A bundle of twistweed entered the nursery before Nibble did. 🌱
THE BOOK OF TAD
PAGE 29
A SECOND WAY THROUGH 🪴
Striped daylight reached the high roots and a nursery already busy with work.
Sora hovered between two root pockets, studying the woven wall. Every nursery space depended on the first passage. Moving the little ones between pockets would still leave them needing that same opening if it clogged.
Brink, the Sergeant-at-Arms, arrived. “Someone has to keep the first passage clear while they work beside it.”
“I need to direct the second.”
“Then I take the first until this one holds.” He moved into position.
Marno pressed along the outer roots. “We can make a gap here. Pull it wide and it won’t hold.”
Nibble followed the line backwards through a weed curtain, dragging three strands and one wrapped around everything except its destination.
“I brought choices.”
“You brought the whole plant,” Marno said.
Sora’s mouth twitched. “A small passage. One nursery pocket at a time.”
Marno wanted a firm brace below; Nibble argued for a woven cradle above that could bend without snapping.
“Both,” Sora said. “Marno holds the gap. Nibble gives it room to move.”
“That is annoyingly sensible.”
Sora pointed to the outer root. “Begin there. Into the upper nursery channel, not the pocket below.”
Marno set the brace. Nibble looped weed around it, then freed the loose tangle from Marno and, finally, himself.
Sora pushed water carefully through the new opening. It held beneath her test.
Marno and Nibble kept working.