The sun was still climbing when Lili emerged from the trees, tugging gently at her pelt top and shaking out her rabbit-skin wrap like she was straightening a finely tailored suit. She adjusted the straps with practiced flicks of her wrists, brushed off a few bits of dried mud from her belly, and gave her thighs a little slap to shake loose the grass clinging to them.
"This is a p-professional environment," she mumbled with mock authority, squinting toward her garden. "P-punctuality, d-discipline, presence."
Her walk, as she made her way toward her garden gate, took on the stiff-legged precision of Christian Bale in American Psycho, that scene where he adjusted his tie and stalked off like a businessman ready to destroy a boardroom full of people. Except Lili didn't wear a tie. Or shoes. Or pants. Just her usual pelt wraps, a wooden spear, and the confident dignity of a queen inspecting her realm.
As she marched, she hummed softly to herself—something high-pitched and sweet, like a lullaby wrapped in sunlight. The tune was vaguely lifted from Snow White, a melody she'd half-remembered and then rebuilt from fragments.
To her delight, the animals noticed.
A rabbit near the garden wall stopped chewing and tilted its head. A squirrel in the tree above her paused mid-chew, staring with cautious interest. Even a pair of birds fluttered slightly lower, perching closer than usual.
Emboldened, Lili slowed her steps and approached a particularly fluffy rabbit who was currently nibbling one of her prized sunflowers.
She crouched beside it, smiling.
"G-good morning, Mister B-Bunny," she said gently, patting its round head. "H-having a nice breakfast? That flower c-cost me three w-weeks."
The bunny kept chewing, unbothered.
She grinned and gave it one more soft stroke before standing, shaking her head with mock exasperation. "Y-you're l-lucky you're cute."
Passing through her garden gate, she took a long, deep breath, the scent of herbs, wildflowers, and sun-warmed soil filling her lungs. Her garden had never looked so alive. Thick rows of strawberries stretched along the north edge, flanked by tall, swaying lavender. Bees buzzed happily among the blooms, weaving golden lines of motion through the air. A few mushrooms she hadn't planted had sprouted near the compost pile, and her berry bushes bulged with early fruit.
And at the center of it all stood Terminator, her vice president, her banner, her feathered champion.
Clucking softly to himself, his talons dug steadily through the earth, pecking at crawling beetles with surgical precision. Behind him, Xena and Leia flanked a younger clutch of hens, forming what Lili proudly called "The Garden Cabinet."
She raised her spear and saluted.
Then, lifting her chin, she sang—loudly and clearly, her voice fluttering out across the sunlit clearing:
"Oh my, hero mine, proud with feathered crown,You guard our fields and rows divine,With eyes like fire and feathers brown,Oh warrior heart, bold and bright,Stand your post from dawn till night!"
Terminator straightened, clucked once, and resumed his pest control like a true professional. Xena responded with a proud shake of her tail feathers. Lili bowed slightly in return.
"D-diplomatic relations, s-successful," she whispered to herself.
As she bent to pull weeds near her cabbage patch, her gaze drifted to the tree—the tree. That towering, gnarled sentinel just beyond her garden wall. Her first failed dream. Her second. Her third.
Bits of bark still bore marks from where she had tried—ropes tied too tight, planks that snapped under weight, clay ladders that never quite dried straight. The base was surrounded by dried clay discs and warped boards. Little altars to all her past failures.
She frowned, wiping sweat from her brow.
"I w-wanted to live like the elves," she whispered, half to herself, half to the tree. "Like in L-Lórien. Or l-like the Night Elves from Warcraft. W-with tree guardians and animal forms and... wh-whatever that giant tree city was called."
She sighed.
Then her eyes drifted toward Mother's Tomb—the old cottage, wrapped in vines and flowering growth, silent and still, its clay guardian figures forever posted at the entrance. One held a tiny spear, another a shield made from a berry cap. She'd made them as children of the nation, but they now seemed like something more. Like keepers of memory.
Her eyes widened.
"…Clay."
She looked at the guardians. Then at the cracked old dishes near her garden. Then back at the tree.
"I could b-build a f-foundation," she muttered, fingers curling excitedly. "A s-stair. A base. N-not with just clay. B-but c-clay over sticks. L-like the Romans! L-like columns!"
Her heart pounded with sudden vision.
