Scarecrow

Risa was awake when the next call came.

So was I.

We had gone back to our room because sitting beside the receiver did not make the signal clearer, and because Wren had promised to send for us if there was anything new.

Neither of us had mistaken lying down for sleeping.

When the knock came, Risa was already reaching for her coat.

“Slowly,” I said.

She looked at me.

I held up a hand.

“I know. You usually get to say it.”

Sera sat up behind us. Luna had left for the common shelter before the previous watch changed.

“What is it?” Sera asked through the door.

“Another message,” Wren said. “They’re moving again.”

Risa stopped trying to fasten the wrong side of her coat.

I did it for her.

Her fingers closed over mine for a moment before she let go.

Sigmund’s voice was clearer this time, though he sounded farther away from the microphone.

“Lower shelter gone. Everyone accounted for. We are leaving the clearing. Moving north along the ridge until we find ground that holds. Do not approach from the water.”

A pause.

Someone spoke behind him.

Then his voice returned.

“Forty people. We’re still forty.”

The signal ended.

Risa stood beside the table with both hands flat against it.

Luna read the words Wren had written.

“North along the ridge,” she said. “That gives us a direction.”

“It also means the place we were looking for is empty,” Risa replied.

“Yes.”

Luna did not soften it.

She moved the marker off the clearing and set it beside the line Holt had drawn towards higher ground.

“We look ahead of them.”

Day 550 began with the camp making room.

Not because we were certain we could bring forty people home that day.

Because forty people would need somewhere to lie down whenever they arrived, and we could do that work while others found them.

Sera took her treatment beside the map table while Holt and Luna argued about a route neither trusted yet.

I finished carefully, waited for the familiar faint pressure behind my eyes to ease, and put the cup where she could reach it.

Then I looked at the sleeping plan.

Forty.

We had spent yesterday drawing rooms for the people already here.

The page had not become useless overnight.

It had become urgent.

“We can’t put them all behind screens,” I said.

“No,” Sera agreed. “But we can put the tired ones under a roof while we work out where everyone goes.”

Holt tapped the common shelter.

“Eating shifts. Clear the tables afterwards. Keep the route to Toby open.”

“Dry ground above the stores?” I asked.

“Nursery,” Sera said.

“I know. I meant beside it.”

She studied the drawing.

“Only if the queen says there’s room, and only after someone checks the slope.”

I nodded.

We were not going to move her young into the rain because we had found people of our own.

That was not what we’d meant when we told her she could stay.

The queen’s first answer came before breakfast was finished.

A neighbouring brood had seen a large human group above the burnt ridge. They were moving north, carrying their own injured, avoiding the lower ground.

The workers had stayed back because the humans were frightened of them.

One had been struck at with a branch.

No one had been injured.

“They need to know we’re coming,” Risa said.

Dot stood beside her chair.

“The queen has asked the neighbour to let our guide reach them. That permission has not returned yet.”

Risa glanced towards the disconnected lead beside the tower controls.

She did not touch it.

“Could we send my voice with the guide?”

Dot’s lights shifted.

“A recording.”

“Yes. Something he would know was me.”

Luna looked up from the map.

“That would help.”

Risa drew a breath.

For the first time since Sigmund’s clear call, she had something she could do that might reach him.

I moved my chair closer.

She made the recording twice.

The first time, she began with his name and stopped because she couldn’t finish the next sentence.

Nobody told her to hurry.

The second time, her voice was steady enough.

“Sigmund. It’s Risa. I’m alive. I’m at Scarecrow with Lucas, Luna, Sera, Liam, and Toby. We heard you. The people coming with this message are helping us find you. Some of them are Teeming. They are helping.”

She looked at me.

I nodded.

“Please don’t throw anything at them. I know what you look like when you’re frightened and pretending you’re angry. Listen first.”

A small laugh escaped Liam on the other side of the table.

Risa kept going.

