High in the branches, hidden from the world, the next life is taught its beginning. Not through lesson or command, but through touch — the soft law of closeness. Here the future is not merely born; it is steadied, warmed, and initiated by the one who came before it. In the quiet work of nurture, the line is carried forward. No trumpet announces this covenant; it is written in breath and fur, in the meeting of small muzzle and great, in the unrecorded tenderness that prepares a life to go on living.