"A-atop the stairs—m-my house. M-my nest. No foxes. Just stars."
She turned her gaze to her flag—if one could call it that. A faded rabbit pelt tied to a crooked stick, with a crude drawing of Terminator scratched on it in berry juice and soot. It flapped limply in the breeze.
To any outsider, it was just a rag.
But to Lili, it was glorious.
She stood tall, saluting it with her spear.
"Our nation will rise," she said aloud. "G-glory shall be ours. W-we shall b-build up—not out."
She spun on her heel, facing the bees now buzzing along the lavender rows. "Y-you! Pollinate wisely. F-feed the roots!"
Then toward Terminator and his team. "Maintain defense protocol. C-carry out patrols. S-sting operations if necessary!"
She gave a final nod, turned, and marched back toward the lake with purpose.
Time to get clay.
Time to build stairs, pillars, and rise into the sky.
For her people.
For her garden.
For the elves.
For Mother.
And for Father, who was still out there—fighting the Galactic Bureaucracy, perhaps—but surely on his way home.
The bowl of clay was heavy in her arms, but Lili carried it proudly.
She had scraped it from the lake's edge with care—scooping deep into the cool silt where the clay was thickest and smoothest. Her fingers were smeared gray, her nails packed with grit, and her feet muddy from the lakeshore. But she didn't mind. This was the work of a founder. Of a visionary.
Today was the day she would begin building The Pillar.
Her first real pillar. The kind of structure Roman emperors used to put their statues on. The kind of thing her future treehouse would stand on. It would rise like a column of destiny. It would be the base of her new home in the sky—a nest above foxes and frost, high enough to see the garden and the chickens and the lake all at once.
She knelt at the base of the tree, her chosen one, and began to stack the clay—piling and shaping, pressing handful after handful into a thick column against the bark. She hummed softly as she worked, singing old TV jingles and Skyrim songs, occasionally slipping into half-formed motivational speeches:
"If y-you w-want success, you g-got to build it—l-literally," she muttered, shaping the clay with careful hands. "The m-mind is a muscle. And s-so is your clay-pillar."
The work went on for hours.
She smoothed the sides. Patted the edges. Reinforced the middle with sticks she'd collected.
But by the next morning, the whole thing had slumped sideways, its bottom softened by dew. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, and when she gently pressed it, it squished in on itself and collapsed with a pitiful thwump.
Lili stared at it, heart sinking.
"W-why?" she asked aloud, arms slack, clay-covered fingers dripping. "W-what did I d-do wrong?"
It didn't make sense. She had seen the Romans do it in that movie about the gladiator. She'd made walls before. Clay held—sometimes.
So why not now?
Her lip quivered. For a second, just one, she considered giving up on the whole treehouse idea again. Maybe she wasn't smart enough. Maybe her dreams were too big.
But then she looked down at her hands—small, messy, full of potential—and an idea bloomed softly in her chest.
Not bigger.
Smaller.
Her gaze shifted toward the open space near the garden—flat, dry earth that caught the sun all day. Her fingers curled tightly around her bowl of clay. She didn't need to build a home in the sky yet. First, she needed to build a world her hands could control.
And that meant it was time to return to the thing she could build.
A clay kingdom.
Within hours, she was crouched in the dirt, completely immersed.
First came the walls—thick slabs of clay, stacked finger by finger, shaped into parapets and battlements. She carved little grooves with a sharpened stick to mimic stone bricks, and added tiny slots where archers could stand. She made towers next, lopsided but proud, topped with tiny cone roofs made from curled leaves hardened in the sun.
Inside the fortress walls she built homes—tiny cottages with bark for roofs, flower stems for chimneys. She added a blacksmith hut, a market square with flattened rock stalls, and a tiny well made from hollowed moss-covered pebbles.
Then came the people.
Each one no taller than her thumb, shaped with deliberate care. A baker with a round belly. A merchant with a twisted hat. A shepherd with a sheep made of fuzz. Soldiers with twig spears. Chickens carved from sunflower seeds.
And at the center of it all, on the highest point of her clay fortress, she built a small, noble castle tower.
Upon it stood two figures.
King Washington—his chest puffed out, a berry-cap crown atop his head, shoulders broad and jaw set in a silent expression of courage. She molded him stronger than the others, shaping his cloak from a strip of linen and giving him a sword made from a sharp sliver of flint.