“Come home. Bring everyone. We’ll make room.”

She stopped.

Dot played it back once.

Risa listened with her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone pale.

“Is that enough?” she asked.

Liam leaned against the table.

“If that doesn’t convince him, I’ll tell him he’s being an idiot. He’ll recognize that too.”

Risa laughed through the tears she was trying not to shed.

“All right.”

The permission arrived shortly afterwards.

The neighbouring queen would allow our party along an upper route through her territory. Her workers would meet the guide at the boundary and lead them towards the last sighting.

The route was for this rescue.

It did not make every passage open to us.

Luna repeated the terms until everyone going could say them back.

She took Liam, Corr, and Ilse. Two of our queen’s people would accompany them as far as the permitted route required. Dot sent a hand carrying Risa’s recording and the stored maps.

It could keep a record without maintaining a connection to us.

Beyond the field cable’s reach, it would not give us a live view.

Risa listened to that explanation without arguing.

Then she looked at Luna.

“I want to go.”

“I know.”

“I can walk.”

“I know that too.”

Luna set the route page down between them.

“We don’t know how long it will take, or whether the way back will be the same. They may need us to stay out overnight. I need you here when the receiver calls again. He may tell us something that changes where we send the next guide.”

Risa stared at the page.

For a moment, I thought she would insist.

Then she pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Bring him back.”

Luna took both her hands.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

She did not promise what the ridge might refuse to let her do.

Risa understood that.

It did not make letting go easy.

Liam found Anja before they left.

I saw them beneath the edge of the common roof, speaking quietly while Corr checked the straps on the carrying frame.

Anja touched the side of his face.

He leaned down to kiss her.

When he straightened, she said something that made him smile, though his eyes stayed serious.

Then he came to the table.

“All right?” I asked.

“She told me to come back with the same number of limbs.”

“Good advice.”

“She also said she’d prefer them attached.”

Risa looked up.

“I like her.”

“So do I.”

Liam squeezed Sera’s shoulder as he passed, then stopped beside Risa.

“I’ll tell him you were bossy.”

“He’ll know you found the right sister.”

They hugged.

Afterwards, she stood beside me while the party went down the checked upper path, the guide ahead and Luna last until everyone had reached the first turn.

Luna looked back once.

I raised my hand.

Then she was gone.

Waiting was not empty.

That was the part nobody had properly explained to me before Avalon.

There were bowls to count, dry coverings to find, places to clear, names to record, and people who needed help getting from one chair to another.

You could spend a whole day working while one part of you remained motionless beside a door.

Risa stayed near the receiver.

Sera took charge of the sleeping arrangements. Priya began measuring what forty extra people would do to the food stores. Toby gathered the people who knew enough to help him with cold, exhaustion, and ordinary injuries.

I sat with Jonas and Benedikt while they checked the high ground beside the nursery shelter.

They brought me their observations rather than asking me to look through stone I couldn’t see.

The slope was firm where it rested against the inner ridge. The outer edge remained too wet to trust.

We marked the firm part for a temporary covered space.

Wood, rope, spare cloth, ordinary fastenings.

No new wall made by a man who still needed Toby to tell him when to stop.

I disliked how relieved I was when the frame began going up without my power.

Then I decided I was too tired to dislike it properly.

The queen helped with the space.

Not by ordering her nursery group to leave.

Her carriers rearranged their loads beneath the existing covering, bringing food closer to the inner edge and freeing a dry strip where several of our supply bundles had been stacked.

Her workers moved those bundles with Ade and Old Son.

The new shelter could join the old one without blocking the route between them.

Dot showed us where the carriers needed room to turn.

Sera moved one of the proposed posts.

The worker beside her tested the change with its body, stopped, then moved through without touching either side.

“Better?” she asked.

Dot translated the answer.

“Yes.”

Sera made a mark on the plan.

That was all.

A post in the right place.

I had begun to think peace would be built out of a great many things like that.

