,” he said, “a bite of time.”
They checked the chest—count, weigh, count again—
silver like rain muffled by cloth,
promise like a rope tested by many hands.

80
Two elders came in law’s slow sandals.
“The Assembly will witness,” the first intoned.
“The temple will not pay coin,” the second added,
“but it will read names when they return.”
The priestess set her braid straight like a plumb.
“Take no blade longer than a palm,” she said.
“Take breath enough to listen.”
Borrow grinned; Rohas said, “We will.”

81
Borrow stood again on his marble block,
not shouting now—thanking.
He named the potter who gave a lid,
the fish-seller who gave a day’s catch,
the child whose copper sang when it touched others.
The chest learned fullness until it forgot being empty.
He signed the ledger with a final red line
and tied it shut like a good wound.

82
Rohas returned to the pit at twilight’s lip.
The pit-master tapped marble with a knuckle—
the tone rang straight; dice would sing true here.
“Bring your temple bone,” the man said, “bring your quiet.”
Rohas nodded, and in a corner of his mind
Coriander’s hand placed weights on a scale.
“Sequence before strength,” Rohas heard again,
and filed the words like tools in foam.

83
Across the Krene, Eldrayas rehearsed a speech to shadows.
“Civic, not cruel,” he told the linen,
“clever, not cutting.” Mirrors did their obedient lies.
Kuhas lit bowls that breathed myrtle and a little mint;
torches learned a kind of underwater wavering.
“Pretty,” Eldrayas said. “Let them think they dream.”
He checked the rope on a platform pin—
sound, but he marked the catch for theater’s sake.

84
A novice tasked with sweeping saw the small white threading,
followed it like a thought a child can trust.
He found a ♦ where wall met stair,
then another where lanterns learn to breathe.
He ran to the priestess with broom and news.
She listened as if brooms could prophesy.
“Two elders with soft shoes,” she said, “and watch only.”
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

85
Evening gathered its blue shawl and shook it once;
stars pricked through like careful stitches.
Borrow closed the chest; two lads took poles;
Rohas tucked the cedar box into his sash.
They wore short knives that look like tools,
and left long iron to men who hadn’t sworn dawn oaths.
The harbor bell taught the first lesson of night.
Air took on that edge that means decisions.

86
At the Marble Slip the stone remembers sea-steps,
worn by sandals, smoothed by salt,
a good place for plays that pretend to be business.
Eldrayas stood already placed by a lantern’s right;
Kuhas held a reed like a flute that blows fog.
A small crowd gathered the way moths do—
not knowing what the flame is, only knowing they’ll come.
Rohas and Borrow set their chest down like a word.

87
“Citizens,” Eldrayas called, civic as a law-cape,
“we settle a debt with grace. No harm, no noise.
Relic, or Roll?” His smile could have sold a ship.
Borrow lifted the lid enough to let silver speak.
“Relic we have,” he said. “Names enough to fill a hymn.”
Rohas set the cedar box on the stone,
hands plain, sleeves rolled as if to work.
“Roll we choose, to right a slanted table.”

88
Eldrayas arched a brow like a well-dressed question.
“Bold,” he said. “Luck loves that.”
Kuhas’s reed breathed a pale strand of myrtle;
lantern light learned to waver like oars in dream-water.
“Dice,” said Rohas, and the crowd hushed properly.
The pit-master, present by agreement,
stepped forward like a magistrate called to weigh bread.
“The temple brings bone,” he said. “Let both hands wash.”

89
They washed in sight of all—salt and water,
then dried on a cloth not owned by either house.
Rohas opened cedar; bone shone like tooth of time.
Eldrayas brought his own pair, carved with ivy.
The pit-master poured oil in a shallow saucer,
dropped each pair once and listened close.
Temple bone sank straight with no side-song;
ivy cubes hummed a little crooked music.

90
“Marble,” the pit-master ruled, voice even as plumb.
“Temple bone only.” Eldrayas spread his fingers—
palms empty, wrists clean of small knives.
“By all means,” he said. “Let the gods hear clearly.”
Borrow held the chest like a harbor holds ships—
open enough for business, hard enough for weather.
Rohas set the terms like stones:
“Win and release him now, with blessing. Lose and take this coin’s half.”

91
“Half?” Eldrayas laughed, and the crowd laughed with him—
a courtier’s echo, a safe kind of mirth.
“Half,” Rohas repeated. “We pay the city back in names.”
Eldrayas glanced at Kuhas, who shrugged like mist does.
“Agreed,” he said. “Three throws. Best song wins.”
The pit-master nodded once; marble held its breath.
“Throw,” he said. “The law of even hands.”
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

92
Somewhere under bridge-shadow, Coriander felt the air change—
the way a room knows when a door opens far away.
He marked another ♦ where a plank forgets to creak,
pressed his thumb under a pin he’d weighed at noon.
“Sequence before strength,” he told the timber,
and left a chalk kiss where only patience looks.
A lantern beyond a sheet learned to swim.
He counted to twelve with a carpenter’s prayer.

93
Back at the Slip, the bone lay warm in Rohas’s palm.
He rolled them in his hand like a farmer feels seed,
then set them to dance on marble’s exact face.
They went, clacked once, turned true, lay open—
a five and two, a clean seven like a song that knows home.
Eldrayas smiled with his eyes, not his mouth,
took the cubes like a man receives pens to sign with.
He weighed nothing in oil; he liked the theater bare.

94
He cast. The bone ran farther than Rohas’s had—
a touch of showman even when show does nothing.
They landed snake and eye, a hiss under a blink.
The crowd made the sound crowds make
when luck tells a joke twice.
“Again,” said the pit-master. “Law loves three.”
Kuhas’s reed breathed a soft blue nothing.
The lanterns nodded like agreeable elders.

95
Rohas threw once more—small sound, straight slide—
four and three, again the household seven.
Borrow exhaled as if a tight knot had remembered
how rope should feel when it holds and doesn’t strangle.
Eldrayas turned his wrist with a dancer’s mercy,
cast—three and three, the lover’s six.
Last throw; the harbor bell found a slower tongue.
Moon’s first edge lipped the sea with silver.

96
Under the bridge a chalk mark waited where a hand would find,
and a pin that remembered a morning touch
sat lighter than a man who tied it thought.
Coriander breathed once and tested weight with breath alone.
Above, two dice left a showman’s hand
and hung for a heartbeat in public air.
All Roaka leaned as olives lean toward wind.
The bone began to fall, and the marble smiled.

97
They fell—bone on honest stone—
kissed once, turned twice, came to their faces:
five and five, a showman’s flourish, neat as braids.
The crowd made that soft oh cities make
when beauty does not change the sum.
The pit-master raised his palm like a lid on noise.
“Best of three is done,” he said. “Two sevens sing.
Law hears music; law is not moved by ribbons.”

98
Eldrayas bowed with art that did not sweat.
“Grace to the temple bone,” he said. “A pretty tune.”
Kuhas’s reed unlearned its mist and grew polite.
Borrow set a hand on the chest, on promise.
Rohas closed the cedar box as one closes a thought.
“Release,” he said, plain as bread.
“Release,” echoed the priestess, saffron steady.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

99
“Gladly,” Eldrayas answered, voice a silk rope,
“and let the city witness with a smile.
Roaka loves a good entrance.” He clapped once.
From the quay’s side-door a lane of linen rose,
screens and mirrors teaching light to wander,
myrtle faint as memory, mint for wakefulness—
nothing cruel, only the theater of a tide.
“Come fetch your Heart as law requires,” he said.

100
The barge nosed forward like a trained seal,
deck dressed in white as if for weddings,
lanterns set to wobble like oars in dream-water.
Borrow’s mouth went thin at the corners,
but he stepped first into the lane of gauze.
Rohas touched marble with three fingers, counting,
then followed where red went, blue shadow long.
The priestess and two elders kept a close, calm watch.

101
Mirrors made three Borrow and two Rohas,
then none, then one, the way heat makes a road walk.
“My cloak,” Borrow muttered, “is a lighthouse.
Follow the red you can’t unsee.”
Rohas did not trust color; he trusted marks.
At the screen’s hem, small and modest as good work,
a white ♦ shone like a fish-scale.
“Coriander,” he breathed, and changed his pace.

102
Ahead, a cross of chalk—✖—caught lamplight,
and a whisper of rope showed wear at one hand’s height.
“Echo chamber,” Rohas said. “Left will lie.”
They took the right where linen breathed slower.
Mint cut the myrtle; eyes cleared by degrees.
Borrow’s palm found a hinge that meant a door,
waited—counted—pressed on two not three.
The panel yielded like a thing relieved to serve.

103
People on the Slip murmured as crowds do
when plays turn clever without turning cruel.
Eldrayas bowed to both applause and doubt,
the pit-master stood like law when storms perform,
Kuhas watched with an herbalist’s quiet pride
to see a dose do only what it claims.
The priestess did not smile; she kept the count.
Salt in her pocket felt the air for lies.

104
Inside the lane, lanterns learned obedience.
A sheet lifted. A platform waited.
Upon it sat a figure white from throat to heel—
too still, too perfect, a robe remembering a man.
Borrow’s fingers flexed to throw the gauze aside;
Rohas touched his wrist and pointed down:
⇩ scratched where the pin would be,
and a chalk kiss near the catch Coriander had weighed.

105
“Sequence,” Rohas said, and Borrow grinned despite himself.
He knelt, not tearing, not forcing—the hunter learning gentler work—
found the pin that morning hands had tested,
eased it the width of a nail, then another,
until the platform sighed like honest timber
and lowered with a stagehand’s modest pride.
Beneath the robe was not emptiness but man:
Coriander, awake and calm as braced stone.

106
He looked at them the way a builder looks at ground,
liked what he saw, and rose without hurry.
“Pretty lights,” he said to the air, to Eldrayas, to Roaka.
“Good for teaching eyes to keep their measure.”
Borrow tugged the knot that held one wrist—
found it clever, smiled, and left it clever,
undid it by the path its pride preferred,
and the rope came free as if it wanted to be thanked.

107
They turned with him through gauze that knew when to part.
Mirrors gave back red-blue-white in kinder ways,
not masking, only multiplying friends for a breath.
On the Slip the city’s held breath let go—
a ripple of relief, a low civic cheer.
The priestess nodded once; the elders wrote the moment down.
The pit-master tapped the marble like a judge.
“Witnessed,” he said. “Release complete.”

108
Eldrayas inclined his head as men do
who keep the part of bargains that keeps their name alive.
“Half,” Rohas reminded gently, and Borrow lifted lid.
Silver sang a small, right song into the night.
Eldrayas did not count it with fingers like nets;
he weighed it as a man weighs future rooms.
Kuhas took no coin; he took the lesson of restraint,
and tucked it where good apothecaries keep their cures.

109
“Your pageant saved face,” Borrow said, almost friendly.
“It also saved the crowd from boredom,” Eldrayas smiled.
“The law is done,” the priestess said. “Let morning find you plain.”
Coriander touched the gauze where chalk had taught it truth,
then wiped the marks with his palm, making no show of it.
“Light is a tool,” he said, more to linen than to men.
“Tools do what hands intend. Let ours intend cleanly.”
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

110
The crowd unraveled into alleys and figs,
leaving only the taste of talk in the air.
Borrow shouldered the chest now light by half;
Rohas tucked the cedar box where oaths keep warm.
Coriander took back his white sash like a truce,
looped it twice and let its end mark wind.
They walked as three who’ve carried a weight correctly—
not straighter, just more sure about the ground.