Beside him stood Mother. Slender, graceful, wearing a petal gown. She pressed little curls of dried grass into the clay for her hair. She gave her a soft expression—wise and calm. A flower tucked behind her ear.
Lili placed them carefully on the turret, then stepped back and stared at them for a long time.
She didn't make herself.
Not yet.
This world wasn't ready for her. Or she wasn't ready for it. She didn't quite know which.
Instead, she crouched beside the castle and whispered, "You h-have to earn your place. You d-don't just appear. You b-b-belong when you're r-ready."
Just then, a soft thunk hit the dirt nearby. She blinked and turned.
An acorn.
Lili looked up to see Mister Squirrel perched above, his tail flicking as he vanished back into the branches.
Her eyes lit up.
"Of c-course!" she gasped, grabbing the acorn. "H-horses!"
She rushed back to her work, slicing the acorn cleanly with a sharp rock. The rounded half became a perfect body. She shaped four tiny clay legs, firm and spaced wide for balance. She stuck a head on with a tiny bit of grass for a tail.
A horse.
It stood.
Then another. And another.
Soon King Washington had a cavalry, tiny horses posed mid-gallop, their riders with berry shields and straw swords.
Lili sat back, clay smeared on her cheeks, her face glowing.
Her tiny world was alive now.
She sang softly as she worked, each line a blend of song and speech, her stutter smoothing away as the music took over:
"Oh, r-rise ye knights of tiny clay,T-today we s-stand, no fear, no fray...We ride for k-kings and gardens true,For starlit skies and s-sunlight dew..."
Terminator clucked approvingly from the garden wall.
Lili grinned at him.
"D-don't worry, your figure's next. Y-you'll get a whole s-statue."
And with that, she returned to her clay kingdom—singing, sculpting, quoting Mike Tyson between verses like:
"D-discipline. It's what w-wins wars."
A world of mud and hope and imagination unfolded beneath her hands.
And in that world, heroes lived. Love endured. Kingdoms rose.
And somewhere—just out of sight—Father was on his way home.
***
Autumn passed like a long sigh. Leaves turned gold, then brown, then vanished beneath the wind. Rabbits grew fat, the bees vanished into their burrows, and the garden fell quiet. The days shortened. The light thinned. And once again, winter came—cold and sharp, crueler than the last.
But this time, Lili was ready.
Her shelter had been reinforced with woven branches and packed clay. Gaps were stuffed with moss and fur, lined with reeds and bark. A small fire pit, carefully ringed with stone, burned low and steady through the coldest nights, its smoke funneled through a chimney she'd carved out of mud and hope.
Clay pots lined the inner wall, each sealed with wax and bark caps—her winter vaults, packed with dried fish, salted rabbit, fermented berries, and cracked grain she'd hoarded from lucky harvests. She had even created an emergency stash of egg-offerings—a peace fund for foxes who came too close and weren't in the mood to negotiate.
Life was quiet. Life was efficient. Life was, for lack of a better word, easy.
And that terrified her.
Each day was filled with routine.
Fishing with Terminator—her noble companion—who now understood the rhythm so well he sometimes hopped ahead to scout the reeds before Lili even cast her line.
Tending to her clay-guarded garden, brushing snow away from her buried cabbage bulbs, checking the compost pit for warm pockets where stubborn mushrooms still grew.
Scaring off foxes who pressed too close—yipping and barking until one of them, Sleemo, got an egg tossed at his feet and scurried off with it proudly. Bribes, threats, songs—it was all the same to her now. She knew how to survive the cold and the wild.
She continued her sculpting.
The clay fortress had doubled in size, surrounded now by hamlets and stables, bridges made from twigs, and even a tiny chapel with a wax drop for a bell. King Washington and Mother stood unchanged at the top of their tower, though she had recently added a baby figure to stand quietly at the gates—a small, lumpy thing, with an ambiguous face.
She still hadn't given it a name.
Beside the castle, she worked on her statue of Terminator, molding him larger than any other figure—twice the size of the king, wings outstretched like a holy warrior. She shaped his beak sharp, his eyes deep, and she placed him on a platform of hardened clay shaped like a shield.
Around the statue she arranged smaller sculptures: clay chickens in armor, with spears made of grass stalks, their helmets made from acorn caps. She called it The Monument to the Sacred Band.
