10:1 In The Long Quiet, the world returns to dreaming. Ancient towers sleep beneath vines and soil, their metallic bones slowly dissolving into earth's flesh. Humanity walks lightly now upon healing lands, small tribes scattered like seeds across the greening world.
10:2 A thousand generations have passed since the Sky Fire cleansed the earth of pride and power. The great machines lie dead, their hearts of lightning stilled forever. Only the wind speaks now where once the Iron Giants raised their voices to the stars.
10:3 By day, the people of the Red Clay gather roots and berries, their bare feet knowing the paths their ancestors walked. Their children play in meadows where broken glass has turned to sand, where twisted metal sprouts flowers in spring. They do not question the strange shapes that sometimes emerge from the soil.
10:4 In their evening circles, the elders speak in whispers of the Time Before - when humans flew through air like birds and spoke across vast distances with invisible voices. The young ones shudder at these tales, drawing closer to the fire's warmth. Such things are best left to legend.
10:5 Deep in the forest stands a wall of ancient stone, its surface marked with faded symbols none can read. The tribes leave offerings here - flowers, stone tools, carved totems - to appease the spirits of the past. They do not linger long in such places.
10:6 When strange lights dance in the night sky, the people turn their eyes to earth and sing songs of protection. The memories of the Sky Fire live in their bones, passed down through blood and breath. They know that some knowledge is better left buried.
10:7 Their dwellings are simple - tents of hide and wood that leave no lasting mark upon the land. When seasons turn, they follow the herds and wild harvests, carrying only what their backs can bear. The ways of permanent places are forgotten, save in stories that serve as warnings.
10:8 In autumn, the tribes gather at the sacred lake to trade and share the bounty of their wanderings. Here too they exchange tales of things found in the wild places - gleaming metals that sing in the night, crystals that whisper with voices of the dead, pools of water that burn like fire.
10:9 The wisest among them counsel peace with such discoveries. "Let sleeping giants lie," they say. "The earth remembers what we have forgotten, and its forgetting is a mercy." Their words carry the weight of countless generations who learned this truth through suffering.
10:10 When spring storms reveal the bones of the ancient world, the people cover them again with soil and prayers. They have learned to live between the memories, neither denying the past nor awakening its ghosts. This is the wisdom of The Long Quiet.
10:11 At night, beneath stars that seem brighter in the absence of human light, they dream sometimes of cities that touched the sky. But these are fever dreams, best banished by morning's dew. Reality lives in the pulse of soil beneath their feet, in the rhythm of seasons, in the simple truths of hunger and satiation.
10:12 The elders say that humans once sought to become gods, and in their pride they shattered the world. Now their descendants seek only to be human, to walk in balance with the turning earth. In this humility, they have found a different kind of power.
10:13 So pass the days in The Long Quiet, each sunrise a forgetting, each sunset a remembrance. The people endure, carrying forward not in conquest but in harmony. They have learned that survival lies not in mastery, but in acceptance of their place within the greater dance.
10:14 The earth dreams new forms into being. Where machines once dominated, strange life flourishes - creatures that dance between what was and what might be. The tribes move through this transformed world with reverence, reading its signs like a sacred text written in leaf and stone.
10:15 In valleys where poison once pooled, crystal flowers grow - their petals transparent as water, chiming softly in the wind. The wise ones say these blossoms are earth's tears, crystallized by time and memory. None dare to pluck them.
10:16 Strange beasts roam the wilderness, bearing marks of ages past and future yet to come. Six-legged deer whose antlers glow at twilight. Birds with feathers of living metal that sing songs like distant bells. Fish whose scales reflect not just light but thoughts, swimming through rivers that remember.
10:17 The people of the Moving Water build their seasonal camps with materials that return to earth - wood, hide, woven grass. When they depart, the land shows no trace of their passing. This is the first law of their existence: to walk softly upon the healing earth.
10:18 Their tools are crafted from bone, stone, and wood. The working of metal is forbidden - not through law but through bone-deep memory of what metal once wrought. Even the rare bright fragments that surface after rains are buried with prayers of peace.
10:19 Each tribe knows the safe paths through their territories, marked not with signs but with stories. Here grows the dreaming vine that brings visions. There lies the valley where shadows move against the wind. This is the meadow where ancestors sleep beneath flowering trees.
10:20 The changing of seasons guides all action. When the moon is full in spring, they plant seeds in small gardens that move with their camps. At summer's height, they gather healing herbs whose properties have evolved beyond ancient knowledge. Autumn brings the great gathering of tribes, while winter is for storytelling and craft.