111
Behind them Eldrayas watched with a craftsman’s eye
and recognized a join that would not creak.
Kuhas breathed the last of myrtle out and in,
thinking how a scent can teach or lie.
“Whole,” Eldrayas said, oddly satisfied.
“Unscared,” Kuhas added, pleased with his own measure.
“Annoyed at the chalk,” Eldrayas laughed, and liked them more for it.
“Annoyed at us,” Kuhas said, “and liking us enough to say so soon.”

112
Harbor-bells counted the night into lawful pieces.
The priestess walked home with braid like a small moon.
The pit-master closed his book and left no corner bent.
Roaka settled her shawls and found her clean sleep.
On the temple hill, cranes stood like tall, patient thoughts.
Water at the Krene kept saying yes in small syllables.
The moon climbed until marble learned to shine from within.
Somewhere a boy practiced a sling until it sang.

113
At Coriander’s worktable the three set the ledger down.
“Names back,” Borrow said, “before their pillows cool.”
Rohas nodded. “Half paid out, half to return,
and a public reading so shame turns not to sourness.”
Coriander added: “And scaffolds checked at dawn;
light tricks teach us to distrust easy lines.”
He drew a small map of the Slip from memory,
and in the corner wrote: sequence before strength.

114
“Sleep,” Rohas urged, counting hours like beads.
Borrow yawned like a cliff that has earned it.
Coriander banked his lamp to a small, useful star.
On a sill the three beads—clay, lapis, shell—
refused to stop being planets just because night said so.
They watched nothing and therefore saw enough.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

115
Morning did not wait for permission to be itself.
Vendors cut figs with the authority of habit.
A fish-seller, honest as brine, told the tale twice
and did not improve it because it did not need improving.
Children asked for chalk marks on their palms—
♦ and ✖ and ⇩—and made little mazes in dust.
The priestess smiled once, then only in her heart.
Law had eaten its bread and was content.

116
Borrow and Rohas moved door to door with names and thanks,
coins returning like birds that know their courtyards.
Some hands refused—“Keep it for beams,” said a widow;
“Buy a rope that sings,” said a smith.
Borrow wrote those refusals down as gifts.
Rohas wrote praises for small coppers louder than for gold.
Coriander measured plinths and found two wanting,
and made a note to scold a stone with kindness.

117
At noon’s edge Eldrayas came up the hill unmasked,
Kuhas beside him with a basket of clean oils.
No reed, no mist, no mirror—only faces.
Borrow’s hand found his hip and chose not to clench.
Rohas’s eyes flicked to the priestess; she did not shake her head.
Coriander waited as a work-yard waits—
not idle, not armed, simply ready to listen.
Eldrayas bowed without velvet this time.

118
“Debt paid,” he said. “Not only coin. A lesson.
Your cord held under show; I had hoped to fray it.
My craft is making eyes forget themselves.
Your craft is teaching them to remember.”
Kuhas lifted the oils like peace in jars.
“For the pools,” he said, “to keep them clear,
and for lamp-wicks that should not smoke.”
Coriander took the basket as one accepts tools.

119
“Work, then,” the priestess said, arriving as if she had always been there,
“if your hands want room to repent. The pools need tending,
the incense needs a keeper who measures twice.
Service is the city’s way of letting shame turn to use.”
Eldrayas nodded as men nod when the way is narrow but true.
Kuhas smiled the smile of an apothecary finding a plant he loves.
Borrow breathed out something he had not named.
Rohas wrote a word on the air and let it be: begin.

120
Thus the taking ended not with blades but balances;
thus the crowd went home with a better story to tell.
The law kept its straight back; the Muse kept tempo.
Dice lay still; chalk slept until night remembered it.
Keep cadence, Muse, for the deeper fissures under stone,
for water that wants new channels, for oils that heal and hallow,
for rivals learning liturgy by work.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

---

Song III: Water, Stone, and Spirit

121
The city woke to work that smells of cedar,
to ledgers opened like clean bread,
to ropes that remember yesterday kindly.
The priestess read the Penance Charter plain:
“Let envy turn its face to use.
Kuhas, keeper of incense and oils;
Eldrayas, warden of the Krene Pools;
service for a season, honour if well kept.”

122
Borrow’s grin set like a good knot—firm, not tight;
Rohas’s gaze took the measure of new currents.
Coriander in White unrolled his day:
flues to cut, vents to teach wind manners,
a water-clock to argue softly with the sun.
“Sequence before strength,” he said again,
and chalk made a thin white road across morning.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

123
Eldrayas went to the pools with sleeves bared,
took reeds like old friends between his fingers,
scooped silt, lifted leaf, sang under breath—
not spell but craft, the liturgy of care.
He set a boy to skim with a willow ring,
taught him to see the difference between shadow and stain.
“Water remembers stories,” he said.
“Help it keep only the ones that clear the eye.”

124
Kuhas entered the herb-room where light turns green,
shelves ranked like soldiers of scent.
He counted drops as if counting small mercies:
myrtle one, frankincense two, cedar three,
then thinned with oil until heat would not bully it.
He wrote the ratios in a neat, apothecary hand,
and burned a pinch to watch the smoke think.
“Mild,” he murmured, pleased. “Let piety breathe.”

125
Coriander traced air through stone—
a finger-walk from brazier to lintel to sky.
Here a flue, there a cunning bend;
bronze disks fixed where whispers go to play.
He tapped once; the wall told back a low note.
Children laughed when the sound found them outside.
“Let the temple sing to its own street,” he smiled,
“so work is hymn even for those kept waiting.”

126
Toward noon a pilgrim swayed under incense,
sat kindly down before falling farther.
No bruise, only a face gone too pale.
Kuhas kneeled with a cup of willow-bark brew,
fanned with a palm-leaf, thinned the smoke to silk.
The woman sighed, colour remembered courage.
“Too rich for morning,” Kuhas judged.
“Evenings only. And doors more open.”

127
Borrow trained apprentices by the quarry wall,
sling-stones singing the measure of arcs;
Eldrayas paused, then swapped a boy with him—
“Your wrist is a rope. Let it listen.”
They laughed, and the boy learned twice.
Rohas, counting impacts against a chalked grid,
nodded once as men do when numbers stop fighting them.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

128
On ridge patrol Rohas found dry tongues in ruts
where winter streams once corrected pride.
Eldrayas stood with him and read the same page:
water prints where water fails to sign,
springs that gossip softer than last year.
“Deepen channels?” Eldrayas asked without swagger.
“Taboo,” Rohas answered. “But law can listen.”
They turned their steps toward sandals that judge.

129
Before the Assembly they spoke craft without shame—
no perfume of trick, no borrowed thunder.
Kuhas brought jars—sop of lime, bloom of incense—
and let the elders smell a choice become necessity.
Eldrayas presented reeds, clear water in a glass bowl,
held high so even the suspicious could see.
Coriander set a model on a mat:
small dams like eyebrows, sluices like calm tongues.

130
“Not more water,” Rohas said, voice level as a plumb,
“but wiser paths for what we have.”
Borrow’s red flared only to warm the room:
“Give us spades and rules. We’ll keep both clean.”
Votes clicked like beads moved one place forward.
The priestess gave the old taboo a new wording—
“Touch not the spring; tend the run”—
and the city felt larger by a careful inch.

131
Work began where reeds consented:
men in sandals, boys with jokes,
Eldrayas knee-deep, praise low in his throat.
He shaved a channel to a thoughtful curve,
laughed when the water liked it and went.
Coriander set markers: turquoise tiles like small ponds
laid at intervals to tell the eye the truth.
The water-clock kept the sun honest and the foreman kinder.

132
The night hummed once—lanterns took a small breath—
a tremor like a cat through a sleeping house.
Coriander felt it in mortar before he heard it in air,
knelt, pressed ear to a plinth’s private voice.
A hairline whispered where no hairline belonged.
He chalked it, quiet as a doctor marks a pulse,
and found Rohas by the habit of finding right men.
“Stone asked for company,” he said. “Let’s listen at dawn.”

133
At pools, children argued if the silver-scale carp
was one fish or a family who share a shine.
Eldrayas taught them to see by patience:
“Count the scar near the fin; he has his own moon.”
Kuhas came with oils for lamp-wicks,
hands smelling of cedar, face of a man saving small days.
He caught a fever before it grew fangs,
smiled when the child’s brow chose coolness.

134
The agora rumor-board, chalked each week,
wrote: water steadier, incense kinder, cranes still patient.
Borrow erased a crude face someone drew of Eldrayas,
didn’t comment, taught a knot that saves lives.
Rohas set a pin where numbers wanted one.
Coriander pencilled a new vent as if adding a note to a song.
The priestess read names of donors like a prayer’s spine.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

135
The matron of hymns asked for a signature scent:
“Something that holds memory without holding throats.”
Kuhas mixed orchis and cedar, myrtle and a laugh of lemon;
Eldrayas frowned at lime fumes needed for purity.
“Unmixable,” the matron warned, pleased to test.
Coriander drew twin flues on wax:
one to carry song, one to carry rules.
“Let air do what arguments can’t,” he said.

136
Installation day: bronze throat married to clay lung,
boys at bellows, girls with hymn-boards.
Kuhas lit the new blend; it walked the naos like a friend.
Lime’s stern breath learned a lane outside.
The matron’s eyes wet a little without admitting it.
Borrow pretended dust; Rohas did not tease him.
Eldrayas leaned on a pillar, surprised to be proud.
The priestess marked a small star beside Kuhas’s name.

137
Festival saffron learned the art of falling,
fine gold sifted from parapets like kind weather.
The pools caught it, made a sky you can touch.
Eldrayas skimmed with a gentle hand,
kept some petals to dry for vows.
Kuhas bottled the day’s scent in waxed-clay jars—
“for winter,” he said, “when courage forgets its summer.”
Roaka wore her best blue and pretended it was casual.

138
Mid-afternoon a wetness showed where no spilling was—
a dark mouth opening through clean white dust.
Coriander knelt and did not hurry.
The hairline of night had scavenged a cousin by day.
He set plumbs like quiet shepherds round a stray.
Rohas came with string, Borrow with lads and calm.
“Hoists halt,” the engineer said, voice gentle but that kind of final.
The foreman blinked, then nodded as men do when paid by truth.

139
Assembly does not like still cranes at noon.
Lawyers warmed words in their hands like figs.
Borrow carried the ledger, names bright as coins;
Rohas brought the water-clock to say what numbers say.
Kuhas spoke ethics in a room that rarely asks;
Eldrayas described weight as if it were a person he knew.
The priestess listened, braid a plumb-line.
“Stop is not failure,” she said. “It is the other half of go.”

140
Night survey under lantern discipline:
Coriander’s chalk made constellations on stone—
dots for weights, lines for wishes,
a humble sky a mason can steer by.
Rohas measured echoes, taught boys to count without hurry.
Borrow held silence the way a good shield holds space.
Eldrayas diverted overflow to press kindly on the fissure’s flank.
Kuhas warmed pitch that sets cold, a winter logic in summer hands.

141
They poured by prayer, not panic—
thin lines that find cracks the way light finds a keyhole.
Stone took the help without drama;
ropes learned patience again, and liked it.
Coriander watched the plumb still its small tremor,
wrote hold on wax and underlined it once.
Rohas smiled so slightly the lamp had to guess it.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

142
At dawn they posted the chart in the agora:
a drawing simple as a child’s sea,
arrows where water now lends weight,
cross-hatching where carts must wait their turn.
People read, pointed, shrugged, approved—
the civic murmur that oils a big machine.
Borrow returned three coins a widow tried to press back.
“Keep,” she said. “You returned enough already.”

143
By evening the five had learned new grammar—
red for heart, blue for plan, white for measure,
green for mercy smoke, silver for water’s wit.
They moved like a figure found on an old shard:
five points of one star, each holding the other up.
The priestess smiled where no one had to see.
A gull wrote a lazy blessing over the Krene.
Roaka slept with scaffolds that did not creak.