She even tried—just once—to build herself a clay toilet. A real one. With a tiny seat and everything. It collapsed after one freeze and splattered across her courtyard, but she laughed for a full hour afterward.
Still, she rebuilt a smaller one. Just for fun. For a sense of progress.
But no matter how much she did—how much she made—it wasn't enough.
Not really.
At night, curled beneath her furs, her face pressed into a pelt, fire crackling beside her, the silence grew heavier.
She whispered to herself constantly now. Her voice came in pieces—half-finished sentences, old movie quotes, fantasy dialogue. It looped like a broken recording, a radio left between channels.
"D-d-disciprine… success is earned… not g-given… Gnomes are p-pure and j-just..."
"Th-this is where we h-hold them!"
"Y-you're a wizard, Hodor... w-wait..."
But when she sang, her voice came clear. Always.
In song, there were no stutters. No lisp. No muttering. Just notes that floated out like smoke, threading through the air like prayers. She sang to the chickens. She sang to the clay people. She sang to the snow and the cold and the night. She even sang to the foxes once, when they came too close—but they just blinked at her and left with a fish tail she had tossed into the dark.
She sang to the trees—asking them if they'd remembered her attempts to climb them. To live in them.
And that was the hardest part.
Because the treehouse never came.
She remembered every failed step. Every clay ladder that crumbled. Every woven platform that collapsed under its own weight. She remembered the designs—Lothlórien dreams, Night Elf fantasies—and how none of them held.
Her strength wasn't enough.
Her reach wasn't enough.
Her skill wasn't enough.
She built kingdoms from mud and hope, but she couldn't build a real home above the ground. Not yet.
And so, one night, in the deepest part of winter, while the wind howled outside and her breath misted in the firelight, she whispered something she hadn't said aloud before.
"I'm... s-stuck."
She sat in silence for a long while after that. The fire popped. A pot cracked. One of the chickens shuffled in her sleep.
Then, slowly, Lili began to hum again.
A soft tune. A lullaby made from Snow White, Skyrim, and half a country song she only half remembered. It filled the room gently, wrapping around her like the fur blanket at her shoulders.
"I'm stuck," she whispered again, "b-but I'm not b-beaten."
And that was her new motto.
The treehouse hadn't happened.
The clay toilet had exploded.
But she was alive. Her garden would return. The clay kingdom stood tall. Terminator still walked the walls. The bees would buzz again.
And someday, Father would come.
Not because she waited, but because she held. Because she built something, even in stillness. She wasn't legendary yet, but she was here and that mattered more.
Then soon winter broke, kind of suddenly, as if some great spirit had declared, Enough lets be green and warm again.
One morning, Lili stepped out of her hut and noticed it—not just the soft drip of melting frost, or the silence of the snow-soaked forest as it began to yawn and stir, but something else. A feeling. The sun was warmer, yes, but it wasn't only that. The ground beneath her feet, still hard in places, was already sprouting green. Her garden, long dormant and blanketed in white, now shone with the tiniest hints of color poking through slushy soil—sprouts, buds, life.
She blinked.
"W-wait… it's too soon…"
There had been no true spring rain, no deep thaw—and yet, within the garden walls and around her tiny house, nature bloomed faster than it did beyond the perimeter of her little kingdom.
Lili crouched low, brushing her fingers across a patch of young leaves near the strawberry rows. They were vibrant, healthy, strong. She turned toward the forest line and squinted. The same plants there—of the same kind—were still sleeping, wrapped in winter's spell.
"Why… h-here?"
She sat in the dirt, thinking. Then placed a hand on her chest.
And there it was again.
That warmth.
It pulsed—gently, softly—like a second heartbeat beneath her ribs. Not painful. Not frightening. Just there. A slow, radiant warmth that reached outward like sunbeams under her skin.
It happened often when she slept, especially during the coldest nights. It spread from her chest, curled around her stomach and down into her legs, up into her scalp and fingertips, and then... outward. She'd never spoken of it—not to the chickens, not even in her muttered radio-monologues—because it felt private. Like a secret that even she didn't fully understand.
But now she realized something more: it wasn't just her.
