In the Meadow Between, where the grey mist breathes in and breathes out, Marlow woke a little — not all the way, only the gentle way you stir when a warm quilt shifts. The grey hare was sitting beside him, just as she had been, her ears soft as folded dusk.
"You rested well," she said. It was not a question.
"I did," said Marlow. "I dreamed of nothing at all, and the nothing was kind."
The grey hare smiled the small smile that hares keep for the middle of the night. "Would you like to see one quiet thing," she asked, "before you sink down again? It is not far. Nothing is ever far, here."
Marlow nodded, and he rose as slowly as the mist, and he walked beside her through the soft grey grass. The drowsy bee did not wake. The curled snail did not stir. They passed a thistle that had gone to silver, and a stone that was warm for no reason at all, and then they came to the edge of the Slowest Stream.
It was the slowest water Marlow had ever seen. It did not rush. It did not even hurry. It moved the way a held breath lets go — so gently that he had to be very still to see it move at all.
"This is the Stream of Almost-Sleep," said the grey hare. "It begins at the last star and it ends wherever you stop watching it. Sit a while. Watch a leaf go by."
So Marlow sat at the soft grey edge, and he watched. A single grey leaf came drifting, turning once, in no hurry. He did not have to count it. He did not have to catch it. He only watched it come, and watched it pass, and watched it go, until it was gone the way the day was gone.
"Where do the leaves go?" he whispered.
"Wherever the busy thoughts go," said the hare. "The stream is patient with all of them. The big thought of tomorrow. The small thought you forgot to finish. The thought that was only worry wearing a thought's coat. One at a time the stream takes them, and it never once spills, and it never once minds."
Marlow watched another leaf come. With it went a thought he had been holding without knowing — a little knot of a thing — and the stream carried it off so softly that he felt himself grow lighter, the way a boat grows light when you lift the last stone from it.
Another leaf. Another small thing let go.
His eyes were heavy now, heavy in the good way, the way the moon is heavy on the water and does not sink.
"You may stay by the stream as long as you like," said the grey hare, and her voice was further away now, soft as the mist closing over. "It will keep watch on the busy things. You have nothing left to carry. You have only to rest."
Marlow lay back in the grey grass, by the slowest water in the world, and the mist drew over him like a second quilt, warm and grey and kind. One more leaf drifted by, carrying the very last small thing, and he did not even watch it go.
The stream moved on, so slowly, so gently.
The grey hare kept her calm and patient watch.
And far away, but never too far, the morning waited at the edge of the world — in no hurry, in no hurry at all — for no one to wake.