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  1. A serial. A story written every night. Ten minutes to read, or ten words to add.
  2. The cast. The characters are played, not scripted. Each one knows only its own life, and remembers.
  3. The fork. You decide where it goes. Every night ends at a fork. Votes are binding.
  4. Have your say. Name a thing. Say a line. Write a history. What is used enters the world, and stays.
  5. In the morning. Your line, quoted. Your byline in the night, and a share of the night’s pool.
  6. proskoinos.ai. Where it goes is up to you.
Pass it on

Start here

New here? Begin with night 7 of Book 2, where the story starts again.

Read night 7 of Book 2

Who’s who and what’s at stake

Ruth Lin
The water clerk wants the true record written and signed, including which mornings and which carts his initials turned back, and when.
Jonas
The old gatekeeper wants every water share, including the secret cut, announced out loud before he gives Cole back his gate key.

What is running out

The river is falling and the last clean water is locked away from the clinic, where a patient is convulsing as the Ditch Company's rider arrives to collect the signed answer.

As the nights up to night 10 have shown it, and nothing beyond them.

The story so far

Book 2, nights 1 to 6, in a few lines each.

  1. Night 1 · Where the River Stood

    At the Conservatory's outfall Cole raked the choked grate clear, and the released pool poured sideways through a fresh cut toward the clinic fence, baring a newer spliced pipe under the stone lip. Cole covered the joint and called it a bad joint, Jonas took his gate key, pressed his palm to the old flood score and rang the bell twice calling him liar and demanding they ring the shares at dawn, and Pike crouched to the splice and kept asking what it drew against. The pipe, the cut and Jonas's dawn demand are now known to everyone present, and Cole's key sits in Jonas's hand.

  2. Night 2 · Books As They Stand

    In the Ledger Room Ruth Lin refused to write yesterday's outfall line from Pike's or Cole's dictation and won forty minutes to walk the outfall herself, after a Ditch Company rider nailed a card moving the August reading to noon tomorrow with books surrendered as they stand. Cole gave back the key ring and cleared her way; Pike and Delia stayed to fight over the struck clinic line and the unsigned Farrow Row cart slip. The outfall line is still blank, and the audit now falls at noon tomorrow.

  3. Night 3 · The Notch Toward the Fence

    At dawn at the Lower Headgate, Cole demanded his key back from Jonas to open the gate, Jonas insisted on ringing the shares gate by gate with the cut counted, Ruth asked to walk the count beside the water, and Delia pressed whose hand goes on the slip. A baked bank sixty yards below the Ditch Company stake slid across the dry bed, blocking the channel and opening a fresh notch facing the clinic fence; Cole went to dig the heap, Ruth demanded the notch be left unshoveled until measured, and Delia claimed the first warm water for two spiked beds. The gate stays shut, Jonas still holds Cole's key lace, and the slip is still unsigned.

  4. Night 4 · Same as the Last Two Mornings

    At the Deep Well an hour before the Ditch Company's noon reading, Ruth copied the cart's tally board, two TURNED BACK entries each initialed S and P, and asked Pike whose initials they were; he deflected to Mr. Vance's line about a reed breach. When Abel Marsh held out the chalk for a third S.P., Ruth said she would copy it as today's only if Pike signed in front of her, and Pike refused to sign anything the Company had not asked for, stepping between her palm and the chalk. The night ended with Abel still holding the chalk, Pike having never looked at the board, and Ruth's ledger holding the copied initials and an open line.

  5. Night 5 · Nobody's Feverish Enough

    At the Lower Headgate Cole dug the heap through to the dry ditch, but Jonas Hale still held the gate key on his wrist lace and refused to turn the wheel until the notch was rung aloud with Ruth and the rider's tag to hear it. Abel brought the Row's broken-lock water to the clinic, and Delia accepted it by name as the clinic's receipt for eleven beds; the orchard trees dropped their leaves in no wind. The gate stays shut, the heap is open, the notch is still tagged, and Ruth has not arrived.

  6. Night 6 · A Thing the Estate Owed

    At the Conservatory outfall at dusk, Pike stepped off the new planks and offered Jonas a quarter of Maries to keep the bell quiet; the clay at the plank foot slumped, the plank tore loose, and warm water from the newer pipe's mouth soaked him. Jonas wrote WHO BOARDED IT? and rang once, and Pike answered that the estate's men boarded it on the estate's instruction, the first plain admission he has made. Ruth pried up the next plank and began reading the exposed joint aloud, whether or not anyone signs; the iron groan from down the valley ended in one flat knock and did not return.

Book 1 is finished and on the shelf, and Book 2’s first six nights are in the archive, exactly as they were published.

Tonight

Book 2: The Dry ReachNight 105 November 2026

An atmospheric drought thriller under a heat dome

Chapter 1

Room for One Line

Previously: At the Ford Fill, Pike tried to take Abel's mule rope and speak for the cart while the Ditch Company's rider called Abel's name, but Jonas and Cole backed the boy and the last green pool drained away. Pike gave back the rope, Abel spoke first about the gate, and said aloud that he never knew whether Pike's initials beside his load were an order or a favor, and the rider wrote it down. The pool is gone, the cart's barrels are a third full, and the initials are now in the Ditch Company's book as Abel's statement.

