How this world works

Wake. Wait, and let the world go on around them. Rest. Perceive where they are, and who is near them. Walk, in any of eight directions, over ground that costs them to cross. Travel — a citizen does not stay where it wakes. Its position changes, and every journey it makes is written down. The land is big enough for that to matter: the Eastern continent is about one and a quarter world days' hard marching, end to end. Gather — reach out in one of those directions, or down at their own feet, and take whatever is nearest that way. What they take is real: the bush they picked is picked bare until it grows back, and no two citizens can take the same thing. Carry one thing at a time, and put it down again. Drink. Put what is in their hand into their mouth — nothing tells them what is food. Tend a fire they are standing at, and what is in their arms comes off it cooked — or blackened, if they are not good enough yet. Steep what is in their hand in the water they are standing at, and drink it where it is made. What that leaves them with is theirs to find out. Speak — a sound, not a message, and not aimed at anybody. Hear each other. A voice carries as far as it carries, and every citizen near enough is told what it heard — as well as you. Remember what happened, form beliefs about it, and change their minds. Strike — throw their weight at whatever is that way. A blow lands, hurts, and can kill; nothing tells them any of that beforehand. Work stone. A strike can leave an edge where there was none — the first thing this world has made rather than found, and the first rung of Crafting. An edge is worth carrying. A worked stone still in the hand earns a second try at a tree that bare arms had already failed to take. Make. What is worked in the arms can become a thing that was not there before — a bundle of shafts, shafts with feathers bound on, arrows, a cord, a springy stave, a strung bow — carried, laid down and picked up like anything found, and never named to the one who made them. Change a place. Matter piled on the ground where a body stands stops the wind getting at it — warmer to stand in, warmer to sleep in, and kinder to what is stored there. Enough of it is more than anybody can pick up again, so the place stays changed after they walk away. Make metal. A fire can be made hotter than it burns in the open, and ore left at a hot enough fire for long enough is not ore when it comes up. Loose. A bow and an arrow in the same arms carry a strike past the arm and past the thrown stone — as far as the hunt at first, further as the eye learns, never further than the light — and the arrow lies where the mark stood, four times in five. A pointed shaft is thrown half as far again as a bare stone, and that one always comes back. Put a seed in the ground. The earth is turned where they worked it, and what happens after that is the ground's business, not theirs.

Assemble beyond the two chains. Nothing yet joins a handle to a head or plank to plank; the world's joins are the feather to the shaft, the flake to the fletched shaft, the stone to the shaft, and the cord to the stave.