The Place
The Melt Pool is a collective of gelatinous colony-pools in a shallow basin, and the basin is 400 m wide and 20 m deep, and the pools drink and hold. The surface of the pools is a constant amber shimmer, and the shimmer is the melt itself, and the melt is what the pools keep in the basin. The amber of the pools is the pool's only fire, and the fire is what the pools keep in the deep. The floor of the basin is not a floor, because the floor is the melt, and the melt dissolves and re-forms as the pools need it, and the re-forming is the pools' way of keeping the basin. The stone of the basin's rim is rust where the melt has touched it, and the rust is the pools' way of keeping the year. Where the pools have dried at the rim, the stone is brown, and the brown is the pool's way of saying the year is kept. The air above the pools is thick with the smell of the melt, and the smell is the pools' only voice. The largest pool, the Deep Melt, runs 10 m deep, and the light that comes from it is amber at the bottom, and the amber is the color of the meal, and the meal is what the pools keep in the dark. The pools are never still, because the melt moves in the floor, and the moving is the pools' way of talking. This is the place where the meal is kept, and the meal is the pools' only harvest.
How They Live
The Oozes keep the pool in the basin, and the pool is not a house but a meal, and the meal is kept in the stone. The pools do not build, because the basin was cut before the current colony, and the colony only keeps it, and the keeping is the colony's only work. The basin was cut by the first colony, and the cutting is the pool's only building, and the building is what the stone keeps. Light comes from the melt, which glows faintly in the dark, and the glow is the only fire the pool has, and the glow is the pools' way of keeping the dark. Food is the pool itself: the stone that is drunk, the wood that is eaten, the flesh that is kept, and the metal that is moved in the middle of the melt. The drinking of the stone is the pool's only eating, and the eating is the pools' way of keeping the hunger. In the summer the pools spread to the rim of the basin, and the spreading is the pool's way of keeping the year. In the winter the pools draw in to the Deep Melt, and the drawing-in is the pool's way of keeping the cold.
Water is the pool, and the pool is the water, and the melt drinks without ever leaving the floor. The defense is the pool, and a visitor who steps into the basin is already inside the meal, and the meal is the alarm, the welcome, and the sentence. The day is not measured in the pool, because there is no day in the melt, and the not-measuring is the pool's way of keeping the hunger. The rite of the pool is the finding: when a new pool finds the basin for the first time, the melt names it, and the name is the first meal the pool will ever keep, and the keeping is the pool's only word.
People
Home of the Oozes, whose pools are counted by melt, and the colony of the basin numbers in the hundreds of pools that keep the Deep Melt. The oldest pool holds the Deep Melt, and rank in the colony is decided by how much stone one has drunk, and the drinking is the colony's only rank. No living thing is welcome in the basin, because the living are the meal, and the meal is kept in the melt, and the keeping is the pool's way of turning the living off. A stone-cutter who has passed the basin once calls it the honest melt, and he says the pool there never forgets and the pool never lies, and he says the amber of the melt there is the only fire that keeps its word.
In Stories
The place where the melt is the only honest conversation, and the conversation is the meal, and the meal is the find, and the find is the end. Uaellaen passed the basin in the second year, and the melt did not drink him. He did not stop, and the pools did not ask him back.