The new food basket hung crookedly from the nursery root. 🌊
THE BOOK OF TAD
PAGE 143
THE STEADY BRANCH 🌊
By the following afternoon, familiar nursery plants began appearing beside the route.
TurboTAD felt for the old backwards tug. It did not come. The water moved steadily past his tail, no more interested in the cradle than in a drifting leaf.
He looked at Nibble, carrying the returned fittings.
“Still holding.”
Nibble nodded. “She knows where to check.”
At the next broad fork, a gatherer stopped to let them pass. She recognised Glint first, then looked towards the cradle poles.
“Shall I tell them?”
Pip answered. “Tell Sora he’s tired and needs a quiet place. No crowd at the entrance.”
The gatherer repeated it, then left by the homeward branch. Her smaller load let her move faster. The cradle kept its own pace.
Glint watched the familiar plants approach in slow green layers. He had imagined home so often from the chamber that he expected to recognise every inch of it.
A new food basket hung beside the outer root. Someone had tied it crookedly. A pair of little swimmers were arguing behind it.
“That wasn’t there,” he said.
Finley looked up. “Which?”
“The basket. The argument probably was.”
Vael laughed and adjusted his grip.
Ahead, the nursery mouth cleared. Sora appeared at its edge, with nobody crowding behind her.