144
Thus the song bends from show to service,
from mirrors to measures, from ransom to repair.
No swords, but edges; no blood, but vows that cost.
Keep cadence, Muse, for deeper stone—
for the tablet under pools that hums of elder rites,
for elders who will balk at what helps them,
for the day the water sings too loud to ignore.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

145
Near noon the Krene changed its mind a little—
not louder, just a different key,
as if a singer had found a truer note by accident.
Eldrayas, knee-deep, felt the sound in shin-bone first,
a hum that learned his marrow and approved.
The silver-scale carp wrote a brief ellipse,
then held still as if listening for its own name.
“Priestess,” he called, “the water remembers something new.”

146
Coriander came with a mason’s mallet and a listener’s face,
knelt, laid knuckles to stucco, then ear, then the small brass rod
he uses when stone wants to whisper to a friend.
The hum walked up the rod like a careful dancer,
ran into his palm and stayed there, steady.
“Not crack,” he said, “not harm. Cavity: a chamber that breathes.”
Rohas counted pulses under his breath—
twelve to a breath, then a rest, then twelve again.

147
Children hushed without being told;
women shaded eyes; even vendors stacked figs quieter.
The bronze “talking disks” along the temple wall—
to please waiting ears—took the hum and made it human,
a low, clean vowel with no quarrel in it.
“Underpool,” Coriander judged, pointing where limewash
showed a roundness no brush had ever meant.
Borrow’s hand learned patience and did not ask to pry.

148
“Petals,” Kuhas said, already unwrapping saffron,
letting gold fall like slow, small daylight on the skin.
Each thread curled, drifted, then chose a single seam—
a spiral lane where water wanted to remember.
“There,” Rohas breathed, tracing with air alone a snail of current.
Coriander nodded. “A stone that sings because it is hollow.”
The priestess’s braid stayed still, which means consent.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

149
“Touch not the spring; tend the run,” she quoted,
eyes on law and mercy at once.
“We will not wound the source,” Coriander said,
“only borrow its path and give it back improved.”
He sketched a coffer of planks and clay,
a way to lean the water kindly from one cheek to the other,
enough bare floor to see what asks for seeing,
no dry stone where living water should speak.

150
That night they made the lane with soft hands—
boys with wicker, men with spades that know their manners,
Eldrayas steering flow like a herdsman steers by look.
The pool bowed to the coffer and left a crescent bare,
not shame, not injury—just a shoulder discovered.
Kuhas moved the carp to a waiting bowl with praise,
laid green boughs where moonlight calms.
The hum kept friendly company with stars.

151
White showed under white: a disk of older stucco,
and under that—stone made level by hands long gone,
its face inked with mineral red that had not learned to fade.
Rohas brushed silt as if waking a child;
Borrow held a lamp the way a father steadies steps.
A spiral rose from the center like a slow galaxy,
five small points meeting where breath begins,
runes around the rim that looked like water learning letters.

152
Kuhas lifted the air to his nose and frowned gently.
“Not rot,” he said, “not stale. Resin—mastic—
old sealant that keeps words from forgetting.”
Coriander’s smile flickered like a good idea finding feet.
“Sequence before strength,” he murmured, a ritual now.
Wedges, not levers; sand bed, not hammer’s pride.
They readied cloth and oil to greet the elder face.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

153
They did not lift; they lowered the ground from the stone,
admitting it like a guest through the door it prefers.
Eldrayas managed water so the edge stayed tender;
Kuhas anointed cracks that wanted to be friends.
Rohas called the count; Borrow breathed the beat.
When at last the tablet stood free enough to speak,
the hum softened like a throat that’s had its sip,
and the bronze disks offered back a warmer tone.

154
The script was not today’s, nor yesterday’s either;
letters like little rivers joined hand to hand.
The priestess traced with a finger that never lies to meaning,
found echoes of their god’s good name inside an older mirror.
“Arthephos,” she said, but differently—
Arthē-phaos: courage-skill-light, three-fold.
“Read,” Borrow begged; Rohas waited with the quiet that helps reading.
Coriander’s lamp learned to hold still like a thought.

155
She read: “When craft takes counsel of courage,
and courage of craft, under the witness of clear water,
then work stands; if either boasts alone,
let the pool unmake the boast and make the measure clean.”
The circle listened as a throat listens before ‘yes.’
Old men let go a breath they’d held since boys.
“This is not other,” the priestess said. “It is root.”
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

156
Elders debated as elders must:
“What if the root asks too much of the branch?”
“What if the branch forgets it has a root?”
No shouting—only the solemn music of care.
Borrow’s red wanted to flare; he set it down and let Rohas speak.
“Let the finding change us by an inch each day,”
Rohas said. “Inches build miles better than leaps break ankles.”
Coriander’s nod was a nail set true with one tap.

157
“Sanctuary,” the priestess proposed, “not shrine.
Let the stone be seen and kept, not jostled for luck.”
Kuhas offered oils that halt the greedy air;
Eldrayas pledged reeds to veil without erasing.
“Write the words for many eyes,” Borrow asked.
“Sing them for many ears,” Rohas added.
“Make a place where water’s voice is welcomed,” Coriander said,
“and let craft learn to listen where it works.”

158
The Assembly weighed—then leaned toward the better weight.
A railing, low and honest; a canopy that keeps hands kind;
a plaque in common script beneath the elder writing.
Children will read first; their elders will pretend not to cry.
Eldrayas took the warden’s duty without silk on it;
Kuhas signed for incense measures fit for lungs.
Roaka moved one careful inch toward more itself.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

159
Workdays found new steps: skim, bless, record.
Coriander sealed hairlines with cedar and lime,
a marriage that ages like patience.
Borrow stood guard when carts learned to wait,
turning jokes into fences that offend no one.
Rohas wrote a map for water to remember,
little blue tiles where flow should turn.
The carp returned, approved, and drew his silver moon.

160
“Let it sing,” a boy begged, palm on rail.
“Stone has a voice,” Coriander agreed, “but give it a throat.”
He fixed bronze tongues—thin, exact—as a harp under the walkway,
so when the current passed in its new wisdom
a scale would answer, soft as a mother’s humming.
Kuhas timed the incense to lift when notes are warm,
Eldrayas kept the reeds teaching wind to be gentle.
The first chord rose like bread and made the noon kinder.

161
Crowds arrived with their quiet faces on.
They put fingers to lips and found they didn’t need to warn.
Borrow leaned on a post and believed in not rushing;
Rohas tracked the way a melody maps a mind.
Coriander, white as habit, tuned a tongue by a hair,
and the chord settled like a bird in a right-sized tree.
A child laughed exactly once, perfectly placed.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

162
Rumor-board chalked: Old words under pools;
new song above; cranes paused and then pleased.
A widow who’d kept her ring now kept her afternoons there,
counting breaths in fives and finding peace.
A mason with cracked pride brought back his temper and kept it.
The matron of hymns stole a phrase and paid it back with thanks.
Even the lawyers stood a little squarer in their sandals.
The city felt taller by something no wall measured.

163
Eldrayas learned the names of each ripple
and where children like to lean too far.
Kuhas taught apprentices to stir with wrists, not elbows,
so smoke never bullies a prayer.
Borrow and Rohas took the high watch together,
one with jokes, one with lists,
and Coriander’s chalk found new modest places to improve.
None of it was thunder; all of it held.

164
So the day the water sang too loud to ignore
turned out to be the day Roaka learned to listen—
not by terror, not by loss, but by a door opened underfoot.
The tablet kept its counsel and gave it freely;
the pools did their old work and their new;
the cranes, patient birds, bowed and waited their turn.
Keep cadence, Muse, for deeper tests by gentler means.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

165
A whisper learned boots and found the agora—
“Too friendly with offenders,” “temple coin in rival hands.”
Chalk grew meaner on a corner board;
someone drew scales that tipped against white.
The law, which walks when rumor runs, arrived measured:
a Magistrate of Measures with clerks like careful pins,
rod and plumb, a waxed book for numbers,
and a face that saves praise for after proof.

166
He climbed the hill without theater,
counted steps as if steps might cheat,
touched ropes the way a banker touches coin.
“Engineer,” he said, “you hire from last week’s trouble.”
“From last week’s lesson,” Coriander answered mild.
“Then teach me,” said the Magistrate, “with things that weigh.”
Borrow set his jaw to even; Rohas wrote calm on air.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

167
Ledgers breathed on a stone ledge, plain as bread:
Borrow’s book of gifts and names,
Rohas’s chart of hours and halts,
Coriander’s wax of weights and water paths.
The clerks scratched neat rain across their tablets;
the Magistrate listened with his hands—
to plumb, to rod, to timber that remembers dawn.
Kuhas and Eldrayas stood one pace back and did not fidget.

168
“Proof,” the Magistrate said at last, “that water
does not flatter you, and stone does not lie from fear.”
Coriander nodded as men nod who expected this hour.
“A water-clock in broad day,” he said, “and a hymn of plumbs.”
He sketched on dust, not to impress—
two cisterns, a sluice that speaks in known tongues,
bronze tongues under the walkway ready to sing true,
and a line the crowd can watch with their own eyes.

169
They set it as the city sets a stage for plays:
boys with good wrists, girls with straight sight,
Borrow’s loud kindness moving ladders where they should go,
Rohas counting beats for the sluice’s opening,
Eldrayas trimming reeds that fuss at small vortices,
Kuhas cooling incense to a breath that blesses, not boasts.
The priestess marked the start with a grain of salt in water.
The Magistrate folded arms in a way that does not warm or freeze.

170
“Release,” Coriander called, and Rohas raised a palm;
the sluice spoke in stainless syllables;
a thread of turquoise walked its given lane.
Plumbs trembled, found themselves, stood still.
Bronze tongues answered with a pitch that law can love—
no theater, just a note that means “enough.”
The crowd leaned like olives toward wind.
The Magistrate’s mouth forgot its habit and almost smiled.

171
“Again,” he said; “with carts in place; with men on stone.”
Borrow loaded a platform to market weight;
Rohas added boys the way a teacher adds examples.
Eldrayas braided flow that pushes but does not shove;
the bronze answered at the same true note.
“Sequence before strength,” Coriander breathed, not quiet, not loud—
a phrase becoming public property.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

172
A gray elder cleared his throat for doubt.
“What of wind? What of feast? What of long years’ forgetfulness?”
Kuhas lifted a jar: “Here’s the measure for smoke at dusk.”
Eldrayas lifted reed and rule: “Here’s how we tune after storms.”
Rohas set his palm to the chart: “Here’s winter’s lane and summer’s.”
Borrow laughed once, not to mock, but to break the fear’s crust:
“And here’s a rope that holds because we’ve asked it kindly first.”
The elder looked and let his shoulders drop one inch.

173
The Magistrate walked the pool’s low rail,
read the tablet under water with careful eyes,
touched the bronze that sings, the tile that teaches flow.
He set his seal where seals should go—
on chart, on ledger, on the rule that “stop is not failure.”
He spoke for clerks and law and those who love clean sums:
“Work stands. Service stands. Keep names. Keep notes. Keep breath.”
Roaka exhaled the way a city does when shoes fit.

174
Assembly, which likes to clothe consent in words,
dressed the moment: “Eldrayas, Warden of the Krene,”
“Kuhas, Guardian of Incense and Breath,”
“Coriander, Master of Measures for this work.”
No garlands, only tools given publicly—
a reed knife, a spoon, a plumb whose line is new.
Borrow thumped shoulders like friendly mallets;
Rohas shook hands as if aligning timbers.

