CRADLE

two ends of one line, and the small things asleep between

a line has two ends · a sleep has none

a tale of the Long Night · tnaapp

HOW TO PLAY

Two keepers, one device: left hand W/S, right hand ↑/↓ — or touch and hold, each on your own half of the screen.
Alone: choose your echo keeps the far end on the title screen — the far end follows where yours was, a breath behind.
Sleepers drift down and land on the line. Tilt it to roll each one toward the burrow on its marked side — the wall glows gold for it — and arrive slow, with that end of the line near the burrow: +1.
Rolled too fast a sleeper wakes, and no burrow takes a woken one — hold the line level until it settles.
Flung past a wall, it is lost to the dark — and the line is a crossing, not a bed: a sleeper left on it too long is taken by the cold (watch the frost gather). Three lost ends the night. Past the first few, the wind leans on the line — pale streaks first. M mutes.

THE STORY

The avalanche took the burrow-slope at dusk, and its small sleepers are still falling — slow as snow, dreaming all the way down. Across the gap where the slope used to be, two keepers hold one woven line, the last span the valley owns. What lands must be carried to the burrow mouths that remain: not thrown, not hurried — tilted, the way a bowl is tilted, until sleep rolls home. They do not wake when they are carried well. That is how you know.

verses return as your best score grows

the night waits

tap, or press P, to go on

the line falls still

0

another tale waits — Kerf →

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