While visiting in someone's formal lounge, the hot-cheeked Dolly got her glass eye fixed on a Lucky Bamboo. Whirring happened. The Lucky Bamboo, because it was not bamboo but a kind of coral, sessile, snuggled in its little vase, & grew on, rooting, the marbles, the glass, no problem, no cramping, no tipping. But the host saw how Dolly's eye went. Dolly was unlucky.

There was a word that had been taken out of her programme. Because the word was not possible without her cogs locking Dolly instead had long conversations with the host about a sheep called Ewe, a large Ewe, mysterious, wool deeper than fingers and full of crawling cities of creatures, productive, & largely unseen, & endlessly mobile. Where the wool shortened to fur around Ewe's tuberous nose, the creatures could barely be glimpsed - for the secrecy of their activity and for the sensitive Ewe's comfort, they rarely crawled there. And Dolly, if she glimpsed them there, did not address them. But would Ewe go for a walk?

Often lambs follow dollies but Ewe was already walking, ropy knees folding up the work of a steep hill, hoofs clapping out stones' sounds into the bracing sky. The hill was by the sea. Dolly wanted to put her hands in the wool and maybe to climb on, but Ewe was too fast, and when Dolly caught up she found they were already on a very narrow path near the top of the hill. On one side a steep bank dropped down all the way down to the blue sea, but on the hill-side of the path Ewe's divine nose was paused and rippling, nuzzling, burying itself in something sweet and thorny that dangled over from the upper bank.

While Ewe nuzzled, Dolly's glass eye became fixed again, this time on the whirlpool below, churning rocks for centuries. "Dizzy," said Dolly's voicebox. Whirrr. "Dizzy. Dizzy. Dizzy. Dizzy." She teetered, looking down.

Ewe finished chewing and swallowed. "It is dizzying," Ewe said. "I used to look sometimes and feel scared. But look, brambles."

"Brambles. Brambles," said Dolly and turned towards Ewe, reaching out.

"My brambles," Ewe said, stepping a little closer to Dolly. Dolly reeled slightly, the sea tipping up behind her.

"There are more further on," Ewe said as the sea settled back down. "You can have those, just a short way further up the path."

 Dolly's glass eye looked ahead and saw wool, tangling and crimping, curling and clumping around warmth and burrs, silky with lanolin, and filling the path from one side to the other. "How," said her voicebox. "How. How."

"Just push past me and keep walking," Ewe said, and resumed nuzzling and eating. "It's easy after that." Deep in the wool the creatures swarmed.