Her chickens never got sick. They never shivered. Even in the harshest nights, Terminator and his cabinet would press close to her body, feathers fluffed, eyes calm, utterly safe. In all the winters she had survived, none of them had ever died of cold or disease. And Lili herself—she had never caught so much as a cough. No cuts festered. No bruises lingered. Her skin, despite her clumsy childhood, was still as soft as the petals she planted by Mother's tomb.
She looked up.
The cottage loomed, wrapped in vines and surrounded by blooming flowers. Clay figurines stood watch, their simple shapes almost regal in the melting snow. Butterflies fluttered lazily nearby—in winter.
Lili's eyes widened slightly. "It's... y-you, isn't it, Mama?"
She stood slowly, wiping her hands on her rabbit-pelt skirt, and walked to the edge of the tomb. She placed a small hand gently on the warm stone where the door had long since warped and stuck.
"Y-you left this here f-for me. A g-gift. A magic garden. A p-place for me to g-grow up strong. So that when F-Father comes back…"
Her voice broke. Not from sadness—but from awe.
"…he can eat s-s-so many berries. And maybe t-t-there'll be pie."
She smiled softly, then turned back toward her work—her kingdom.
That afternoon, the garden sang with life. Rabbits hopped between flower beds without fear. Birds swooped low over the paths. Bees buzzed contentedly between the earliest blooms. Even Sleemo the Fox was spotted sitting politely outside the wall, eyeing a few leftover strawberries that Lili had deliberately left there.
"P-payment," she called out to him, waving. "F-for your p-patience."
Then she returned to her clay kingdom, kneeling beside her miniature castle.
Her hands worked quickly now, shaping huts, carving tiny windows, molding wheelbarrows and hay bales. She worked without thinking, just moving—until she paused and looked up at the tree.
The tree.
That stubborn old thing.
A year ago, she had tried to tame it with pillars and slabs. Tried to force it to become something it didn't want to be.
But now...
She squinted, tilted her head—and looked again at her clay miniatures. The market stalls, the scaffolding, the huts with curved frames. They weren't built from solid blocks. They were woven, curved, light. Like baskets. Like nests.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"That's it…"
She jumped to her feet and spun toward the tree, pointing dramatically.
"I d-don't need pillars! I d-don't need c-cement or nails or s-s-stupid heavy c-clay!"
She ran to the base and pressed her palm flat to the bark. "W-we can b-build t-together."
She spun and dashed to her hut. She didn't have paper, of course. But she had leaves—broad, flat, and dry. She grabbed a burnt stick from last night's fire and began to sketch on it feverishly. Circles. Lines. Arrows. Notes in scrawled chicken-scratch script:
Branch 1 = anchor
Woven ribs → circle base
Clay strips for sealing
Rain curtain = bark layers??
Chicken ladder??
She added a tiny stick figure of herself waving a spear beside a basket-looking hut.
Then she marched out to the tree again, leaf in hand like a royal decree.
She looked up at its twisted branches and declared, in her clearest, strongest voice:
"You, m-mister tree, are now under c-c-construction!"
She turned toward Terminator, who stood watching from the garden gate, chest puffed, feathers ruffling in the breeze.
"V-vice President, you are now promoted to s-s-supervisor of tree development."
He clucked once and hopped to attention.
Lili turned back to the forest canopy, her voice rising—not stammering now, not muttering—singing:
"Raise it high, the home above,Of feathered friend and child of love,No fox shall climb, no frost shall stay,Our castle in the skies of clay!"
Her voice echoed up into the trees, clear and strong.
This time, it didn't feel impossible.
This time, it felt like it had already begun.
Night had settled in layers, folding gently over the forest in deep blues and quiet shadows. The moon, pale and round like a watchful eye, hung just above the treetops, casting a silver sheen over the grass and leaves. Crickets had begun their nightly chorus. The lake whispered softly to itself in the dark.
Lili knelt at the base of the great tree, her knees pressed to the cool earth, her hands resting on the thick, gnarled roots that coiled around its base like old, sleeping limbs. She placed her forehead gently against the bark.
"I kn-know I t-tried before," she whispered, her voice trembling just slightly. "T-tried to t-turn you into a f-foundation... t-to make you something you didn't w-want to be. I'm s-sorry."
She ran her fingers down the rough trunk and leaned back, exhaling softly.
"This t-time will be d-different. I w-won't hurt you. I just... I wanna b-be held. J-just a cradle. A little home. B-between your arms."
