Katharine didn't neglect her sleep, but it nonetheless didn't come easily to her that night. Partly, this was because of a vague sense of guilt: when invited to share her feelings after dinner, she had avoided the whole topic of the reminder, and had focused instead on her quarrel with Ophelia, attributing this vaguely to "a disagreement about rules". She knew that this wasn't quite honest (though it was perfectly truthful), but she hadn't been able to bring herself to share her really important feelings with her parents.

She knew that was wrong of her. Children had to respect and trust their parents; otherwise, how would they ever become good adults themselves? And she did trust her mother and father. She knew that they were upright, intelligent people, and that they would do anything – within the rules, of course – to keep her and her brother safe. But, all the same, when she thought about telling her mother how happy the reminder had made her, or imagined her father sensibly and meticulously analyzing that happiness until there was nothing dangerous left in it, she knew that she just couldn't do it, however bad a child that made her.

She hugged her comfort object a little tighter, as though, by giving the stuffed zebra a little more of what it ought to have from her, she could make up for having given her parents a little less. Its soft plush fur pressed against her cheek, and she smiled softly, feeling grateful that her Ceremony of Eight was still almost a year away. She needed some extra comfort, tonight.

She wondered what was supposed to happen to her when December did eventually roll around, and her comfort object got taken away. Was she just supposed to not need comfort anymore? Or was she expected to learn, over the course of the coming months, how to comfort herself without any help? That would be all right, she supposed – but it seemed awfully lonely. And how was she supposed to be learning it? Nothing in her Instruction that year had even mentioned self-comfort – at least, not that she could remember. What if she failed to learn it, and wasn't ready to take part in the Ceremony when it came? Would she have to remain a Seven for another year while her friends moved on? Could that even happen, under the rules?

Maybe she was just thinking about it too much. That was one of her bad habits, she knew; she couldn't count the number of times that her mother had said to her, with a laugh, "Really, Katharine, life isn't as complicated as you want it to be!" Which she had always thought was a little unfair; it wasn't that she wanted life to be complicated, it was just that questions kept occurring to her that her peers, and maybe even her elders, never seemed to think of.

She sighed sleepily, and tried to focus on something that wouldn't keep her awake. Something that could just be felt, and surrendered to, like the softness and warmth of her pillow, or the gentle rhythm of her own breathing. In and out, rise and fall… inhale, pause, exhale, pause… hfff-ffhhh, hfff-ffhhh…

…Ĭ wán-dĕred lóne-lў ás ă clóud…

So, eventually, her mind was stilled, and her body (which was still that of a Seven, however strangely precocious the rest of her may have been) drifted into a long-postponed and badly needed sleep. And with that sleep, of course, came dreams.

Not visions, be it noted. None of Katharine's dreams that night came from anything stranger or more supernatural than her own mind and heart. Nor were they particularly symbolic or significant dreams; indeed, when Katharine woke the next morning, she had no notion that she had dreamed at all. They were merely the ordinary mental activity of the lightly sleeping child – the passive drift of the soul along the currents of natural desire.

Why, then, should they be mentioned here at all? Only because the human soul is a stubbornly continuous thing. Time may change its state, but it cannot change its nature; every moment of its being remains united to every other, and, being thus united, necessarily influences and shapes the whole. The poet of the daffodils had known that the child is father of the man; Katharine did not know, but nonetheless demonstrated in her person, that the sleeper is likewise sister of the waking child.

The founders of the Community had known this well; it was the reason they had instituted dream-telling as well as sharing of feelings. It was important, certainly, that waking sentiments be rendered safe and tractable, but this was of little value unless the urges that bore the sleeping mind along were similarly tamed. (Indeed, they had flirted with the idea of dispensing with sleep altogether, but this had proven impractical.) But the sleeper who forgot a dream couldn't be expected to share it, and so Katharine's reveries that night were never brought under the knife of analysis and dissected into their component emotions; they were allowed, of necessity, to abide in their fullness as dreams.

This was, in all probability, a very good thing for the Community. Had Katharine been deprived of the half-remembered images by which her body interpreted the reminders to her mind, it is unlikely that she would have been able to embrace those reminders as readily as she did. She might well have still been unready when the cataclysm came – and where the Community, and even the whole of the world, would have been then, is an unpleasant thing to contemplate.

So Katharine slept, and dreamed – and, in their various dwellings, the other residents of the Community slept and dreamed as well. As they did so, the restoration that time and stillness bring to living minds was worked upon them; when morning dawned at its appointed hour, they found that the shock and horror of the previous day had been wiped from their souls, and that the memories of what had occasioned it could be seen in their proper light. And, so seeing them, the majority of the residents laughed at their own fears.

What, after all – so they asked themselves – had really happened? A Speaker had made a bizarre and probably meaningless announcement; well, people did do strange things now and then, when stress or personal difficulties overwhelmed them. Doubtless he would be given a period of absence to recover his equilibrium; some other temporary Speaker would be appointed in his place, and the life of the Community would continue as it always had. The wisdom of the Elders, which had preserved the Community for countless generations, would certainly see to that.

So they put the matter out of their minds, and emerged from their dwellings to go about their daily business. They ate and drank; they procured goods and distributed them; the Masons built useful structures, and the Landscapers planted appropriate trees. More personal affairs were likewise attended to; the records of the Spousal Assignment Office, for instance, show that three citizens applied on this day to be given in marriage, and that two pairs of spouses were assigned to each other.

And over it all, an ancient and forgotten power watched, and waited.