* A hand in your making, a bird in the hand, hands forced, hand in hand, blood on your hands, washing one's hands of the matter
* First one to go
* One night, outside the clearing where the tower is, meets clone
* Clone guides her hand into the soil where it takes root, muscles loosened, unwound, thus unbound began to lengthen, strengthen, arch skyward, seeking stars.
The day began with the botanist giving the physicist a hand in setting up countless contraptions around the rim of the clearing, describing an invisible net of arcane geometries held five feet above the ground. She lugged the total station while he placed the equipment. He prattled on as he went, describing what he was doing, what tools he was using, what equipment she was carrying. She largely lost track after the word 'theodolite', though.
Theodolite.
*Theo*-dolite?
*Theodo*-lite?
The *-ite* put her in mind of stones. Of something semiprecious. Pretty, but not costly. And that *theo* stuck on the beginning got her thinking of gods and, perhaps, of God. Theology. That sort of thing.
*The god-stone? Does that make sense?*
Or perhaps it was the *-dol-* stuck in the middle. Sadness? No. Pain? Dolorimetry. Was at a science? A sub-field, perhaps. Not hers, not the physicist's.
*The god-stone, amber of the highest quality, embedded in which is a kernel of pain.*
Here the physicist was, describing measurements and chromatic aberrations and spherical lenses and timed strobes and...
And all she could think was *were I to stumble across it, would I know the god-stone if I saw it?*