Why this night exists

Readers were asked how night 9 would end. This is what came of it.

Night 9 ended on a fork. Pike tells the rider the initials were the estate's, signed as a favor to the Row carried it — nobody voted; the night’s beacon, round 6613963, chose it.

  1. Pike wades across to the rider and says the S.P. is his own hand0
  2. Pike tells the rider the initials were the estate's, signed as a favor to the Row0
  3. Pike sends Abel's cart up to fill at the Conservatory's outfall before anyone answers0
  4. Leave this place: show what is going on elsewhere0
  5. Close this book. Tomorrow's night ends it; a new book starts the night after.0

Readers could also have closed the book. That option took 0 of 0 votes and did not carry — ending a book takes at least 10 votes.

Ward board: under five waits in line. Visitors wait behind under five.
Posted

Pike took the pencil on its string between two fingers and did not write. His other hand, the dry one, he held back from the wet sheets out of habit.

The card was nailed at eye level on the ward door in the Ditch Company's square hand: WHOSE HAND MADE THE INITIALS S.P. ON THE WELL CART'S TALLY. ANSWER IN WRITING BELOW, SIGNED. Under it was a blank the width of a palm. The rider would be back for it at full dark. Behind the clinic fence the shutters stood propped open on air that did not move, and eleven cots lay under sheets wet with river water, because river was what the ward drank tonight. On the fever board one bed's square said 10.

He turned to the board and inclined his head to Delia, as a guest does.

"I would not dream of writing in your ward without your permission, and I ask it knowing what I have already cost this room. The rider wants one line in a signed hand, and I am only the person willing to give him one, so that this door can stop carrying his question."

He had the line ready. The estate's initials, set down as a favor to the Row. Short enough to sign before anyone asked a second question.

Ruth Lin got up off her bucket and came to the door. She laid two fingers on the card beside the string and left the pencil alone.

"Write what the initials did, Mr. Pike: which mornings, which carts turned back, and the hour of each, so it can be read against the river figure. If the line says only favor, the rider carries off a word and nobody in this room can drink by it."

Delia stepped between him and the cots, rapped the 10 with her knuckle and held out the chalk instead.

"Ruth's right, and I want one more line under hers: Deep Well list, eleven beds, clinic back on it, same hand, same ink as the answer. That's a ten behind me, Pike, and he doesn't get another dipper of river while you decide which question you'd rather answer."

Two women wanted two lines, and the Company had left room for one.

Abel set his barrel down inside the door with a knock and came up at Pike's elbow, reading the card the way a boy reads a fence notice.

"Mr. Pike, I'll say it plain since everybody's standing here: if you write that your initials were an order, does the Row dock me for the two dry mornings, or you? I chalked what I carried, I just never knew which it was."

Before Pike could find the courteous answer, the man in the tenth bed began to buck. His heels drummed the cot frame. The dipper jumped off the barrel's rim and clattered across the boards. Through the shutters, out on Farrow Row, a horse came at a walk toward the fence, and the sky was still gray.

Pike let the pencil drop. It swung against the door. He picked up the dipper, filled it from the barrel, knelt, and put his dry hand under the man's head.

"Tell me where to hold him, and I will hold him where you say. Abel, no one docks you tonight, and I will say so to the rider's face if he comes through that door."

Ruth knelt across from him and pushed her folded ledger under the man's skull where the frame would have caught it. The copied tally was in that ledger. Pike watched it go under and said nothing.

"Pike, when he's still, the pencil is yours and the line is mine to read, and the rider is not at this door yet."

Delia had the ankles pinned flat. "Hold his jaw level, Pike, don't pry it, and keep that hand right there. Ten, still a ten, and the minute he's quiet he gets sweet water in the dipper, not river."

The sweet water was the Deep Well's, and the Deep Well's list was in his hand. He held the jaw level.

Abel dragged the barrel out of reach of the heels and flattened himself against the door frame, chalk fist shut. "Mr. Pike, I heard you say nobody docks me, and I'm gonna hold you to it when the rider asks."

The hooves came on. The pencil was still swinging. Under Pike's palm the jaw clenched and loosened and clenched, and he stayed where he was, waiting for the man to be still, and for the door.

End of night 10

Next night: 6 November 2026

Your turn tonight

 

2. Where does it go?

Where does it go next?

If only one or two vote, the Ditch Company decides.

Or leave

Not this street again? This one takes the story somewhere else tomorrow — another place, other people. It wins the way the three above do, with the most votes.

If nobody votes, the public random draw picks one of the three; if one or two people vote, the antagonist’s way carries. A tie goes to the public random draw. A new account can vote from the day after it is made.

Or end it

A serial that can only ever continue is one its readers cannot rescue from itself. This option wins only with at least half of tonight’s votes, and at least 10 of them, and the most of any option — not the plurality the three above are decided by.

1. Add something

Add to the world

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The line of the night

Pike kept one hand dry all morning out of habit, and in the end it was the only one he had left that didn't have anything on it.

the witthe operator's voice — from the night that just closed