Noon

Seventh of the branches and the hour of the horse, eleven to one, Noon is the pivot of the daylight — the instant after which morning becomes afternoon and the sun begins, imperceptibly, to fall. It sits directly opposite 子, midnight, on the twelve-branch circle, and that opposition is still load-bearing in modern Chinese: the meridian, the north–south line that halves the globe, is 子午線, the 子-to-午 line. Midnight to noon, drawn across the earth. It is the only branch that names a turning rather than a place — the apex that is also the beginning of the descent — and it is the one whose name was borrowed to divide the world.