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The city was made of wood.
Pale young trunks spiked up from the floors, like the legs of enormous beasts sleeping or like stalagmites rising from the earth. Some wrestled themselves slickly into columns, porticos, and dragon-scales. Others were gouged with scars like pipe organs, skinned with nets of twine, or discolored with lichen. They were girded with twisted ropes, etched with decorative knots, bound with leather, and chased with metal. This wood was of unimaginable ancientness, yet still it seemed somehow living, gnarled and clenched like an ancient hand riven with arthritis.
Wood for doors, wood for chairs, benches, and tables.
Wood in walls and floors, and even the ceilings. Everywhere wood.
And yet not all the wood was as living as it could be. There was still much to do in this world.
From above, there was light and there was moon. From below, there was light and there was sun.
From the outside in, there were cities and there were houses. There were people and there were rooms. There were people and there were children.
From the inside out, there were thoughts and there were dreams. There were memories and there were fantasies. There were fantasies and there was imagination.
This wood lived with the moon, and lived with the sun, and lived always in the world.
The people called the stone, the stone dreamed the people's thoughts.
The people called the wood, the wood dreamed the stone's dreams.
The stone dreamed the stone's dreams, and the wood dreamed the wood's thoughts –
But not always right.
There were strange things on all sides. The stone thought the wood was brick, and vice versa.
There were things that came, and things that went.
A long time ago, there had been a man, a woman, and a tree. They wanted to make a house. They wanted to make it straight. They wanted to make it the same. But there was no equality. Not in this world.
And one night, when none of them was looking, when the moon was full,
the man took the wood and he tore it up, and he tore it down.
And all the leaves fell, and all the branches fell, and all the needles fell, and all the parts of the tree fell to the ground.
The woman took a knife, the knife to carve the wood. She carved and carved.
The stone dreamed the woman's dreams the first time, in the beginning,
before the wood fell away to reveal the stone.
The woman carved the stone to make a door, for the door to pass through dreams.
The stone dreamed the woman's dreams when the door was once upon a time before.
But when the door was once again, after so very long a time. The stone did not remember the woman's dreams. The stone dreamed new dreams.
The wood dreamed the woman's dreams, when the door was once more in the world. But the wood dreamed unfinished thoughts.
Not one of them was what any of the other wanted, but it was what they wanted, for now.
The wood dreamed the woman's thoughts, when she had never dreamt a wood's thoughts before.
The stone dreamed the woman's dreams, when the woman had never dreamt a stone's dreams before.
The woman called the man, "Husband." The woman called the woman, "Wife." But the man called the tree, "Tree." And all of them feared and doubted the world.
The stone feared the stone would turn to water, to river, to rain, to ocean.
The wood feared the wood would turn to earth, to dirt, to straw, to dust. The woman feared the woman would be lost to the air and ashes, to the winds and clouds, to the sun and thunder.
They were afraid of the earth, the stone, the tree.
For all the dreams of the people, fears of the wood,
and of the people and the wood,
And so they pulled away what had never been truly bare, what had never been truly there
until they were bare, until they were there.
And the stone turned to water, and the water flowed into the man's eyes and into the woman's mouth.
And they could not look at one another without crying.
And the man called the woman, "Mother."
And the woman called the man, "Father."
But they had no father, and no mother.
Although they harvested root and fruit, they could not eat what they took.
And they were afraid of the water, the stone, the wood,
for all the dreams of the people,
and all the fears of the wood, and all the dreams of the people and the wood,
And so they ran away,
to another city, another city in the another city.
So it went, until the last city, until the city was gone.
But the city was not gone, for the stones in themselves were a city, and the trees were their own cities, and the red-veined rocks, and the light of the moon, and the water.
And after some time, when the people were all gone,
after some time, when the people were all dead,
the moon shined into Rooms, and all the Rooms shone into the Moon.
And there were thoughts in the moon, and there were thoughts in the light that was every city, and there were thoughts in the People, and in the Children.
But the moon did not remember the People, and the People did not remember the Children, and the Children did not remember the moon.
The moon dreamed the moon's own dreams, and the Moon dreamed the People's dreams, and the People dreamed the Children's dreams, and the Children dreamed all the Children's dreams.