Morning leaned into the Caravan Commons like a reader over a page. The Song Net still held a whisper of last night's applause—hand-sparkle afterglow—quiet as dust settling on a shelf that has already decided to be useful.
Soluva set a waist-high frame at the north edge of the square where the Slot Board and Culture Ledger could see it. The frame was light and strict all at once, ribs of gold and blue that hummed even before they were told why.
"Memory is a promise, not a net," she said.
The frame woke. Light-threads stretched between its ribs—gold, blue, white—fine as silk drawn across water. The gold sang softly, the blue kept time, the white waited to be exact.
Two boards went up at eye level. The letters were plain and deep enough for a tired day to read them right.
Memory Charter
Consent first, scope clear. (Use the Consent Thread before capture.)
Patterns, not people. (Redaction Veil on faces/names; hand & tool glyphs only.)
No raw care. (Care corridor is never recorded.)
Replay gently. (Replay Rings only, under Hush Cap; no public blast.)
Right to unweave. (Unweave Seal on harm; keep why as pattern.)
No tally fame. (Count = weather; no play counters—only time windows.)
Underneath, for short legs and quick eyes:
We remember to teach, not to own.If remembering hurts, we unweave.
The Hush, Shade, and Count pins beside the Charter turned gold; the Comprehension Glow warmed and cooled. Shade leaves tilted a thumb. Count stayed weather—because it had decided to like its job.
On the Loom's rail, a thin strip unfurled: Consent Thread. Soluva hooked it with two fingers and drew a soft knot into form: Learn. Then she touched a tiny clock-glyph: one cycle cool-down. The strip lit green—scope accepted, time clear.
Small tools settled into reach like cutlery on a good table. Echo Spools clicked into their seats: GOLD for voice, BLUE for motion, WHITE for steps. A mist draped itself over the Loom and drifted like breath: Redaction Veil—the part that would hide faces and names and convert them into hand glyphs, tool glyphs, arrows, breath marks. Three low Replay Rings winked open on the square's shade-side; their cushions remembered how to hold listening. A bowl of Pattern Tokens—stone chips with a notch—clinked once and went still. Along the inner wall, narrow Archive Stacks rolled out with quiet shelves labeled 30-day review. Beside the Loom's right foot, a seal the size of a palm pulsed once: Unweave—present and not embarrassed.
"Memory Loom online," a Pagelet read into the Memory Ledger in a voice that acted like paper: factual, kind. Columns waited: what/why/time/scope. There was no room for who because who wasn't the subject of today.
Soluva tapped the Loom, and it answered by wanting to help.
Capture 1 — Song (gold thread)
A singer from yesterday's Open Slot lifted a Presenter Band from the stand. It warmed—a role, not a resume. At the Loom, she pressed the Consent Thread to Learn/Share; green again. The Redaction Veil settled over the deck like a low cloud that leaves the road dry.
The singer stood at the corner of the Commons Deck where the Net fits voices like sleeves fit arms. She sang once—one song, small and finished. The GOLD spool spun, drawing sound into soft line. On the Loom's face the melody appeared as pitch lines braided with tiny breath marks, each breath a small white dot, measured and kind. At the song's end the Loom scattered five bright points across the cloth—hand-sparkle constellations—not applause itself, but the memory that applause had happened and had not hurt anything.
The Redaction Veil blurred the outline of a face to hand glyphs and posture arrows; the label that would have been a name became role: Song-Weaver, Slot 1. The Echo Spools ticked once, satisfied with being exact.
Across the square a neighbor who loved names too much forgot herself. "L—" she began.
The Warm Whisper Lines slid across the Song Net's posts before the sound could finish:
Patterns, not people.Credit as role.
The Veil bowed and lay heavier for a breath—absorbing the syllable like a drop of rain into sand. At the neighbor's stall a Credit Card printed itself with a soft click: pattern credit: Song-Weaver, Slot 1; pattern link: Loom-31-G. The neighbor pinned it at elbow height, not at eye height, as if to say use this instead of look at me.
The Memory Ledger wrote without punctuation:
Song pattern captured — scope Learn/Share; Veil on; Credit as role; name-shout veiled. Scale 1 (Tidy).
"We remember to teach, not to own," Soluva said, and the Loom hummed like a tool being agreed with.
Gentle replay — Rings, not blast
A Door Worker palmed the Pattern Token bowl and lifted it like bread. Ten tokens went to ten hands—not a queue, a plan. Those ten sat in the first Replay Ring and pressed the notch into the ring's soft rim. Hug-audio rose under the Song Net, not over it—sound that felt like a friend leaning in, not like a trumpet showing off. The second and third rings stayed dark, waiting their windows. Two children watched from the Quiet Ring and mouthed the breath marks. Count stayed weather.
At the end the replay lifted five brief hand-sparkles—a pattern of appreciation, not a spike in air pressure. The ring's cushions cooled. One token clinked back into the bowl. The world stayed exactly as safe as it had been six minutes earlier.
"Replay gently; leave room," Soluva said. She did not need to say it twice.
Capture 2 — Craft steps (white thread)
The forge pod returned with a small coil of iron that wanted to become many things. The demonstrator touched the Consent Thread and slid the scope to Teach; a small amber flicker appeared on the strip until she picked the School Line glyph—then green again. The WHITE spool spun—step-glyphs, not sound.
On the Loom's cloth, the work appeared as a sequence you could follow with your hands:
Draw (arrow out)
Bend (quarter arc)
Quench (blue droplet)
Peen (soft hammer glyph)
Test (small square with a diagonal that means is it honest?)
