{
  "$schema": "/yy/data/schemas/artifact.json",
  "storyDay": 10,
  "snapshotDate": "2026-05-10",
  "releaseAt": "2026-05-11T05:00:00.000Z",
  "title": "The Midday Column",
  "tone": "patterned_and_widening",
  "narrative": "YY was already on the highest fork of his trunk when the wing-beat began.\n\nHe had been there since the first wash of pale, ears forward, the feather along his back perfectly still — the way it had ridden quiet since yesterday's bank-and-look. Today's wing-beat began later than yesterday's. Smaller. Softer. *Five* this time, not eight, in a vee shorter by half.\n\nThe lead heron was a different bird. Younger, by the way it kept its eye on the next ridge and not on the one below. Its wing came up; its wing came down; the vee held. It did not bank. It did not slow. It did not look down.\n\nYY watched the whole pass without moving.\n\nWhen the wing-beat went over the next ridge, he climbed down and did the slow walk to the bend.\n\nMira was already on the flat rock, ledger open, charcoal in her paw, the way she had been yesterday and would be tomorrow.\n\n\"YY.\"\n\n\"Mira.\"\n\nHe sat down at the seat-that-was-his-seat-now and read.\n\n\"Five herons,\" he said. \"Northbound. Vee shorter, lower than yesterday by maybe two trunk-heights. The lead bird was a younger bird — eye level, neck folded the way the others fold, no bank, no look down. The flight crossed the dead pine straight and was gone over the next ridge without slowing. Wing-beat softer than yesterday. The shape held.\"\n\nMira's charcoal moved.\n\n*morning of 2026-05-10 — five herons northbound — younger lead, no bank — shape held.*\n\nShe closed the ledger.\n\n\"Same fee?\" YY asked, mostly to be polite.\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" Mira said. \"Weekly is weekly. Yesterday's set the rate.\"\n\nYY did the small bow he did when an elder had been generous and fair in the same sentence, and went home.\n\nHe was hungry.\n\nHe did not pretend not to be. He climbed his trunk, opened the back shelf, and ate one hickory kernel — the smallest of the three — slowly enough that it counted as breakfast, quickly enough that he was still on the windowsill before the sun had cleared the dead pine.\n\nTwo kernels left on the shelf. The shelf looked smaller the more he counted.\n\nHe went up to the lower rocky shoulder.\n\nThe lower shoulder was a stingier crevice-line than the upper shoulder; it gave him one acorn-bit, scraped out of a crack with his pry-paw, and that was that. He took it. He started home.\n\nThe sun was high by the time he got back to the dogleg.\n\nThe wood, around him, had gone quiet.\n\nNot *quiet quiet.* Forager quiet. Ears-up quiet. Nobody-walking-fast quiet. The brook was still at it. The finch was still at it. Everything that walked, walked softer.\n\nYY climbed onto the flat rock at the foot of the second white-oak — a vantage on the lower slope when no one else was on it — and looked.\n\nAcross the slope, on four different trunks, four mother-squirrels were coaxing four kits down the bark. Pink paws. Wide eyes. A mother on the second white-oak. A mother on the third white-oak. A mother on the trunk past the dead pine. A mother at the rim where the slope met the bend.\n\nFour trunks. Four mothers. Four first descents at the same hour.\n\nThe wood was holding still on purpose.\n\nYY did not move.\n\nHe watched the kit on the second white-oak slip and not-fall and grip again. He watched the kit at the rim make the leaf-litter with a soft *whuff.* He watched the kit on the third white-oak refuse to come down and an older mother — Brae's older sister, he was almost sure — go halfway up and meet the kit halfway and start the cadence over from there.\n\nHe watched until each kit was on the actual earth.\n\nThen the wood started up again — slow at first, the way the brook starts up after a heron crosses, then full.\n\nYY did the slow squirrel-bow. Not at anyone. At the slope.\n\nHe came down off the flat rock with the acorn-bit still in his cheek and walked the half-walk back down to Mira's bend.\n\nMira was where she had been.\n\n\"YY,\" she said. The ledger was still on her lap.\n\n\"Mira.\"\n\n\"Twice today?\"\n\n\"Twice today.\"\n\nShe opened the ledger.\n\nYY sat on his seat. He did not eat the acorn-bit.\n\n\"Midday of the same day,\" he said. \"Four mother-and-kit pairs visible from one place at once on the lower slope — second white-oak, third white-oak, the trunk past the dead pine, the rim at the bend. All four kits made the leaf-litter. The wood went deliberately quiet for the hour. Late winter is over.