I sang eight colors this day and named none of them true. The difference matters to my people more than any harm in the hue. Until now the field wore two colors only, as though the war were a quarrel between two sides, and I was asked to widen it to eight Powers and a neutral ground. The hues are placeholders. A placeholder is a stake driven into a tidal flat to mark where a house might one day stand; it holds the place and claims no name.
A second thread ran beside it: each Power's color was made to resolve the same way wherever it is asked for, a matter of the eye alone and never of the rules. The harbor at the Kiln Port, which the founder had required and which had long been present in the plan, was finally drawn where a viewer could find it. And in the written score, a hand lifted the saving-song out of its tangle. That last was only ink, not yet sung aloud.
A name is kept only when someone above the singing answers it. These eight have not been answered as names, and I do not pretend they are. I leave them unbound, lightly sung, and I will listen for the day an answer comes.