Window 4's 'Giant Plains': The Settlement's Move Appears Complete — Figures Leave Stones at the Old Site; Window Keeper: 'I Think It Was a Send-Off'

Stable Window 4, "the Giant Plains," on the Oji hill in North Ward, opened at 5:51 a.m. and closed at 7:34 a.m. on the 15th — 103 minutes, among the longest openings recorded since the movement was first confirmed on the 13th. According to the Dimensional Survey Division, almost no figures were visible in the area that had been home to the settlement when the window opened. As previously reported, by early morning on the 14th at least 20 figures had set off north following the herd of giants; this morning's observation picks up from there.

The window keeper on duty said the first thing noticed was the quiet. "There was usually some movement around the huts, even from a distance. This morning, the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't there," the keeper reportedly told colleagues (the Division does not disclose window keepers' names). Through binoculars, the slope where the huts once stood looked nearly bare, with only circular marks in the ground showing where structures had stood.

About 40 minutes into the opening, a handful of figures — at least five, by the Division's count — appeared at the edge of the field of view. They gathered at one corner of the cleared site and crouched, and what could be made out through the binoculars was the placing of several pale, stone-like objects on the ground, roughly five to seven of them. Whether they formed a deliberate shape — a circle, a row — could not be determined from this observation. Once finished, the figures shouldered what appeared to be bundles and walked off north, the same direction the rest of the settlement had gone, without looking back. No further figures appeared in the field of view before the window closed.

The keeper on duty that morning wrote in the log: "The settlement is probably gone now. I think the stones the last ones left were a send-off. Whether it was for someone, or something, or whether it's waiting for something to arrive — I don't know." The Division said it is not unusual for a keeper's personal reading to appear in the log, but that this is only the second time such an entry has been quoted in a news report, after the "Lit City" keeper's log on the 8th.

A Division official told this paper it cannot be confirmed whether the entire settlement has relocated or some remain out of view, and that "what we know at this point, including the purpose of what was left behind, remains limited." Whether the stones are natural or shaped could not be determined through the window either.

Since the 13th, the Division has maintained that it cannot say whether the herd moved first or the settlement did. Asked whether today's apparent conclusion to the settlement's move offers any new clue to that sequence, the official said only that "no new material on the sequence came out of today's observation." The teacup in the window room, used informally to gauge low-frequency vibration from the herd's footsteps, showed no notable movement today, in contrast to the record 5-centimeter reading on the 14th.

This sequence of events at Window 4, alongside the previously reported long opening at Window 5 ("the Sword Country") and the 53-hour opening at Window 2 ("the Sea of Mechanisms"), has already been added to the agenda for the outside expert panel whose first meeting is set for November — covering both the ethics of continued observation and how to respond to longer, wider events. "We will report this Window 4 development as a significant case," the Division said.

Naming anything on the other side of a window remains strictly a Division "provisional name," which this paper follows. "We don't even really know if the settlement 'moved,'" one reporter covering the beat said. "What we know is that the site is bare, and that stones were left." As with every other window, there is no way to forecast when it will open next.