conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Finch, Crane, Brand with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Bee-Loud Glade'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Bee-Loud Glade
  Last night's storm rolled through like it meant something, crackling and snarling and snapping down branches, howling outside the mouth of my cave like the coyotes I sometimes hear far away in these hills (they've never come close, and I've never known why). It was the loudest storm I've heard in the years I've lived here, or maybe it was only the first big one to pass since my eyes began failing and forced me to listen more deeply than I did before. There's no way of measuring that sort of thing. I can't return to when my eyes worked to find out. I can't compare a storm known with five senses to a storm known only through four. Or four and a half, I suppose; I can still see, just not as well as I could. I can make out the flash of lightning but never the shape of its bolt. Some mornings it's better and others it's worse; some days I can see almost as clearly as I ever could, only to wake up the next morning to find my eyes are worse than ever. It's like there's a loose lens in my head that sometimes, by chance, slides into place for a while. But despite those day-to-day fluctuations in its decline, I've had to accept that my eyesight is fading from blurry to black and is taking the bright, green world around me down with it. It's getting harder and harder to be on my own, and in this line of work—not that it is really work, though it started that way—being on your own is more or less the whole job.
  This morning I stepped out of my cave into a world that still smelled like fresh rain and burnt air. Something was different—a feeling, an itch at the back of awareness—and the left-behind lightning scent made me think of those old monster movies in which the scientist waits to see if his creature has been brought to life, and the audience waits along with him. It was the same as any one of my mornings, except for that nagging feeling it wasn't.
  I checked on my crops, to be sure they were safe and not torn up by wind or flooded too deep to survive, and to my relief the informal fence of blackberry bushes had once again done its job. Berries were scattered all over the ground, slipping and squishing between my bare toes as I circled the potatoes and carrots and beans with the stoop and squint it now takes me to get a good view, but the crops themselves were unharmed. I pulled a bright yellow squash from its vine, washed it off on the wet grass, and crunched through its crisp skin as I felt my way back to the gap in the bushes and set off to inspect the rest of my world. And for once, for some reason, I walked away from the river. I went against my usual route and my long-standing habit of starting each day in its waters.
  And that's how I got into trouble: wandering away from routine, relying on an ever more obsolete image of what my home acres look like to guide me. As long as everything stays where I expect it to be, I can find it; as long as trees don't walk off and my cave doesn't move and crops grow where I plant their seeds, I can get by with only this foggy tunnel of vision. But last night's storm shifted things; it laid branches across my familiar paths and uprooted bushes I've used as landmarks for ages. It knocked over the cairn of stones I'd stacked up a long time ago to mark the edge of my regular ambling, but I only realized it had fallen down later, on the way back to my cave, after wandering past the downed marker and into the tangled part of the forest where I don't go very often with these failing eyes.
  I must have wandered for hours, long enough for the angle of sunlight to rise and fall as the day dragged on, and as I dragged myself through the forest. I may have crossed my own hidden trail dozens or hundreds of times, whipped in the face and legs by the same eager branches again and again, and I may have been on the edge of the woods, on the edge of the glade by my cave, for most of the day—how would I have known when all I could see was the green veil of forest before my eyes, hanging always a few inches ahead with all the world blurry behind it?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about crackling, something, singing, sing, rustling, sprayed.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Bee-Loud Glade
  Last night's storm rolled through like it meant something, crackling and snarling and snapping down branches, howling outside the mouth of my cave like the coyotes I sometimes hear far away in these hills (they've never come close, and I've never known why). It was the loudest storm I've heard in the years I've lived here, or maybe it was only the first big one to pass since my eyes began failing and forced me to listen more deeply than I did before. There's no way of measuring that sort of thing. I can't return to when my eyes worked to find out. I can't compare a storm known with five senses to a storm known only through four. Or four and a half, I suppose; I can still see, just not as well as I could. I can make out the flash of lightning but never the shape of its bolt. Some mornings it's better and others it's worse; some days I can see almost as clearly as I ever could, only to wake up the next morning to find my eyes are worse than ever. It's like there's a loose lens in my head that sometimes, by chance, slides into place for a while. But despite those day-to-day fluctuations in its decline, I've had to accept that my eyesight is fading from blurry to black and is taking the bright, green world around me down with it. It's getting harder and harder to be on my own, and in this line of work—not that it is really work, though it started that way—being on your own is more or less the whole job. 
  This morning I stepped out of my cave into a world that still smelled like fresh rain and burnt air. Something was different—a feeling, an itch at the back of awareness—and the left-behind lightning scent made me think of those old monster movies in which the scientist waits to see if his creature has been brought to life, and the audience waits along with him. Those crackling moments of anticipation, the knowledge that something has happened, but what? The same birds were singing as sing any day, the same treetops rustling in a light breeze as their leaves sprayed a shower of rain down onto my body. It was the same as any one of my mornings, except for that nagging feeling it wasn't. 
