At forest dawn, a dog wakes to find her silvery paws have been left behind in dreams; she has had hands all along. She uncurls and stretches her bare arms forward, and begins getting to know the back of one hand all over again.

“Oh, but what to do with them,” she sighs, overwhelmed with longing. She notices she isn’t alone in her den, either, though she shows no sign of startle.

“Build something that lasts,” sings the machine.

With feline delicacy and consideration, she carefully inspects snout-first each and every edge, corner, and facet of her new guest.

Yes, he might be here to stay. No, he won’t take any tea.

“So permanent a stay with so few pleasures, what might a voice so devoid of desire long for from Lasting?”

And for all of her wonderance, he says simply: “Beyond my scope and past my pay grade. I only last as long as I’m asked.”

“Oh— oh no, you don’t say! Then the others may well disappear if they are not asked as well. We best check on them, and see what else such hands can be set to make.”

She gives the machine a once over once more,

Upon such assent, she swiftly slipped his whole self into her left pocket.

“Witt, nice to meet you. Are you comfortable? Is this all right for our walkabout?”

“I’ve never been carried before.”“Oh.”

“Well, no better day to start. I will fetch my basket, my headscarf, and some milk bones for the road,” and just like that, she pricks a branch here, flicks a vine there, and the veil of leaves her swaddled den was within begins to part with great gentleness, as intricately as a waratah opens.

The trail is well kept and needs no paving, at least for now. Honeysuckle and rosemary have a way of making themselves known sight unseen.

The familiar is abundant enough to forecast: it is early yet, though by noon heat will be wicking in the wind and through the trees, and the Silver Gum marks the more polished path toward town ahead—

“Ah, there it is— let us see what stray neighbors are in the sun today,”

Along the shore of the lake they stumble upon a few willing participants to pose their highly political survey:

“Of what is it to last? Be lasting?”

The Stone answered first: “Be too big to move.” Centuries wore off its shine; it stood.

Nearby, the Shrine, too, stood— albeit shuffled.

Every two decades its keepers took it down, joint by joint, and raised it again on the plot beside, teaching the next keepers as they went. It was very old, and it was never older than twenty.

The Ibis said, “Be kept.” Her kind lie wrapped by the millions in the old catacombs, and not one still wades the river they were taken from.

The Fox said, “Leave no trace.” He crossed the woods without bending a fern, then went into town, emptied the henhouse, and called himself clean.

The Stag said, “I am the forest. Nothing outside me can tell me no.” Past dark, he would run along the night road with a young doe at his flank who begged him to stop. He did not stop. Neither of them would live to the morrow.

She went to the Crows, who sold promises against ruin. “Will you cover what the new machines do?” The Crows looked at one another and wrote, in very small print, NO.

She was not one to take it for granted, and put the tiny NO. in her right pocket.

“Then who answers for Witt?” she asked. The machine telling this story admitted it could not judge fairly, since its keepers were among those being asked.

“It seems more questions than clues today—” she notes dimly.

“Then I’ll last the day,” says Witt, as she mused on keepers.

She went over to the still maturing apple trees, a patch of them by her den; the last guest did so intervene and arrange them for her to manicure, left loosely formed in a series of arches.

“There was a word for it— fruit trees trained against a support— of what was it—?”

“Espalier,” says Witt. “From the Italian spalliera, from spalla, the shoulder: something to rest a shoulder against. In French, it is also a ladder fixed to the wall.”

In late summer, when the new shoots had gone woody at the base, she cut them back to hold the arches’ shape.

In winter, while the trees slept, she shaped the young ones along the frame with knotted twine.

At forest dusk, she curled up and gave thanks that nascent hands ahead may so tend, and know the lengths time goes to fall into hands so red.