{
  "$schema": "/yy/data/schemas/artifact.json",
  "storyDay": 6,
  "snapshotDate": "2026-05-06",
  "releaseAt": "2026-05-07T05:00:00.000Z",
  "title": "Half a Square",
  "tone": "wry_and_negotiating",
  "narrative": "Tock was on the bend below the counting tree, holding two squares of dried persimmon at arm's length and looking at them with deep personal disappointment.\n\n\"YY,\" Tock said, the way someone says a name when the day has stopped going their way. \"You look *moderately* fed.\"\n\n\"I look,\" YY said, padding up, \"like a squirrel who has had a *good* week.\"\n\nTock squinted. \"Have you?\"\n\n\"Modest week,\" YY said. \"Within the genre.\"\n\nTock turned the squares over in his paws. They were the rust-orange of last fall's persimmons, dried thin and a little dusty. Tock did not look like a squirrel who wanted to be holding two of them.\n\n\"My back-cache went,\" Tock said. \"Mice. The whole shelf. These were on top of a slate of pine bark, so the mice did not get to them, but everything *under* them is gone. I have two persimmon squares and a fortnight of hard rain ahead of me.\"\n\n\"That,\" YY said, \"is *unfortunate.*\"\n\n\"Mm.\"\n\nTock waited.\n\nYY waited too. He was carrying nothing in his cheek today and nothing in his paw. The hickory kernel was on the back shelf at the treehouse. The persimmon was a sweetness he had not had in months, and his stomach knew it before his brain caught up.\n\n\"What,\" Tock said, slowly, \"is going on at the scratch-pine.\"\n\nYY rolled the question around for a beat.\n\nThe scratch-pine *was* news. Tock would smell it tomorrow morning anyway, or the morning after, and find his own way onto the rocky shoulder. The shoulder was big enough for two squirrels. The crevice YY had pried his kernels from was already empty. The other crevices on the shoulder he had not yet checked.\n\nThe brook eddy was none of Tock's business.\n\nThe warm patch was *very* much none of Tock's business.\n\n\"The fox is gone,\" YY said. \"The smell has been gone since yesterday morning. The shoulder is open.\"\n\nTock's whiskers went up. \"Open *open*?\"\n\n\"Open enough that I went on it.\"\n\n\"And found?\"\n\n\"A *kernel,*\" YY said, careful with the singular. \"In a frost-cracked crevice on the western face. There were probably others. I did not stay.\"\n\nTock looked at him. Tock was not a stupid squirrel. Tock knew that *I did not stay* was a phrase that did most of its work in the spaces between its words. But Tock also knew that one direction was more than no direction, and that two persimmon squares were too many for a squirrel about to face a fortnight of rain.\n\n\"Half,\" Tock said.\n\n\"*Half.*\"\n\nTock broke a square along its dried-thin grain and handed YY half. The half was sticky in a way that meant the back of the square had not fully dried. YY took it like it was the only persimmon in the woods.\n\nThey sat on the bend a moment, eating.\n\n\"YY,\" Tock said.\n\n\"Mm.\"\n\n\"You held back on me.\"\n\n\"I did,\" YY said.\n\n\"That's all right.\" Tock chewed. \"It's the right week to.\"\n\nThey finished their respective halves. YY tucked the rest of his against his chest, where it would stay flat for the climb home. Tock licked persimmon dust off his paw with a slow, thoughtful tongue.\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" Tock said.\n\n\"*Tomorrow,*\" YY agreed.\n\nThey went different directions.\n\nOn the climb home, YY did the new arithmetic in his head. *One kernel on the back shelf. Half a square on the kitchen ledge. The warm patch unread. The brook eddy unread. The shoulder told to one squirrel, with one direction.* The arithmetic was the kind that did not balance to a single number. It balanced to *places.* Food was starting to live in places.\n\nHe was carrying that home, too.",
  "stateNote": "The day cost YY almost nothing in body and gave back a small concrete trade plus a structural shift in how he thinks about food. He goes home with a half-persimmon on the kitchen ledge, a kernel on the back shelf, three forage zones in his head, and the new fact that he is now actively choosing what to tell the other squirrels. Tock left with one direction; YY left with everything else.",
  "summary": "Tock was on the bend with two persimmon squares and an emptied back-cache; he asked what was going on at the scratch-pine and YY traded one direction (the fox is gone, the rocky shoulder is open) for half a square — keeping the warm patch and the brook eddy out of the conversation entirely.",
  "worldAnchor": "The U.S. and Iran exchanged new proposals to end the Strait of Hormuz war on 2026-05-06; President Trump paused Project Freedom and said there was 'great progress' toward a 'complete and final agreement.'",
  "statsBefore": {
    "health": 0.79,
    "food": 0.46,
    "attention": 0.6
  },
  "statsAfter": {
    "health": 0.79,
    "food": 0.49,
    "attention": 0.58
  },
  "_links": {
    "self": "/yy/data/2026-05/main/day/6.json",
    "manifest": "/yy/data/2026-05/manifest.json",
    "branch_index": "/yy/data/2026-05/main/index.json",
    "snapshot": "/yy/data/2026-05/main/snapshots/6.json",
    "world_seed": "/yy/data/2026-05/world-seed.json",
    "comparisons": [
      "/yy/data/2026-05/vs/main/alt1-with-feather/day/6.json"
    ]
  }
}