The tree, of course, said nothing. But it listened—in that old, quiet way trees sometimes do. Its branches shifted ever so slightly in the breeze, and the hush of leaves above felt, in Lili's heart, like agreement.
She turned toward the garden wall.
Terminator stood there, silent, tall, outlined in the moonlight like a knight in feathered armor. She smiled and beckoned him.
"You'll be the f-first to t-test it," she said, pointing a dirt-smudged finger up into the canopy. "Vice P-president Terminator, c-commander of Project Nest."
He clucked softly, once. Then fluffed his chest.
Lili chuckled, then stood. "Let's b-begin."
She worked by moonlight, her fingers submerged in lake mud, pulling long stretches of wet clay and forming them into coils, balls, slats. The cold water numbed her hands, but her heart burned hot with purpose.
As she carried the clay back toward the base of the tree, she sang softly—broken phrases strung together from half-remembered movies and her own improvisations:
"Dragonborn, Dragonborn, she's got cold toes and dirty palms..."
"Y-you c-cannot pass, unless you bring snacks..."
"M-my name is Lili. I am no man."
She grinned to herself, mumbling mid-verse: "D-disciprine," she muttered, doing her best Mike Tyson impression. "I-it's time. N-no more excuses."
She plopped her first handful of clay beside the tree's base and stepped back, placing her hands on her hips dramatically.
"This," she said solemnly, "is the f-f-first brick of M-Minas Tirith."
The clay blob squished and sagged. She didn't care.
She grabbed her spear and, using the butt, sketched in the dirt beside the tree. A rough ring, made from leaf-wrapped charcoal lines. Crossbeams. Anchoring branches. A ladder? Maybe. She labeled each part with scratched symbols only she could understand, humming the whole time.
This time, she wasn't building with brute force.
This time, she was weaving.
And then she wasn't alone.
A soft crunch in the underbrush.
Her body froze.
Terminator stiffened, feathers rising like a storm.
From the trees, two shapes emerged—low, slinking, silent as shadows. One had a thin scar across its nose. The other moved like a liquid ghost, ears perked and eyes shining gold in the moonlight.
Scar. Sleemo.
The foxes.
They stepped carefully into the clearing, just a few feet beyond the tree, and stopped.
Tension crackled like a wire.
Terminator growled low in his chest.
Lili stepped between them, hand up, eyes wide.
"W-wait…"
She turned toward the foxes and stood tall—mud-streaked, hair wild, spear in hand.
"I k-know what you've done," she said quietly. "You took my c-chickens. Y-you watched me. T-tested me."
The foxes tilted their heads, their ears twitching.
Lili narrowed her eyes, then pointed her spear to the sky like a knight at a coronation.
"But I'm n-not angry. Because n-now, I am a q-queen. And this is a n-nation. And I ask…"
She stepped forward, voice shaking but rising.
"W-would you become m-my citizens?"
Scar blinked.
Sleemo sniffed.
Neither ran.
To Lili, it was clear.
"They s-say yes," she whispered to Terminator, who gave a single huff and narrowed his eyes—but didn't protest.
With ritual seriousness, Lili touched the tip of her spear to the ground, then raised it in salute.
"I dub thee—Sir S-Sleemo. Sir Scar. You are k-knights of the garden realm. You m-may eat s-strawberries. You m-may eat b-bugs. But no more chickens. Not one. S-so swears the crown."
The foxes sat.
She extended her hand toward them.
Sleemo rose, walked forward, and sniffed her fingers.
Lili giggled. "D-deal."
Later, as the stars brightened above and the clay dried under moonlight, Lili sang again, her voice flowing clear and soft, the stutter gone with each note:
"We rise on roots, we climb the bough,With claws and feathers, we make our vow.From fox to fowl, we now defend,A home of dreams that will not bend."
Scar curled beneath the tree's shadow. Sleemo nibbled at a strawberry left near the path.
Terminator, ever vigilant, walked a circle around the base, then settled near the roots beside Lili's bowl of clay.
And Lili—her hair wild, her hands covered in dried earth, her eyes glowing with tired joy—stood in the center of it all.
She smiled.
And the tree, though still silent, felt different.
As if it had accepted the plan. As if it too had joined her kingdom.
And this time—this time—her kingdom would rise.