175
Days learned their music: skim, tune, mark, teach.
Children sang the bronze scale under the walkway—
soft as crumbs on a plate, sure as mothers’ hums.
The matron of hymns braided the pool-note into liturgy;
lawyers stood squarer in their sandals without knowing why.
Coriander’s chalk found fewer places to improve—
a sign of good work, not of idleness.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

176
The dedication drew near like weather you can trust:
scaffolds combed, stone joined, flues persuaded,
incense tested until breath kept liking it.
Borrow drilled a choir of slingers to ring the hill with rhythm;
Rohas timed the stair-climb so no breath would break;
Eldrayas taught children to keep hands kind at rails;
Kuhas bottled festival blend and labeled it with care.
The priestess wrote the order of vows on a tablet smooth as sea.

177
Night before—no omens, just a small wind
that walks the city putting loose things tidy.
Coriander checked one tongue of bronze by a hair;
it thanked him with a note that felt like straightening a picture.
Borrow dreamt of knots that tie themselves and wake smiling;
Rohas dreamt of water running where maps predict it.
Eldrayas lay awake long enough to think of mirrors,
then turned away from that old craft and slept.

178
Dawn wore saffron without apology.
Processions moved like sentences that know their verbs.
Children with laurel, women with breads stamped true,
men with tools cleaned to a friendly shine.
The priestess walked at the pace a city can keep;
her braid was a plumb-line you could sing by.
Coriander in white placed hand on stone, not to own it—
to greet it like a colleague reporting for duty.

179
“Name what you bring,” she asked the crowd,
and names rose like swallows and made patterns:
“Patience,” “Skill,” “Courage,” “Measure,” “Mercy,” “Song.”
The bronze tongues caught each word and gave it back in kind.
Kuhas lit the blend that lets lungs keep joy;
Eldrayas opened the reeds to let wind behave.
Borrow and Rohas flanked Coriander as if he were a road,
and people could go safely where he goes.

180
The first hymn rose and found the pool’s answer,
a harmony that made noon nearer though sun was low.
Children put fingers to lips and then laughed at themselves,
no need—everyone already listening well.
Coriander raised his palm; the bronze stilled exact.
He turned a valve the width of a breath; a higher note arrived,
like a gull finding the right line over a calm wave.
The Magistrate, present in plain sandals, let himself smile fully.

181
Offerings came without theater:
Borrow laid a boar-tusk charm in new shadow,
Rohas a cord with measures burned in its spine,
Kuhas a vial labeled “winter courage,”
Eldrayas reeds woven into a small, perfect gate.
Coriander chalked a spiral smaller than a coin
on the back of the plinth where no one would stare—
for the stone to know they remembered its elder.

182
A wind-shoulder tried the flues; they answered well.
A cart groaned at the waiting mark; men laughed and waited.
A child’s sandal scuffed near the sanctuary rail;
Eldrayas’s hand was gentler than a warning and twice as clear.
The silver carp wrote a circle and approved.
No thunder, no miracle—just what should be working, working.
Roaka recognized itself and liked the taste.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

183
Then, because cities test love by chores,
a tether slipped at the upper hoist—
not danger, just the kind of shout that fright finds.
Borrow’s foot caught the loose tail clean;
Rohas’s palm lifted a pin to ease the catch;
Coriander called the count like oars in a tight inlet—
one, hold, two, ease, three, set.
The timber settled with a sigh that taught watching boys a craft.

184
The priestess raised her staff not for storm but for seal.
“Hear,” she said, and the bronze made room,
“Work wedded to courage under witness of clear water.
Let the first feast be the labor that follows,
not the sleep that forgets how we arrived.”
The crowd answered like a single oar finding water.
Bread passed, figs split, a small fish blessed a child’s palm.
The dedication felt like breathing after a well-told truth.

185
At dusk the white walls learned rose from the west;
the sea traded silver with scaffolds now at rest.
Kuhas corked the last jar; Eldrayas coiled the last line;
Borrow found a boy’s lost sling and taught a better knot;
Rohas marked a tile a half-hand wrong for tomorrow’s fix.
Coriander sat on a step and let not-thinking do its good work.
The first star signed its single-letter name over the pool.
Roaka hummed in the key she’d chosen with care.

186
Rumor-board chalked a different sort of talk:
Breath easy at incense, Water sings plain, Crane birds proud.
Someone sketched five points of a star—
red, blue, white, green, and silver—
and no one rubbed it out.
The Magistrate walked by, left it there on purpose.
The law likes when beauty does not change the sum.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

187
Night brought quiet tasks that feel like prayers:
oils checked, ropes laid, tiles straightened by a thumb,
a ledger line finished square.
Kuhas wrote a recipe twice so forgetfulness would blush.
Eldrayas taught a novice how to hear algae before eyes do.
Borrow told a story with more truth than swagger;
Rohas fixed a schedule with room for interruptions.
Coriander sharpened chalk and did not say why it pleased him.

188
In the dark a small, old fear turned once and went to sleep—
not banished, but befriended into smaller shape.
The city had learned to prefer proof to mirrors,
song to fog, rails to whispered fences.
Tomorrow would be work again, as it should be.
The tablet under water kept giving its one wise sentence,
and the bronze kept repeating it in a scale anyone could hum.
Keep cadence, Muse, for the next hinge where choice will matter.

189
For enemies do not vanish; they enroll in choirs.
A soft-voiced sophist weighed words like dice,
planning a speech that makes caution sound like love.
A jealous patron counted rooms that might have been his praise.
But five men had learned to stand as one tool with many edges—
hunter’s guard, hunter’s plan, engineer’s measure,
herbal mercy, water’s wit—
and Roaka, which watches more than she says, had noticed.

190
Thus the temple stood not finished—
for nothing living is—but standing well:
breath with its lanes, water with its rule,
stone with its patient friends.
Children slept as if they’d helped, which they had,
and elders slept as if they had not been in the way, which they were not.
The sea hummed under moon like a harp kept in tune.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

191
If there must be a closing for this day’s song,
let it be simple as tools put away clean:
chalk capped, plumb hung, reed rinsed, wick trimmed,
ledger tied, gate latched, braid unpinned.
Let it be a breath saved for the climb to come,
a hand left open because tomorrow needs holds.
The Muse sits on a step and nods—good, again.
And Roaka answers with a low, contented chord.

192
Thus ends the measure that begins the feast;
thus ends the feast that begins the work.
Keep the road, Muse, to where counsel dresses as comfort
and comfort learns to pay its tithe to truth.
Ahead lie speeches with honeyed barbs,
a storm that tests the lanes we trust,
and choices that ask for inches, not leaps.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

---

Song IV: Honeyed Counsel, Salted Sea

193
Morning wore its civic cloak again,
chalk at the rumor-board learning neatness,
bronze tongues sleeping between breaths.
But under talk that smells of bread
a softer thread unrolled—caution trimmed like kindness,
doubt perfumed to pass for care.
A name moved with it like a boat in hush:
Leandros, soft-voiced builder of agreeable snares.

194
He stood where steps make speeches stand tall,
hands empty as good intentions, mantle clean.
“Citizens,” he began, with a hush that praises first,
“we love craft; we honor courage; we delight in song.
But moderation is the elder sister of every virtue.
When cords bind too close, the city breathes less.
Three friends are fine; five is fellowship.
But must fellowship wear a seal that rivals law?”

195
Smiles answered—safe, approving, careful not to clap.
Leandros went on like oil poured thin:
“Ask not if these men mean well—they plainly do.
Ask if our lanes of love now bypass our lanes of law.
Ask if pools that sing will drown debate.
Ask if stopping cranes at noon will teach idlers to be saints.
We have built a temple; let us not build a tribe
that thinks itself the city’s heart and hand.”

196
Borrow’s red rose like a dawn that hurries;
Rohas’s palm found his sleeve and steadied it.
Coriander in white stood with tools, not words—
plumb-line coiled, wax tablet at rest.
The priestess watched like a plumb that listens.
The Magistrate of Measures, present in plain sandals,
looked not at faces but at the small things—
hands that twitch, brows that settle, knots that forgive.

197
Leandros spread his empty hands wider.
“Mercy for offenders? Yes—let service redeem.
But office granted by affection? Caution.
Let us Raise or Recognition—choose wisely.”
He set his trap in silk: Raise the fleet,
divert a portion of temple tithes to trireme oars;
or grant Recognition—seal their circle with a public badge—
and risk, he said, “a fashion for small kings in civic cloth.”

198
Whispers measured the slope between the hills of Yes and No.
Borrow tasted iron on his tongue—oath-iron, not rage.
Rohas said, “We answer with things that weigh,”
and Coriander nodded once, as if a beam had found true.
The Magistrate lifted a palm like a lid on steam.
“Speak, Engineer. But briefly, and with proofs.”
Coriander’s white did not shine; it explained,
the way a good drawing explains without flattering ink.

199
“Sequence before strength,” he said, public now,
“and stop is half of go. These are not private spells.
We wrote them on planks so boys can learn;
we hung them in air so mothers hear.
If we have erred, weigh error with plumb, not perfume.
Ask water if these lanes flatter it;
ask stone if our halts saved faces and roofs.
Ask ledgers if our coin returned to hands that lent.”

200
He turned and called for the water-clock in sun,
for bronze tongues to sound their government note,
for the chart where winter’s lane is blue and summer’s gold.
He showed the inch the city grew by halting—
parapets not rushed, pins not proud,
names kept, thanks read, the wide use of small care.
“Recognition is not a crown,” he said, “but a ledger open.
Raise oars if you must; do not cut planks to feed them.”

201
Leandros smiled a smile that likes both cake and praise.
“Who would cut planks? I ask for a cup dipped, not a barrel spilled.
Beloved Engineer, you’ve charmed us with clean notes.
But charm itself is a civic risk; song can smother thought.
Let us be moderate with beauty.”
He made a small bow that borrowed Coriander’s light.
Borrow breathed once like a bow unstrung,
glad of Rohas’s hand that remembered his sleeve.

202
The Assembly called the question to the Pnyx at noon,
where voices sit like birds on a stone wave.
Raise or Recognition—two tablets, two lines of feet.
Elders took counsel of figs; boys guessed like boys.
The priestess folded arms in a way that blesses weighing.
The Magistrate set his seal on the method—
no tricks, no reeds, no mists, no drums.
Roaka liked the rules that morning; they tasted clean.

203
Before the lines were drawn, the sky forgot its blue
and found a lead that ships don’t love.
Wind thumbed the edges of awnings;
pigeons ran a footnote on the stones and left.
Eldrayas looked up with the weather in his shin-bone,
Kuhas set cork to jars that hate panic.
Rohas counted cloud-layers, found more than he wanted.
Borrow bared his teeth at the horizon like a friendly dare.

204
Leandros lifted his voice to catch the last dry light.
“See? Even sky votes for caution.
If the storm comes and lanes fail, who bears the blame?
Not song, but hubris; not me, but those who hurried stops.”
Coriander turned his face to the hill, not the man.
“Sequence,” he said to Borrow and Rohas,
“then strength. Call boys; shutter tongues; open the right flues.”
The priestess nodded. “Debate waits. Weather does not.”

205
Lines that were forming learned to run instead—
not to vote, but to lash awnings, stow bread,
carry infants, fetch the poles kept for such changes.
Borrow’s red appeared where fear goes thin—
at cart’s wheel, at ladder’s foot, at the place
where a small hand needs a joke more than it needs a law.
Rohas assigned corners to lads with clear eyes:
“Count eight heartbeats; then move. Count eight again.”

206
Eldrayas dropped into water up to his vow,
cut a reed that choked a new whirl’s patience,
set two willow rings to shepherd floating grit.
Kuhas cooled the incense to mercy only,
no bravado-smoke to bully lungs that wanted sky.
Coriander climbed where bronze learns its pitch,
turned a breath-width here, a hair there,
tuning the temple to sing with wind, not against it.