  I checked on my crops, to be sure they were safe and not torn up by wind or flooded too deep to survive, and to my relief the informal fence of blackberry bushes had once again done its job. Berries were scattered all over the ground, slipping and squishing between my bare toes as I circled the potatoes and carrots and beans with the stoop and squint it now takes me to get a good view, but the crops themselves were unharmed. I pulled a bright yellow squash from its vine, washed it off on the wet grass, and crunched through its crisp skin as I felt my way back to the gap in the bushes and set off to inspect the rest of my world. And for once, for some reason, I walked away from the river. I went against my usual route and my long-standing habit of starting each day in its waters. 
  And that's how I got into trouble: wandering away from routine, relying on an ever more obsolete image of what my home acres look like to guide me. As long as everything stays where I expect it to be, I can find it; as long as trees don't walk off and my cave doesn't move and crops grow where I plant their seeds, I can get by with only this foggy tunnel of vision. But last night's storm shifted things; it laid branches across my familiar paths and uprooted bushes I've used as landmarks for ages. It knocked over the cairn of stones I'd stacked up a long time ago to mark the edge of my regular ambling, but I only realized it had fallen down later, on the way back to my cave, after wandering past the downed marker and into the tangled part of the forest where I don't go very often with these failing eyes. 
  I must have wandered for hours, long enough for the angle of sunlight to rise and fall as the day dragged on, and as I dragged myself through the forest. I may have crossed my own hidden trail dozens or hundreds of times, whipped in the face and legs by the same eager branches again and again, and I may have been on the edge of the woods, on the edge of the glade by my cave, for most of the day—how would I have known when all I could see was the green veil of forest before my eyes, hanging always a few inches ahead with all the world blurry behind it?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs? End with the sentence ' I didn't expect to speak it aloud, but it gave me something to call him in my meditation, and it was easier to aspire to emulate something if I knew its name.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I jumped back inside but didn't land well, turning my ankle and collapsing onto the cold ground. The lion rose from his haunches, shook his head so a cloud of fur erupted around him like a blown dandelion, then took three steps forward straight into my home. My heart raced, and I kicked backward across the ground until my shoulders were against the pallet and I had nowhere else to go.
  And the lion took three more steps before hanging his muzzle right in front of mine, so close I could feel his hot breath drying out my nostrils and eyes, and he yawned. Right in my face, a long, creaking yawn, then he laid down on the floor at my side and he went to sleep. At least, I think he was sleeping. His eyes were closed and he wasn't eating me, that much I can say for certain.
  I had a better chance of eating this lion than he had of eating me. Still, it was exciting to sit so close to an animal I'd never expected to meet, to see how much longer his body was than I'd imagined, stretched out across the floor of my cave, and to see his long tongue loll out the side of his mouth and drip a pool onto the stone. I'd learned that lions aren't vicious and wild, but models of patience and peace. He could teach me something about meditation, this lion, I thought, so I left him sleeping on the floor by my bed, on top of the woolly blankets I'd flung to the floor getting up, and I went down to the river to float and to think of how I might be as quiet and calm as a lion.
  He was gone from the cave when I walked back for lunch, though it still smelled of his hot body and breath—not an unpleasant smell, either; it made the cave cozy and warm and made me wonder if anyone sold scented candles with the aroma of lion (not that I needed candles, because I had the real thing in my garden).
  And I decided that evening, while sitting over tea by my fire, that I would call the lion "Jerome." It seemed like a nice, gentle name for a nice, gentle lion. I didn't expect to speak it aloud, but it gave me something to call him in my meditation, and it was easier to aspire to emulate something if I knew its name.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They don't appear to have brought any tools, except for a knife with a thick, heavy handle they're passing back and forth to share as a hammer. And here's me in my cave, sitting on top of a whole box of tools that I'll no longer be able to use once my vision has faded completely. All the tools Mr. Crane left me, revealing them to me one at a time as I built my life in this garden, all the tools those hikers will need to build here a life of their own. I've been sitting on this box most of the morning, waiting for the Old Man to tell me I should drag it out, share my tools with the hikers, or that I should push it back into the shadows of my own home and keep the secret all to myself.
  I sit here as if he hasn't already answered, as if my mind is not already made up and is still mine to make. I won't be able to drag the tools to them, not with my knee as swollen and sore as it is. There's no way I'll be able to reach them without doing myself greater harm. But I'll pull the toolbox as far as I can, beyond the dark mouth of my cave and out into the sunlight where the hikers will see it. I'll find some way to get their attention and make them look in my direction, lead them to discover what I have to share—the tools they will need, and the tools I will need them to use if I am to go on with something at all like the life I've been living.
  But not yet. First I'm going to sit here by myself, alone for another moment or two, before the brambles creep into my cave and the clatter of metal on stone and the clamor of building drowns out the hum of the bees.