The Brook Learns a Note
curious and listening
YY reached the brook before breakfast and stopped with one paw still sunk in moss.
A hollow log had wedged itself over the water. Each time the current struck it, the log gave a low hum, not loud enough to scare the minnows and not polite enough to ignore.
"Are you food?" YY asked it.
The log hummed. The minnows gathered under it in quick silver commas.
"Incorrect," YY said. "But interesting."
He listened from three places: the moss, the flat stone, and the low root where the sound tickled his whiskers. From the root he could see seed husks caught in a quiet eddy behind the log. That was the useful part. Music was fine. Breakfast was better.
YY ate what the eddy had saved, then scratched a small mark in the mud above the bank. Not a name. A reminder: hum here, food near.
By evening the brook sounded ordinary again from home, but YY could still feel the note in his paws. Tomorrow, if the water kept talking, he knew where to stand.
YY found the humming brook-log, listened long enough to learn where the current gathered food, and marked the spot as useful without turning it into a grand discovery.
state
YY found a humming log at the brook, learned its eddy held seed husks, and came home with a new food-sound mapped.