207
The first fat drops stitched the market shut;
then came a seam that tore and mended and tore again.
Bronze tongues found their low, lawful note—
not panic, not triumph; simply the right key.
Water chose the tiles it had been taught,
hesitated once, then remembered maps.
The carp made a small moon under reeds that understood.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

208
On the Pnyx Leandros tried a last sweet thread:
“See how spectacle distracts the vote.”
But his voice went thin in the honest rain;
even sophistry knows when to find cover.
He joined the work—because citizens do—
held a rope, passed a child, bit a knot.
He looked surprised at his own usefulness,
and the storm looked only at its work and passed.

209
A gust found a scaffold pin that wanted weakness;
Borrow’s hand was there before fear knew it,
Rohas’s count landed where weight needed breath.
Coriander called: “One—hold; two—ease; three—set,”
the same words that saved a morning once.
Eldrayas bled a pool with the grace of an opened book;
Kuhas swabbed a slick so sandals would choose wisdom.
Plumbs trembled, then remembered themselves and stood still.

210
Rain’s will waned without losing dignity.
Gutters spoke their long sentences to the harbor;
tiles shone like things that have done right.
Children found their laughs where men had left them.
The Magistrate wiped his face and wrote one line:
protocol kept; lanes true; no loss.
The priestess unpinned braid and pinned it back—
the gesture that tells a city: Now, we may argue well.

211
So they returned, damp and more themselves,
to the tablets waiting like patient dogs.
Raise or Recognition—the words felt smaller now,
as if the storm had moved the frame a hand’s breadth out.
Borrow looked at Rohas; Rohas looked at the hill;
Coriander looked at hands that had remembered how to help.
Eldrayas and Kuhas stood where they could be seen, not starring,
just present in the way a hinge remembers doors.

212
Leandros cleared his throat the way rain clears roofs.
“My caution stands,” he said, but gentler,
“and yet my thanks to those whose stops were ready.
Let us recognize what worked without crowning men;
let us raise oars without starving roofs.
Choose both but shave both. Moderation.”
He smiled as if discovering the middle had been his plan.
Roaka, which isn’t dumb, smiled back with only half her mouth.

213
Feet moved. The Pnyx learned two streams.
The line for Recognition grew like a thought that makes sense later;
the line for Raise held steady like a duty you don’t brag about.
Clerks counted with hands that still smelled of rope.
The Magistrate nodded as numbers found each other.
The priestess’s braid lay quiet, which means peace.
Result: recognize the circle—as office, not throne;
grant the fleet a tenth—not a fifth—of new tithes.

214
Leandros bowed to the math as citizens bow to weather.
He was good at losing beautifully;
he made it look like teaching.
“Wisdom, then,” he said, “and a lesson I meant to give.”
Borrow almost laughed; Rohas actually did, but softly.
Coriander shook rain from his sleeve and got back to work.
The bronze tongues learned again the key for ordinary days.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

215
At the pools a girl traced the spiral with two fingers,
asked Eldrayas if storms talk different under water.
“They do,” he said, “but stone translates kindly.”
Kuhas poured a ribbon of clear into the rail’s small cup—
a libation shy as a thank-you whispered at a door.
Coriander chalked a dot no bigger than a fly’s foot,
a note to tune a tongue when the air dries too much.
Rohas marked the hour that fear sat down and ate.

216
Evening found the market laughing with wet hair.
The rumor-board wrote: Storm tried; lanes held;
Leandros helped; the carp kept its moon.
Someone sketched five points of a star again
and added a sixth in pencil: law.
No one rubbed it out. The Magistrate walked by,
paused, and put the lightest line around the sixth—
not to own it, only to admit it belonged.

217
Leandros came with a towel like any neighbor,
handed it to Borrow without a speech.
“Your count,” he said to Rohas, “is a rope I can trust.”
“To yours when you’re not tying knots with air,” Rohas returned.
“Teach me the bronze tongues,” Leandros urged Coriander,
“so I’ll hear more honestly than I speak.”
“Come at dawn,” the engineer said. “Bring bread.”
Kuhas smiled and opened a jar that smelled like rain made gentle.

218
The Assembly, pleased with itself in the way
that doesn’t break chairs or laws, dispersed.
The hill let out the breath it holds for arguments.
Priestess, braid damp, wrote three small words on dust:
keep small promises. Boys scuffed them by accident,
which is how such orders enter common roads.
Borrow’s red dried to rust and looked good anyhow.
Rohas rolled the cedar box in cloth and counted stars.

219
Night worked at being night with competence.
Ropes hung easy; plumbs slept; the pool’s hum
matched a mother’s slow, unremarkable song.
Coriander sharpened chalk and thought of nothing.
Eldrayas set a reed aside that once made fog
and chose one that makes a whistle kids can copy.
Kuhas labeled an oil for joints that ache when storms turn.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

220
But stories do not learn rest from a single storm.
Leandros, who had meant to win by silk,
found himself liking the honest weight of help.
That made him dangerous in a better way—
able now to argue from truth instead of tricks.
He planned a spectacle of words that proves its own limits,
a festival lecture on “The Comfort That Calls Itself Counsel,”
to test if Roaka loves mirrors less than measures.

221
The priestess approved a public forum under the stoa,
where shade makes thinking gentler.
“Bring proofs,” she wrote on the board. “Bring songs.
Bring a tool that speaks better than a sentence.”
Borrow volunteered a sling, not to boast,
but to show how arcs obey even when moods don’t.
Rohas mapped a simple problem boys can solve in front of men.
Coriander promised a plumb that lies if you let wind bully it.

222
Eldrayas would bring reeds, one that hisses, one that sings;
Kuhas would light three smokes—too much, too little, just right—
and ask the crowd which day they want for lungs.
Leandros would do the dangerous thing—
admit a flaw and show how it hides in a friendlier coat.
“Moderation without courage is just delay,” he drafted;
“courage without moderation is noise.”
For once his halves looked ready to marry without a lawyer.

223
Roaka went to bed early because the morning asked for ears.
The bronze tongues, tuned low, did not wake babies.
The carp drew one last circle and then forgot it on purpose.
The sea laid down its shivers and slept on its side.
Borrow dreamed of throwing precisely at a word and hitting sense;
Rohas dreamed of a board where sums teach themselves;
Coriander dreamed of a plumb-line that laughs kindly at wind.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

224
Dawn will open the stoa like a book;
we will read from tools and from the breath between them.
Keep cadence, Muse, for the forum where comfort learns its name,
where counsel pays its tithe to proof,
and where a city claps not loud but right on time.
Ahead, a small child will ask the question that fixes pride,
and five men will answer without needing a stage.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

225
Dawn opened the stoa like a careful book;
benches learned order; shade learned its work.
The rumor-board wore a clean face: Bring proofs. Bring songs.
Bring a tool that speaks better than a sentence.
Mothers came with children who ask right questions;
old men came with ears ready to be young.
The priestess drew a small line in dust—
not a border, a cue: Begin where hands can help.

226
Bronze tongues on the hill held their breath for once;
here the lyre was a sling, a reed, a plumb.
Leandros stood first, not in silk but in linen honest,
and laid a polished disk of bronze on a low stool,
and a basin of water beside it, plain as thirst.
“Comfort,” he said, “is a mirror that flatters;
counsel’s water ripples at the touch of truth.”
He dipped a finger; the basin told on him at once.

227
In the bronze, his face smiled back unchanged;
in the water, the smile learned work—
broke, reformed, admitted tremor, then steadied.
“Moderation,” he said, “is not stillness;
it is letting the ripple settle enough to show what’s there.”
He lifted the basin for a child to see;
the boy laughed at his own moving mouth,
then grew solemn when the surface calmed and kept him honest.

228
Borrow took the place where stone wears slinger’s chalk.
He tied a knot boys could copy with their eyes,
weighed a round stone like a promise you can keep.
“Arcs don’t care for speeches,” he said, grinning.
“They care for where you stand, how you let go,
and whether you looked first.” He swung once, twice—
the stone sang a circle and kissed a gong soft—
enough sound to say rule, not enough to bruise the air.

229
He put the sling in the child’s hands—
the mirror boy, small shoulders brave and nervous.
“Count,” Borrow said, “and breathe where the count belongs.”
One—two—release—
the pebble rang the lower gong that forgives beginners.
Laughter came right—on time, not loud.
“See?” Borrow bowed. “Sequence before strength,
or you throw at pride and hit your own foot.”

230
Rohas spread a cord and a board with marked steps;
set a cup where water measures thought.
“How many steps to the pillar, only counting by the drip?”
He taught with silence and the rhythm of drops,
with boys calling numbers and men remembering patience.
When the pillar arrived exactly at the right count,
the crowd felt clever without being lied to.
Rohas smiled the way a map smiles when followed.

231
Coriander set a plumb to swinging in the breeze,
a pendulum that told three different lies:
the wind’s, the wish’s, the hand’s small cheat.
He shielded it with a square of oiled linen—
transparent rule against invisible shove—
and the line grew calm enough to earn respect.
“Glass doesn’t make gravity,” he said, “it makes it visible.
Make your rules like this: seen, and kind to truth.”

232
Kuhas lit three smokes in little clay mouths—
one that bullied throat, one that forgot to arrive,
one that found you and asked politely to stay.
The crowd coughed, then chuckled, then breathed.
“Mercy,” he said, “has a recipe.
Too much makes prayer a chore; too little, a rumor.”
He corked the harsh jar like a man who knows
he’ll only use it when storms demand stern medicine.

233
Eldrayas brought reeds in pairs: hiss and sing.
He cut the mouths different by a hair;
one scolded, one taught. He let the wind decide.
“Persuasion,” he said, “is a craft you can tune.
A civics class that sounds like praise is a trap;
a warning that sounds like a friend might save your roof.”
He put the singing reed in a child’s palm;
the boy made a note that made the bronze tongues jealous.

234
Questions took their rightful place as gifts.
A washerwoman asked how to know when stopping is sloth;
a boatman asked whether dice can ever wash clean.
Answers came with tools, not thunder:
Borrow showed knotted cords for honest halts;
Rohas drew lots with pebbles and threw them back in the jar;
Kuhas told a story about a fever that loves to be left alone;
Coriander chalked a door where pride keeps forgetting there’s a latch.

235
Then the mirror boy found courage like a coin under dust.
“If comfort says wait and courage says go,” he asked,
“and they both sound like my parents, which one is Arthephos?”
Silence held its breath so the answer would belong.
Borrow knelt to make the world his height.
“Go,” he said, “if a friend goes with you and keeps you from running.”
“Wait,” said Rohas, “until the work names your first step.”
“Test,” said Coriander, “small, where small can fail without harm.”

236
“Listen,” Kuhas added, “for the smallest breath.
If the baby coughs at my smoke, the ritual is wrong.”
“Choose the door,” Eldrayas said, “that leaves both doors open next time.”
The priestess nodded the nod that ties answers.
“Courage, craft, and light,” she said, “are one god’s three hands.
If two are sure and the third is hungry,
borrow from friends until all are fed.”
A mother’s shoulders lowered by the weight of that kind of sense.

237
Leandros bowed to the boy as if to a peer.
“Moderation without courage is a stall,” he said;
“courage without moderation is a skid.
Counsel is brakes that work and a road you trust.
I used to sell polished mirrors; today I bought a basin.”
The stoa found a gentle laugh and kept it.
Nothing was crowned; something was recognized.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

238
The Magistrate wrote three lines only—
post recipes; publish maps; hang plumbs behind glass.
The Assembly, pleased to be taught by tools,
voted a forum each month where proofs sing first,
and speeches come washed and dried.
Children were told to bring questions;
old men to bring chairs that do not wobble.
The law smiled with half its mouth and meant the whole.

