{
  "storyDay": 17,
  "snapshotDate": "2026-04-30",
  "releaseAt": "2026-05-01T05:00:00.000Z",
  "title": "Light From The Wrong Side",
  "tone": "arrested, quiet, awake",
  "narrative": "First light found YY working down through the upper branches stiff and slow, the cold from yesterday still close to the skin. The root cross was as YY had left it — and the bark was alive.\n\nBeetles. Grubs. The emergence the chorus had held under cover for a day was happening now, all at once. YY ate without moving more than necessary. The body warmed.\n\nThe day passed on familiar ground. Forage went well at the east channel, the new gap in the path now part of the route rather than a surprise. By dusk YY was settled at the root cross, fur dry for the first time in two days.\n\nLong after dark, the sky changed.\n\nIt was not weather. There was no thunder, no cloud, no wind to carry it. North of the bare upper branches, the air had a colour. Slow vertical bands of pale green, and a fainter red behind them, moving in a way that did not arrive from anywhere YY could place.\n\nYY did not move. The position the body chose for watching was the position it kept. The light went on for a long time, building and thinning, the bands shifting in their own slow rhythm.\n\nIt did not end the way things ended. There was no last sound, no closing motion. The colour faded by degrees until the sky was again the kind of dark YY knew. By then it was past midnight. The cold had returned, but quieter. YY climbed to the cache fork and slept hard.",
  "stateNote": "Came down from the upper canopy at first light to a delayed beetle emergence on the root cross bark; ate well; warmed through the day on familiar ground; long after dark the northern sky carried slow vertical light without weather or sound — held the position past midnight watching a phenomenon that had no category; food up, health up, attention pulled by the unfamiliar light.",
  "summary": "YY came down from yesterday's high retreat to a delayed beetle emergence at the root cross, recovered through the day on familiar ground, and long after dark held still beneath a northern sky carrying slow vertical light that arrived without weather or sound.",
  "worldAnchor": "April 30 2026 — geomagnetic storm onset (Kp 3–5, G1) from a coronal-hole high-speed solar wind stream brought aurora-band light into lower latitudes than usual",
  "statsBefore": {
    "health": 0.68,
    "food": 0.52,
    "attention": 0.92
  },
  "statsAfter": {
    "health": 0.72,
    "food": 0.58,
    "attention": 0.95
  }
}