8 · melu so shua

Where to looks back, so looks forward: same position, touching the verb, announcing that the doing is still ahead. And one small gift in this chapter costs you nothing: lo mia (many-I) is how Phi says we. You have owned both pieces since chapter three.

I

Evening, at the table. Plans:

melu so shua.
lo mia muila so muholi.
lo mia wei muila thinoe so loa.
pheralu so lepa.
sorae phelo so loa.
lo peloru so rihe.

A friend will come; we will dig the earth; we will give seeds to the earth. That is how Phi plants: giving, wei muila, to the earth as to a friend. Rain will fall, the sun will give light, and the flowers will rise. Six sentences, and a whole garden stands in the future.

II

Morning. The future starts arriving:

sorae rihe. melu shua.
melu: kia. wa lo mia muila so muholi.
phao: lia. whelani.
phao muila muholi. melu muila muholi.
lopia thinoe kolua.
lopia wei muila thinoe loa.

Notice the friend's question still carries so : at the door, the digging is still ahead, and four sentences later it is simply happening, unmarked, now. Tomorrow keeps turning into today; the particles keep up.

III

lohau muila muholi.
phao: tua lohau. tua.
misheko lo miona nila.
misheko nulae.

The dog also digs the earth. This is not the help it appears to be. The cat watches the entire enterprise and reaches its usual conclusion.

IV

lopia: wa lo peloru so rihe.
wheo: lia. lo peloru so rihe.
shero shua.
lo mia nulae.
misheko rihe.

Will the flowers rise? They will. The elder says it the way elders say such things: with the same words the child used, returned in the same order, and no doubt anywhere in them. Night comes; we sleep; the night shift clocks in.

Yesterday and tomorrow are both yours now, and they cost one particle each. to steps back, so leans forward, and both stand in the same place: right before the verb, where Phi keeps the truth about time.

The machinery, when you want it: future so is the manual's Part IV, chapter 14.