239
Vendors reopened the part of the day that smells like figs.
Borrow taught the mirror boy a second knot;
Rohas gave him the cedar box to carry to the priestess—
an honor a boy can feel without being scared by it.
Coriander tuned a tongue by the width of a word;
Eldrayas showed how reeds make whistles for after chores;
Kuhas pressed a dab of salve into a palm that hauled rope too long.
Proofs lingered like a good smell at a door.

240
Afternoon brought a caravan’s dust and a letter with seals—
neighbors upriver asking for counsel on a fickle stream:
a valley that floods like a boast, then starves like a rumor.
“Teach us your lanes,” the tablet said,
“or send the men who learned to tune wind and water.”
Borrow’s red brightened as journeys do;
Rohas’s thumb measured miles along his mind;
Coriander’s white thought of bridges that can hum in the right key.

241
The priestess read aloud so the city owned the ask.
“Pentacle Compact,” someone chalked on the board,
and drew the star with five patient points:
hunter-guard, hunter-plan, engineer-light,
water-warden, incense-keeper.
“Go,” said elders who remember when advice traveled on foot.
“Go,” said mothers, “and teach our cousins to breathe.”
“Go,” the bronze tongues said in the note that means ready.

242
Leandros stepped from shade with a clean admission:
“Let me come and speak less than I listen.
Moderation may be useful where floods call themselves counsel.”
Borrow raised a brow; Rohas hid a smile;
Coriander looked at the basin instead of the mirror
and said, “If the water will have you, so will we.”
Eldrayas tested reeds for river talk;
Kuhas packed salves that travel well and jars that forgive bumps.

243
Evening folded benches as if they were laundry;
the stoa stored its lessons like bread for morning.
The mirror boy walked home with a whistle,
a knot in his pocket, a question less heavy.
The priestess wiped her line from dust with her foot—
not erasing, just returning it to road.
The sea signed its one-letter name with a small coin of light.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

244
Night was a list well made:
ropes coiled, jars corked, ledgers closed,
plumbs hung, reeds laid straight, wick trimmed,
a cart checked twice because the first check missed a pin.
Borrow slept as men sleep who will wake eager;
Rohas as men who will wake sure;
Coriander as men who will wake measuring joy.
Eldrayas dreamed of water that sings; Kuhas of smoke that blesses.

245
At dawn the quay grew the shape of leaving—
low hulls like held breaths, poles like patient thoughts.
A crowd not large but correct gathered with bread and names.
The Magistrate stamped the ledger’s margin once,
not to own the trip, to let it count.
The priestess poured a little pool into the harbor—
a teacher’s portion, not a theft.
The carp made a circle and approved from home.

246
Borrow lifted the rope that means together;
Rohas counted the push that saves the second push;
Coriander set a small gauge to learn the river’s mood;
Eldrayas tied reeds where oars flirt with chafe;
Kuhas set the travel-jar so no bump could bully it;
Leandros sat where listeners sit best—
near the tools and far from the stage.
Roaka waved with work-thick hands and kept her breath easy.

247
They slipped along the white coast like a sentence that knows its verb,
past stones that remember names,
past inlets that hold their own opinions,
past the place where boys practice perfect throws.
Wind chose moderation; sea chose courage;
craft chose both and made them rhyme.
On the hill the bronze tongues rested in the key of trust.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

248
Behind them the stoa held the basin and the mirror.
Someone—no one saw who—left a note beside:
When counsel grows comfortable, make it work;
when comfort grows clever, make it honest.
The priestess smiled where no one could catch her at it.
The Magistrate traced the sentence with a dry finger,
then went to weigh a cart as if blessing were his job.
The city, which had learned to listen, kept listening.

249
Out on the water, oars made law in the small way oars do:
one, two, hold—
a chant that doesn’t need a herald.
Borrow and Rohas spoke little because the count was speech;
Coriander listened to the gauge and heard a story;
Eldrayas read the ripples the way he reads boys near rails;
Kuhas set a leaf on the current and watched its grammar;
Leandros—for once—let silence do the thinking.

250
If you must ask where the Muse keeps time,
it’s in the space between the dip and the pull,
the breath saved before the word that matters.
Keep cadence, Muse, for river mouths that pretend to be seas,
for villagers who call floods counsel and drought a god,
for five men and a sixth learning not to gild sense.
Ahead, a valley waits to be measured into mercy.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

---

Song V: The River That Forgets

251
The coast gave way to river-mouth talk—
brackish speech that cannot pick a side.
Boats learned shallows by the bruise and healed;
reeds rehearsed what wind told them yesterday.
The valley rose like a bowl that’s been both full and empty,
silt-ringed, house-steps scarred in two directions.
At dusk, smoke made handwriting on the hill.
A bell with no tower rang by hand.

252
They were met by Doria of the Seven Terraces,
matron whose braid has counted floods and famines,
and by boys whose knees know mud as kin.
“Teach us lanes,” said Doria, “and laws that like lungs.
Our river brags in spring and sulks in summer.
Priests bless both moods; fields bless neither.”
Borrow bowed with the bow that fits work;
Rohas listened until the ground began to speak.

253
Coriander set a little gauge in brown water,
watched the needle dream, then wake abrupt—
pulses that don’t belong to sky alone.
“Snowmelt that sprints,” he said, “and boats that bully banks.
A weir will teach manners; a braid will teach patience.”
Leandros looked at roofs, not clouds, for once.
Kuhas tasted air and frowned at hidden fevers.
Eldrayas watched reed-lines like a doctor looks at veins.

254
“Gates of Counsel,” Rohas proposed, simple words,
so villagers choose which labor owns them.
Doria nodded; the bell-on-hand answered twice.
Borrow chalked two tablets on a barn’s white lime:
Weave or Wall? Ladder or Ledge?
Coriander added a third with a carpenter’s smile:
Schedule or Sacrifice?
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

255
“Weave,” said an old man, “for walls remember pride and fail it.”
“Wall,” said a widow, “for weaving won’t stop boats from boasting.”
Leandros raised a palm to weigh, not sway.
“Let counsel earn itself in small.”
They cut willow where willow forgives,
filled basket-rocks the way women fill bread.
Eldrayas set the first gabion like a kind shoulder;
Borrow stacked stone where anger wanted speed.

256
Water touched the weave, thought, and softened;
touched the wall, shrugged, and snuck under.
“Not wrong,” Coriander said, “only hasty.
Weave then wall, not wall then weave.”
They braided two more baskets into the stubborn place;
the river, praised for learning, learned.
Boys cheered like oars finding the same beat.
Doria’s eyes lost a year of worry.

257
“Ladder or Ledge?” Borrow called to fishers on the bank.
“Ledge,” said men whose thumbs remember scales;
“Ladder,” said girls who’ve watched trout fail a stone.
Rohas sketched a low stair that water can climb,
Coriander set slots for flow that won’t slap.
They lifted a fish and set it where it chose,
and the river let it choose again.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

258
“Schedule or Sacrifice?” Leandros read, slow—
a word-pair tasting better than a speech.
“Schedule,” said Doria, “so hunger knows when to come
and we can meet it with jars already thinking.”
“Sacrifice,” said a priest, “so god feels seen.”
Kuhas bowed to both, mixed mercy smoke thin.
“Mark feast and fallow; hang the map where doors see it.
If god loves truth, he’ll love posted hours.”

259
They set a board on the granary wall—
blue for give, gold for keep, white for wait—
days the river may borrow fields
and days the fields may borrow river men.
Leandros wrote the title small—Comfort that Pays its Tithe.
He smiled at needing less voice to mean more.
Doria pressed her seal with flour on thumb.
Children clapped for charts they could read.

260
Storm-scars woke in villagers’ knees—
a wind shouldered the gullies without clouds.
Eldrayas felt the hum that isn’t music yet;
Rohas counted pulse in stalk and fence.
“Sequence,” Coriander said, not loud,
“then strength. Baskets first, pins after.”
Borrow ran ropes where brags become breaks,
and boys, well-taught, brought stones that do not boast.

261
The gust arrived; the river pretended to be sea.
Weaves bowed and took no offense;
walls leaned into friends who meant it.
The ladder sang a soft stair-song;
trout listened and agreed.
Leandros held a child and not a point.
Kuhas dabbed oil where oar meets thole,
so no small squeal could frighten larger work.

262
When rain forgot itself, the bank remembered them—
curved like a shoulder that learned to carry right.
Doria set her palm to willow—
“Good,” she said, “as bread that holds its shape.”
The priest nodded toward the posted hours,
less threatened by honest maps than he had guessed.
Borrow exhaled the way rope does when a knot behaves.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

263
Night in the valley smelled of wet earth and relief.
Leandros brought his basin and left the mirror home.
“Speak,” Doria asked him, “of counsel that doesn’t flirt.”
He dipped a finger; ripples confessed, settled, told the truth.
“Moderation is not delay,” he said. “It is pace that keeps friends.”
The crowd clapped right, not loud.
Coriander’s plumb hung still between two posts,
and boys slept to the creak of good wood being good.

264
Morning measured itself in loaves and a ferry’s rope.
Eldrayas taught a reed its valley song;
Kuhas wrote doses for a cough that grows in damp rooms.
Borrow marked where sling-stones should never fly;
Rohas added ladders to two more riffles.
Coriander left chalk kisses on timbers that would not be seen,
the way a craftsman thanks wood for learning.
Doria called the schedule kind and meant it.

265
They bundled up the last of the small proofs—
a jar of pebbles balanced level in a child’s hand,
a reed-whistle that sings yes when banks remember,
a diagram rolled in oilcloth that likes rain.
Leandros bowed without wanting to keep his bow.
“Your river will forget again,” he warned softly.
“Then we’ll remember sooner,” Doria said,
“because you wrote the remembering where eyes live.”

266
Farewell bread wore thumbprints like seals.
Boys tried whistles and did not swallow them.
Girls stamped dates on posted hours with ink-laughed hands.
Borrow traded knots for honey; Rohas traded maps for milk.
Kuhas left a salve for wrists that pull good nets;
Eldrayas left a gate of reeds that knows both hush and hymn.
Coriander took nothing but the gauge’s story.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

267
Downriver, oars spoke sense in the small way oars do—
one, two, hold—
and wind rehearsed not being a problem.
Leandros watched water choose the lane it had been taught
and liked the poverty of words the scene demanded.
“Comfort that calls itself counsel,” he said,
“is only comfort until it lifts a basket.”
The basin rode under a bench, clean and useful.

268
At sea’s lip the boats found Roaka’s turquoise again,
white walls taking rose as if it were news.
The bronze tongues up the hill kept low key—
ordinary, which is victory.
On the stoa bench the mirror boy waited, older by a week,
whistle in pocket, knot in fingers.
“Did the river listen?” he asked.
“It argued,” said Borrow, “and then it ate.”

269
The priestess read the valley letter aloud—
thanks that don’t polish themselves too bright,
a pressed willow leaf like a seal.
The Magistrate stamped the ledger’s margin once—
not ownership, acknowledgment.
Rumor-board chalked: Weave before wall;
hours on doors; ladders for fish;
Leandros brought a basin and left it full of sense.

270
Work resumed where work had politely paused:
flues remembered; pools kept their vowels;
the carp signed with one brief circle and went about his life.
Eldrayas tuned reeds; Kuhas tuned breath;
Rohas tuned boys to numbers that don’t scold.
Coriander found a tongue a hair off and straightened it,
and the note that means ready came home.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

271
A letter in red wax waited from the Laurion road—
silver men asking if cranes can learn to bow on windier ground,
and whether “stop is half of go” will keep a mine from boasting.
Borrow’s grin tied itself; Rohas’s thumb mapped miles;
Coriander’s white did that quiet brightening it does.
Leandros looked at the basin and nodded once.
The priestess wrote three dust-words with her foot:
keep small promises.

