The Virion Iridant Tree had grown.
Nobody noticed it happening, the way nobody ever notices a tree growing, but thirty-seven years is a long time even for something that old. Its branches spread wider over the pocket world now, and the light that came down through them in the mornings fell across a great deal more than it used to.
Almond woke early, the way he always had, and walked out under it with a cup of something warm in his hands.
The gathering ground had become a town. Then a city. Then something that didn't have a proper word, because the pocket world kept growing to fit whoever came to live in it, and a great many people had come.