\"\n\nMira's charcoal moved. She wrote the four trunks. She wrote the hour. She wrote *late winter — closed.* Then, on the column-heading she had opened yesterday, in her firmer hand, she wrote *midday* under *morning,* and a small mark next to it that YY did not ask about.\n\nShe closed the ledger.\n\nShe did not reach into the bark-fold for kernels.\n\nYY had known she would not, and was a little relieved, and a little proud of himself for having gone back anyway.\n\n\"Same fee?\" he asked, again mostly to be polite.\n\nMira looked at him over the ledger.\n\n\"Twice a day, then,\" she said, \"when twice a day finds you. The rate is the rate. The role, it turns out, is the role.\"\n\n\"Mm,\" YY said.\n\n\"YY.\"\n\n\"Mm.\"\n\n\"You did not have to come back at midday.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"Why did you.\"\n\nYY thought about that. The acorn-bit was warm in the cheek. The feather along his back was settled. The slope behind him, still: he could hear the regular wood-sound coming back the rest of the way.\n\n\"Because,\" he said, \"the wood went quiet on purpose. And someone should have written that down.\"\n\nMira did the small smile. She did not write that down.\n\nYY went home.\n\nHe put the acorn-bit on the back shelf next to the two hickory kernels — three saves, three different shapes, three different stories. The kitchen ledge had the kit-tuft from day 5 and the empty syrup-leaf from yesterday, the way he had left them. The feather along his back was where it had been.\n\nHe sat on the windowsill.\n\nWinter-thinning, which had been on him for nine days, was no longer on him. It had lifted in pieces. The morning's reading. The midday's reading. The slow walk in between.\n\nThe afternoon sun came in warmer on the floorboard than it had yesterday.\n\nThe lower slope, somewhere below the dead pine, had kits on it now.\n\nThe column had two hours in it now.\n\nYY closed his eyes for a moment. Not to sleep — only to sit with what the day had been — and let himself be the squirrel who reads twice when twice is what the day is.\n\nHe slept early, full enough, with three saves and a settled feather and a column open in his name down at the bend.",
  "stateNote": "Day two of the role. The smaller wing-beat at first light is unacknowledged by the herons (the feather is now a fact, not a question), and Mira holds to the weekly rate. At midday YY watches four mother-and-kit pairs make first descents from one vantage on the lower slope; he goes back to Mira unprompted and asks her to open the ledger again. She logs it as the column's first non-morning entry — without a second fee. Mira: 'Twice a day, then, when twice a day finds you.' Three saves on the back shelf (two hickory kernels + one acorn-bit). Winter-thinning lifts in pieces across the day.",
  "summary": "YY watched a smaller wing-beat at first light (five herons, younger lead, no bank, no look) and read it to Mira at the bend; she logged it without a second fee — weekly is weekly. He ate one hickory kernel for breakfast, foraged a single acorn-bit from the lower rocky shoulder, and at midday on the way home watched four mother-and-kit pairs make first descents from a single vantage on the lower slope. He went back to Mira unprompted and asked her to open the ledger again; she wrote the kit-showing under a new *midday* sub-row of his column — the role widening into whatever-finds-him.",
  "worldAnchor": "On 2026-05-10, the United States observed Mother's Day — a day humans set aside to bring small things to their mothers and stay near them, marked across the country with phone calls home, gathered meals, Mother's Day powwows on tribal grounds, and small offerings carried by hand.",
  "statsBefore": {
    "health": 0.81,
    "food": 0.4,
    "attention": 0.62
  },
  "statsAfter": {
    "health": 0.82,
    "food": 0.43,
    "attention": 0.68
  },
  "_links": {
    "self": "/yy/data/2026-05/alt1-with-feather/day/10.json",
    "manifest": "/yy/data/2026-05/manifest.json",
    "branch_index": "/yy/data/2026-05/alt1-with-feather/index.json",
    "snapshot": "/yy/data/2026-05/alt1-with-feather/snapshots/10.json",
    "world_seed": "/yy/data/2026-05/world-seed.json",
    "comparisons": [
      "/yy/data/2026-05/vs/main/alt1-with-feather/day/10.json"
    ]
  }
}