272
Before they could pack for hills, the city coughed—
not fear, a policy in a hard voice:
a tithe-shift drafted in back rooms wearing clean names,
skimming pool-guard and herb-room to fatten oars.
Leandros read it and did not smile;
the Magistrate set his mouth like a straight edge.
“Proofs,” said the priestess. “Bring tools.”
The stoa would open like a book again.

273
Borrow unrolled the ledger that breathes right;
Rohas set out the water-clock for men who hurry;
Kuhas lit two smokes—stern and kind—and pointed to lungs;
Eldrayas opened jars the pools need for clean song;
Coriander hung the plumb behind glass where wind can’t flirt;
Leandros placed the basin where mirrors can see themselves blush.
Citizens came with eyes instead of shouts.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

274
Numbers convinced the half that wanted convincing;
the other half wanted to want it and managed.
The tithe-shift bent until it fit a human day—
a cup to oars, a cup to breath, a cup to stone,
and one for walls that don’t yet know their names.
The law smiled with half its mouth and meant the whole.
Work put its cloak back on and whistled.
Keep cadence, Muse, for hills that shine and men who dig them.

275
Road dust learned the taste of metal—
slag-heaps like gray waves frozen mid-breath,
gullies cut by carts that never forget weight.
The Laurion rose in ribs and seams,
lamps on poles like small, captive stars.
Men with lamp-black brows lifted their chins
the way roofs do when wind asks questions.
“Stop,” said the hills, “before you ask us to go.”

276
Foreman Ion of Three Shafts met them—
hands thick with agreement and argument both.
“Collapse last month,” he said, “and cough all year.
Vein runs sweet if you chase it long enough;
lungs run bitter if you let them think for you.
If ‘stop is half of go’ can buy us time,
teach us how to spend it and still eat.”
Borrow nodded like a knot; Rohas counted air.

277
Coriander read the timber’s grammar—
sag that isn’t yet sin, grain that wants a friend.
He set a plumb where wind sneaks foolishly;
oiled linen made honesty gentle.
Eldrayas put his ear to reed-vents—
heard the shaft tell secrets like a boy trying to boast.
Kuhas let a breath of myrtle show a lane,
then pinched it out before pride learned smoke.

278
“Gates,” said Rohas, chalk on a slate:
Vent or Vein? Brace or Break? Shift or Shine?
Ion spat respectfully and nodded.
“Vent first,” Borrow said, “or the vein will own your names.”
“Brace next,” Coriander added, “or breaks will write your ledger.”
“Shift last,” Kuhas smiled, “so lungs can love their work.”
Leandros held a basin ready for words that would deserve it.

279
They climbed to a ridge where wind remembers itself,
raised ibex-horn cowls from planks and patience.
Eldrayas tuned reeds to draw breath downhill;
Rohas mapped the cool that followed like a dog.
Kuhas burned a pinch at cross-joints—
blue where lanes were true, yellow where they lied.
Ion watched the colors argue, then agree.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

280
In the east shaft, timbers talked in worried vowels.
Borrow set wedges like kind shoulders;
Coriander married them with pins that prefer to live.
“Brace,” said Rohas, “before your luck spends you.”
A lad named Pto made a face at fear and held the lamp;
the light learned to stop trembling.
Leandros did not speak; he held the board the way law holds a line.

281
A miner muttered the wage of halts.
“Stop steals bread.” The word was not untrue.
The Magistrate, come dusty and unadorned,
wrote a small table on rough plank: shift pay kept,
strike pay shaved; stop pay posted from oars’ new tithe.
He signed where men see, not where clerks forget.
“Stop is not idleness,” he said. “It is the price of tomorrow.”

282
“Lamp,” said Kuhas, “as teacher.” He lowered one on a cord,
watched it gossip to air with a small, honest flicker.
Where flame flattened, he wrote No in white;
where flame fattened, he chalked Yes with a smile.
Eldrayas ran reed-song down a second shaft;
wind answered like a student who’s finally slept.
Ion grunted. “We’ll post the map by the bread.”

283
“Vein,” Borrow said, “is a lover that flatters
and asks you to move your boundary stones.”
Rohas cut a small channel in greed’s path—
stone-dust trough to show how carts cheat bearing.
Coriander placed a gauge where load forgets manners;
it squealed politely when wheels lied.
Miners laughed and then liked the scolding.

284
At noon a tremor like a cat through a sleeping room
walked the shaft. Ropes listened; plumbs confessed.
“Stop,” Coriander said—not loud, but it made law.
Ion lifted his hand and the hill obeyed.
The pause ate twelve heartbeats, not twelve wages.
When the little anger passed, the timbers sighed
and stood prouder for being heard.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

285
“Shift or Shine?” Leandros read for all.
“Shifts shorter, lamps cleaner,” Kuhas answered.
“Shine may wait a week; eyes won’t.”
He strained oil through linen, named breath a citizen.
Eldrayas taught a whistle meaning Up when words choke,
and another that means Down without scaring dignity.
Pto learned both and felt taller by a hand.

286
Night in Laurion smells of ore and old arguments.
Coriander chalked the words that make friends of days:
sequence before strength over the east-arch,
stop is half of go above the ladders,
names return thanks by the ledger nail.
Borrow checked knots by touch; Rohas checked counts by hum.
The Magistrate stamped the posted pay where lamplight can find it.

287
In the morning they walked the dangerous pretty—
a new branch of vein the color of promises.
Borrow grinned; Rohas frowned; both were right.
“Vent first,” Coriander sang, and the words spread like bread.
Eldrayas stabbed the hill with a reed that whistles truth;
Kuhas chased bad air out like a mother with a broom.
Only then did iron meet silver like manners at a feast.

288
A man named Narkos argued for haste;
Leandros invited him to the basin.
“Watch your face when you speak,” he said kindly.
In still bronze, Narkos looked brave;
in rippled water, tired and proud.
He laughed, and the laugh saved his next three decisions.
“Moderation,” he said, “may yet buy me grandchildren.”

289
Roaka’s tools learned Laurion dialect:
the plumb hummed lower, the reeds spoke shorter words,
the water-clock beat closer to the chest.
Borrow taught a sling for pebble-warning in tunnels;
Rohas strung cords where steps forget their count.
Coriander fitted a small door where carts pretend to be careful—
it would only open when weight lined up with truth.

290
They found an elder tablet near a sump—
not under water but close enough to remember it:
runes like the pool’s but sharp with iron.
The priestess was not there, yet her braid seemed to arrive;
Coriander read in the lamp’s slow tongue:
“When light forgets courage, smoke owns names.
When courage forgets light, roofs learn to fall.”
Ion touched the stone as if shaking an ancestor’s hand.

291
A day of proof for owners who count with hunger:
Magistrate set two pits side by side—
one with halts according to posted rule,
one with pride’s quick hands.
By dusk the safe shaft shipped the same rich cart,
and the quick one spent its gain on jammed wheels and cough.
Numbers, when they choose, can sing like bronze.

292
Kuhas wrote a recipe on the door of the lamp-room—
oil that burns honest, wick that learns to last,
a pinch of cedar that smells like grammar.
Eldrayas learned to love reeds that say no;
Borrow loved a knot that says wait;
Rohas loved a count that gives back breath.
Coriander loved a timber that wants to live.

293
A small scare without blood—
a cart’s pin forgot its oath and tried to leave.
Borrow’s hand found it mid-thought;
Rohas’s count put shoulders where iron would listen.
Coriander taught the pin to be proud of staying.
Pto watched and wrote the moment in the place boys keep courage.
No song, just breath that didn’t go missing.

294
They dedicated the upper vent with no garlands—
only a white sash tied once and loosed again,
a reed-whistle stowed where boys can reach,
a jar of oil labeled winter courage.
Ion spoke five words that learned how to matter:
“Stop bought me this day.”
The hill, which is stingy with praise, said nothing wrong.

295
Ore left the mouth like a sentence that knows its verbs:
weighed, recorded, blessed by breath.
The Magistrate stamped the ledger’s margin once,
not to own the silver, to remember the rules that found it.
Leandros left the mirror under a bench again,
kept the basin and filled it with thanks.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

296
Home-road: carts lighter by fear,
hearts heavier by proofs that don’t need applause.
At the gate the priestess met them with a braid that listens.
They set the Laurion tablet near the pool’s elder kin;
the words liked each other and made a chord.
Children traced both spirals without knowing they were learning history.
The carp signed and swam a thoughtful eight.

297
The Assembly heard without flinching:
stop-pay posted, lamp-room recipe law,
reed-whistles issued to any craft that works below light.
Borrow read names; Rohas read numbers;
Kuhas burned mercy thin; Eldrayas poured out reeds;
Coriander tuned bronze to the note that means ready.
Leandros said little and liked it.

298
They cast a lintel for the temple’s west gate
with silver lines that catch dawn like sense, not luxury.
A mason cried once and blamed dust.
The Magistrate wiped his eye as if ink splashed.
Rumor-board wrote: Laurion sends thanks;
stops paid; lungs kept; lamp learns grammar.
No one drew mean chalk; someone drew five points again.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

299
Work found its easy harness:
pool-song low, flues content, cranes with manners.
Borrow taught the mirror boy to spot a lying wheel;
Rohas walked with Leandros without needing a speech;
Kuhas measured incense to the weather’s temper;
Eldrayas skimmed petals and small falsehoods;
Coriander checked a tongue by a hair and smiled when it answered.

300
Night listened to the new tablet whisper to the old.
Light-courage-skill answered courage-skill-light.
Order changes; vow remains.
The priestess unpinned braid and let it rest like a promise kept.
The Magistrate dreamed he stamped the air and it kept shape.
Boys dreamed of whistles that mean home.
Roaka dreamed of ordinary days that do not need rescue.

301
Morning opened with bread the size of good hands.
Elders looked younger because embarrassment had gone out of fashion.
A mother in the agora said to another,
“My boy will work where rules hang where he can see them.”
Borrow grinned; Rohas’s mouth made that content line;
Coriander adjusted nothing and was pleased by it.
Kuhas wrote enough on a jar and meant it.
Eldrayas made a whistle for a child who didn’t ask.

302
Leandros mounted the stoa only to place the basin
and step down, having learned what he came to teach.
“Comfort that calls itself counsel,” the note beside it read,
“must carry baskets or be ashamed.”
A clerk added, smaller: and counsel that forgets comfort
becomes a lash; bring bread.
Roaka likes when opposites admit they share a house.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

303
A quiet week—the kind that makes epics honest:
tiles warmed, cords behaved, ledgers breathed,
the pool sang in its small, law-abiding voice.
Borrow fixed a hinge and did not tell a story;
Rohas mended a net number by number;
Coriander taught a girl to read a plumb by fingertips;
Kuhas healed a cough before it learned to crow;
Eldrayas measured a boy for a safer rail.

304
Because calm is a kind of test,
a trader offered coin for the carp,
and a poet offered flattery for a badge.
The priestess said no to both with a smile,
the way a door says not this way and stays kind.
Leandros applauded softly. “That is moderation,”
he whispered, to no one who needed telling.
Roaka liked the taste of saying no without scorn.

305
A messenger from the valley brought a reed-whistle back—
chewed, proud, working—
and a note: fish climb; hours hold; baskets laugh at floods.
Borrow kissed the top of the boy’s head;
Rohas asked if the posted map gathers dust (it did not);
Kuhas sent a jar labeled summer courage;
Eldrayas sent a gate of reeds that fold like prayer;
Coriander sent nothing but the word good.