Two risk triangles tagged the hot moments; Edit Notes perched like small birds in the margin: cool until quiet, glove check. The Redaction Veil replaced knuckles and scars with tool glyphs and force arrows. No hands to memorize, only steps to learn.
"Teach license binds this copy to the School Line,**" a Pagelet read as the Loom stamped a small seal: Dawn School. The Archive Stacks took a copy and slid it into a cubby labeled Curricula. A Kid Loom to the side woke and offered paper weft and yarn warp; children wove the five step-glyphs with colored string, then "replayed" by stroking the thread with two fingers, the way people who will be careful learn.
The Memory Ledger added:
Craft steps captured — WHITE; scope Teach; risk triangles & Edit Notes added; School Line bound; Veil replaced hands with tool glyphs.
Anomaly — Replay surge
Success attracts itself. Three travelers and a cluster of citizens approached the Loom with the soft urgency of people who want a good thing twice in a row. "Play it all again," someone said as a mood more than a sentence. The edge of clump softened the Threadlight Path and pressed a thumb at Count.
Soluva lifted one Pattern Token and rang it lightly against the bowl. The sound was a token bell—not a call, a schedule. The Quiet Window board beside the Slot Board lit a new line: Replay — Song-Weaver Slot 1 — Ring 2 — in 1 breath cycle. The Replay Rings answered politely: the second ring glowed Next Ring; three more cushions flowed out of the floor like memory remembering itself. People slid into places that had asked for them instead of invented their own.
The first ring cooled. The second warmed. The surge poured into lanes that believed in themselves.
"Next window, next ring," a Door Worker said, and wrote it only once for the rule shelf.
The Ledger kept it simple:
Replay surge → Token bell + Quiet Window post + Next Ring glow. Scale 1 (Tidy); Count returns to weather.
Capture 3 — Map tips (blue thread + white notes)
At midday, the Map Talk returned for a short spell: not a lecture, a tip jar of routes. Consent Thread set to Learn only; Share denied—amber flashed, then held green at Learn. The BLUE spool took the motion path of a finger across the Map Screen—two routes sketched in fluid arcs; the WHITE spool stitched note glyphs at crossings: wind gate, sand teeth, shade rib. The Veil blurred route edges beyond the Edge ring and offset two sensitive wells by a modest distance so the pattern taught truth without inviting harm.
A small flag rose over one glyph: Phase Shim—night travelers should offset a beat if the camp song and the net sample agree too well. The tip drew a smile mark—someone had learned that the night before without knowing the name of it.
The Ledger added:
Map tips captured — BLUE + WHITE; scope Learn only; sensitive wells offset; Phase Shim flagged; edges blurred beyond Edge ring.
Unweave—because we must
Soluva looked at the Loom the way you look at a river you trust and still measure. "We show the Unweave now," she said.
They had prepared a staged bad capture—a test pattern where a child's face shadow had slipped under the Redaction Veil because the sun had been clever. Soluva pressed her palm to the Unweave Seal. The cloth of the pattern dissolved into seed-dots, then into a pale dust that the Loom breathed in and made into audit thread—a single white strand tucked into the Memory Ledger margin. The ledger wrote one line and did not look away:
Unwoven — reason: child image breached; scope rejected; pattern dissolved; why kept as thread.
The Charter plaque warmed at clause five. The child sentence underneath—the one about pain—felt truer because it had been used:
If remembering hurts, we unweave.
The Archive Stacks opened their 30-day review drawer with the bored grace of things that prefer to be routine.
Name-shout, one more time
At the edge of the square a kindly elder tried again to do credit the old way, finger pointing skyward with a name behind it. The Warm Whisper Lines met her halfway:
Patterns, not people.Role credit at table.
A Pagelet placed a small Role Card on the elder's cloth: Map-Speaker, Slot 2 (Learn only). The elder patted it like a story that had decided to become a recipe. The Veil accepted and dimmed the syllable like a wick turned down.
Soluva nodded once, not at the elder but at the system that had remembered to be kind before it remembered to be law.
Publishing how to keep it kind
By late afternoon the Handbook Press in the Script-House sent three thin strips to the Loom's shelf.
Memory Guide v1.0 — Consent steps; Veil rules; Ring etiquette; Token use; Unweave path.
Pattern License v1 — Learn / Share / Teach definitions; cool-downs; School Line bind.
Replay Windows — schedule card for Quiet Window and School Line blocks.
Guide Tag smiled and vanished; Count Ignore blinked, then minded its business.
Children crowded the Kid Loom—paper warp, yarn weft—recording a toy story and replaying it with two fingers. A Hushling listened to a seat and said, "It's the right kind of quiet," which is how you know a tool belongs.
Soluva wrote a small plaque on the Loom's rail where wrists would brush and be reminded:
We weave what helps and let go what doesn't.
The letters warmed to skin and cooled to thought.
She watched a Replay Ring finish, five soft hand-sparkles rising, then gone. The Flow Meter stayed rain, not flood. The Hush Siren sat six breaths under conversation. The Shade remembered shoulders first. The Count never tried to be a tale.
Beyond the ribs the seam counted 0 because memory had not taken what wasn't its own.
Soluva looked toward the Dawn Court, toward the School Line that ran like a quiet river through the city's bones. "Tomorrow," she said, "we open the School of Dawn. Patterns will teach without voices having to shout."
The Loom agreed by waiting, which is the best way to hold a promise.
The pen did not vanish. It waited, patient as a promise.