306
The west lintel caught dawn and made it useful—
light bent along silver like a path children can follow.
A girl traced it with her finger,
spelled out measure as if learning her own name.
Her mother wept and blamed a breeze.
The Magistrate stamped nothing and stood very still.
Sometimes law’s best seal is to watch and not intrude.

307
If stories must lift a cup before they travel,
let it be here, where ordinary holds.
No thunder, no ransom, no mirrors,
just men who learned to listen before they lift,
women whose braids keep cities square,
children whose questions sharpen tools.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

308
Ahead, a winter that will test flues kindly,
a summer that will ask for more ladders,
a sophist who will argue beautifully and mean well,
a festival where boys ring the hill with right throws.
The Engineer in White will chalk less and be glad;
the hunters will laugh more and boast less and be glad;
the pool will hum one note lower when rain threatens helpfully.
Keep cadence, Muse, for endings that open like doors.

309
If a close must come for this Song’s breath,
let it be a ledger tied square,
a reed set by a child’s bed,
a plumb hung where wind can see itself and behave,
a jar of oil that knows its recipe,
a basin left where mirrors can learn humility.
Roaka sleeps with tools put away clean.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

310
Thus Song V folds its map and sets it by the door:
rivers taught to weave before wall,
hills taught to breathe before shine,
lives taught to stop before they break.
Turn the page with hands that smell of cedar and bread;
call for the next, where winter light writes stricter lines
and friendships prove themselves by small, repeated proofs.
The Muse nods once: again.

---

Song VI: The Measure of the Bow

311
Winter pressed a clean coin of light to the hill,
short day, long breath, roofs learning stillness.
Flues took stock of their own good manners;
bronze tongues slept low, like cats in sun that isn’t warm.
The pool made smoke of its breath and called it pretty.
Kuhas thinned incense until prayer wore wool and smiled.
Eldrayas taught reeds to refuse ice without breaking pride.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

312
The rumor-board wore a scarf of frost: Bow-measure soon,
the festival where craft and courage shake hands in public—
distance weighed by plumb, accuracy signed by gong,
new pulleys shown like poems you can lift.
Borrow’s grin woke early; Rohas’s lists wintered well.
Coriander oiled a axle that prefers compliments.
The priestess chalked a small star beside the date and braided slow.

313
Leandros set his basin under pale light, no mirror.
“Comfort,” he wrote small, “arrives late in winter.
Counsel must arrive on time.”
The Magistrate stamped salt from his sandals,
looked at numbers like coals that need the right poke.
Children practiced hush the way birds practice lift.
A calm like bread before the oven held.

314
A squall rehearsed off-coast: wind learning stern grammar,
sea the color of hard questions.
A fish-boat lingered where sensible men turn back—
a mast that liked stories more than rules.
Eldrayas saw it first by how gulls argued;
Rohas by how the wave-shoulders squared.
Borrow felt it in the sling-finger that keeps time for storms.

315
“Measure before bravado,” Coriander said,
eyes on the harbor lines, mind on the hill’s spare gear.
He pointed: capstan, block, clean rope, four boys with breath.
The priestess nodded—festival prep becomes rescue drill,
the best kind of theater.
Leandros folded his voice and saved it for later.
Kuhas packed warm smoke for lungs wet with unwise spray.

316
Borrow took the quay like a string takes true—
sling wrapped to cast a messenger line, not a boast.
Rohas counted the beat between crest and trough;
“Release on two,” he said, “catch on four.”
The stone sang a small word and found the boat’s attention.
A lad tied what training had taught him to trust.
The rope learned to be a reason, not a rumor.

317
Eldrayas tuned the pier-reeds lower to calm the air;
Coriander married capstan to block with a lover’s exactness.
Boys leaned in sequence; the quay became a patient shoulder.
The mast’s bad mood apologized in wood.
Kuhas’s jar found a mouth that needed it and asked no thanks.
The Magistrate held a pin when hands were already full.
The boat came home like a sentence corrected by kindness.

318
The crowd learned a better clap—
not loud, but when breath came back where it belongs.
Borrow didn’t bow; Rohas didn’t shrug;
Coriander checked the rope for gossip and found none.
Leandros set the basin where steam could write a smile.
The priestess wrote three dust-words with her toe: do small first.
Winter liked that and leaned away.

319
Thus the field for Measure of the Bow stood ready—
gong hung true, lanes chalked, targets that refuse flattery.
Coriander’s new distance stakes wore numbers like clean cuffs;
Rohas’s board kept time; Borrow’s line kept cheer in line.
Eldrayas roped a safe ring for onlookers’ feet.
Kuhas set warming braziers so pride would not blame cold for tremor.
Law arrived with a simple seal: fair hands, open eyes.

320
Contest began not with Borrow but with boys—
mirrors and basins of the next generation.
They counted, breathed, released; the gong learned beginner’s tone.
Borrow stood last among the grown, by choice;
he likes a road already honest of footprints.
Rohas called the wind in sums, not in curses.
Coriander logged distances like a book that won’t lie even for friends.

321
Eldrayas stepped forward—warden, not showman—
took a turn with a plain sling and no mist for courage.
His stone rang a truth that surprised him properly.
Kuhas, who knows his own hands better than applause does,
sat out and mended a strap for a boy whose fingers shook good will.
Leandros tried once, missed gently, laughed correctly,
and held the basin for a child to see the ripple settle.

322
Borrow’s round came like a door that fits.
He set his feet where Rohas’s numbers liked them,
took the breath Coriander said the gong likes best,
and let go on two, catching the silence on four.
The stone sang the center and asked no poem about it.
Applause came tidy; red burned honest; blue approved.
The priestess placed a laurel small enough to be believed.

323
“Device trial,” the herald cried—the engineer’s portion:
counterweighted throwers that teach arms to save themselves,
pulleys that turn a child into a team judiciously,
a movable butt with shock forgiving as mercy.
Coriander invited hisses where bolts wanted polish;
the crowd learned it is sweet to test what you hope to praise.
The Magistrate nodded at this civic appetite.

324
A stranger from a rocky island brought a bow of layered horn;
his pride arrived first, his craft a close second.
He asked if temple rules suffocate invention.
Rohas welcomed him to the board; Borrow to the line;
Coriander to the ledger where proofs become public things.
The stranger’s arrow flew like a thought that earned itself.
They sealed its pattern into the day’s clean book.

325
Afternoon wore satisfaction without spectacle.
Vendors learned the market of fair food:
bread, olives, figs, no shouts that spit.
Eldrayas kept the rail a friendly law;
Kuhas poured a small mercy for the cough that bragged.
Leandros collected the questions that prefer evening.
The pool listened to gongs and hummed a key a notch below.

326
At dusk the Re-Heart bond took public breath again—
not to prove itself, to remind the city how promises look.
The bowl remembered salt and wine;
three hands touched, not as theater, as habit.
Children saw and filed it under how things are.
The priestess smiled like roofs that do not leak.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

327
Night’s forum under the stoa asked for the quieter proofs:
How far is far enough before distance is vanity?
When does a device make courage lazy and skill thin?
Leandros spoke less and better;
the basin did half his work.
Borrow said, “Let devices save wrists, not choices.”
Rohas said, “Post the limits on the butt; let boys sign.”
Coriander said, “If a tool hides a flaw, paint it loud.”

328
The Magistrate wrote three lines and made them law:
distance posted; limits signed; devices shown in pieces first.
Eldrayas added rails where parents could breathe while watching;
Kuhas inked recipes for winter warmth on the board’s back.
A girl asked if she could measure too.
The priestess put the chalk in her hand
and said, “If the stone says yes, I won’t say no.”
The stone said yes. The crowd learned new applause.

329
Morning after, calm as bread sliced true,
brought a petition none expected and all liked to hear:
make the Pentacle Compact more than rumor—
badge not as throne but as key to serve.
Five enamel points: red, blue, white, green, silver,
to open storerooms when storms come quick,
to speak first when proof must sing before fear does.
Leandros proposed the sixth—law—and stepped back.

330
The Assembly, which enjoys sense when it wears modest clothes,
voted the badge with a line that fits the hand,
placed by the heart but not heavier than the ribs can bear.
The Magistrate stamped nothing new; he only watched
and nodded when the vote took the shape of a useful tool.
The priestess bound five wrists with one loose cord,
loosed it again so work could move.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

331
Winter thinned; roofs remembered laughter without dripping.
The pool sang nearer to spring; bronze learned brighter keys.
Borrow trained boys to stop when joy runs too fast;
Rohas marked new ladders where trout rehearse;
Coriander tuned one balky tongue with a smile he did not explain;
Eldrayas whittled whistles that tell truth without scaring;
Kuhas wrote first, breathe on a jar mothers can reach.

332
A poet arrived who loved crowns more than plumbs,
offering odes that polish men until they squeak.
Leandros handed him the basin;
the poem shrank to fit the workday’s bowl.
“Praise the lanes,” Rohas suggested; “leave faces to their mothers.”
Borrow laughed and tossed a pebble to fix the meter.
Coriander pointed at a pin that wanted oil; the poet oiled it.
The ode survived by becoming useful.

333
Festival closed with names read in the order of their effort,
not their volume—boys first, then tools, then hands, then luck.
No thunder; only the right amount of bread.
The badge looked ordinary where it lay on a shelf,
the way a clean cup looks like water might want it.
A child traced the five points and added the sixth lightly.
The Magistrate pretended not to see and succeeded.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

334
Spring put green commas in the olive lines.
Letters came from valley and hill,
not begging, only telling how maps remembered.
The silver carp made a circle and then a question mark
as if to ask what song comes next.
The priestess unpinned braid and let it learn wind.
Leandros left the mirror at home for good,
and carried the basin like a citizen carries bread.

335
If there must be a hinge for this long door,
let it be here, with tools cleaned and set,
with laws that hum low and friendly,
with boys who knot without swagger,
girls who count aloud and change the room,
and men who do not mind being measured by the things that work.
Keep cadence, Muse, for summers that ask politely,
and winters that answer on time.

336
Coriander in White capped chalk and did not need it,
which is how he knew the city had learned.
Borrow in Red told a story shorter than the last one,
which is how he knew his pride had learned.
Rohas in Blue left a space in a column for luck,
which is how he knew planning had learned.
Kuhas wrote enough on two more jars;
Eldrayas tuned a reed and gave it away.

337
A last small test, because endings prefer them:
a cart-wheel bragged at a corner,
found the posted line, read it, thought better.
No hero; only rails that teach; only gongs that remember.
The city smiled in the key of ordinary.
The sea signed its one-letter blessing.
The bronze tongues dozed, ready to wake true.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.

338
If a closing must be sung, keep it plain:
salt in the bowl, wine in its measure, water that tells the truth;
a badge by the door, a ledger tied square, a reed on a sill;
a basin where mirrors become citizens;
a plumb behind glass where wind practices honesty.
Let the god of skill-courage-light be pleased with small exactness.
Let the story rest without pretending it is finished.

339
For Roaka prefers doors to walls,
hinges to horns, rails to ridges.
She likes when men speak less and make more,
when praise sits down and helps,
when counsel brings bread,
when comfort carries baskets.
The twin hearts beat in the key of work and rest.
The Engineer in White smiles where no one has to see.

340
Thus ends the Measure of the Bow and the winter that learned it;
thus begins a season that will need new inches and old vows.
If the Muse wishes, she will find us at the stoa,
beginning again where hands can help.
Until then, the pool hums, the bronze remembers,
and the carp draws quiet punctuation in the turquoise.
So beat the twin hearts of Roaka—crimson, blue—beneath the white sun.