Sigmund called twice more before midday.

The first message gave us little beyond confirmation that the group was still moving.

The second mentioned a split tree and a band of pale rock above them.

Holt looked at the patrol page.

“Could be three places.”

Risa’s face tightened.

“Then send all three.”

Dot passed the new description to the queen. The queen sent it towards the neighbour guiding our party.

We did not know how long that would take.

Risa wrote the time beside the words.

Then she set the pencil down with great care.

I could hear the effort in that small movement.

“Come and eat,” I said.

“What if he calls?”

“Wren’s here.”

“What if—”

I held out my hand.

“You can hear the receiver from the next table.”

She looked towards it.

It was only a few steps away.

At last, she took my hand.

At the food table, Risa forgot what she was holding halfway through raising the spoon.

I waited.

She lowered it again.

“I used to know exactly what to say to him.”

“You made a convincing recording.”

“That’s different.”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the bowl.

“What if he’s changed?”

“He probably has.”

“What if I don’t know him anymore?”

I thought of Sigmund on a training field, furious with a stopwatch. Sigmund on a bench, saying nothing while the rain fell. Sigmund leaving his jacket over his sister when she’d fallen asleep against me.

People had always contained more than one version of themselves.

Avalon had only made the changes harder to ignore.

“You’ll know some of him,” I said. “The rest can take time.”

Risa turned the spoon between her fingers.

“He doesn’t know about us.”

“No.”

“Or the baby.”

“No.”

She looked at me suddenly.

“If he says anything foolish, I’m allowed to hit him.”

“Could you wait until Toby has finished checking him?”

She laughed once.

Then, finally, she ate.

The first message from our party came through the queens in the late afternoon.

They had reached the human group.

Forty alive.

Luna had seen Sigmund.

The words reached Dot in an order she checked twice before she spoke them aloud.

Risa stood beside the receiver while Dot repeated them.

“Luna has seen him?”

“Yes.”

“Not just someone with his name?”

“The message identifies him as the person Luna already knows.”

Risa covered her mouth.

I put an arm around her.

Across the shelter, Sera sat down abruptly on the edge of a bench.

She had been holding her breath too.

Holt took the marker off the uncertain line and put it beside the last reported place.

Then he wrote the time.

Forty alive.

For several minutes, that was enough to fill the room.

They could not return before dark.

The group had tired people, injured feet, and children who had been walking for too long. The route back crossed a steep section the guides did not want them attempting without light.

A neighbouring brood had offered a dry upper chamber with an open approach.

Luna had accepted after checking it.

They would rest there and begin moving at first light.

Risa stared at Dot.

“One more night.”

“Yes.”

“Are they warm?”

“Liam and Luna are attending to that. Food and water have reached them.”

She closed her eyes.

I could almost see the two wishes fighting inside her.

Come now.

Please don’t hurry and fall.

When she opened her eyes, she asked Dot to send a message.

“Tell him I’ll still be here in the morning.”

Dot waited.

Risa swallowed.

“Tell Luna that too.”

We slept a little that night.

Sera lay on Risa’s other side. I held her hand between us while the room cooled and someone checked the outer lamps.

Luna’s empty place was too noticeable.

I tried not to look at it.

“I keep thinking I heard her,” Sera said quietly.

I knew who she meant.

“So do I.”

Risa stared at the ceiling.

“She said she would do everything she could.”

“Yes.”

“She does.”

“Yes.”

After a while, Sera reached across Risa and touched my arm.

We stayed that way until sleep finally arrived.

It did not last long.

It lasted long enough to help.

Day 551 began with everyone moving too quickly.

Priya put a stop to some of it by refusing to hand out extra bowls until people stopped trying to take three things at once.

Holt stopped the rest by making us say which jobs actually had a time attached to them.

Sera’s treatment first.

Food for the receiving team.

Medical space cleared.

Water containers filled.

The outer route marked so frightened newcomers would not step directly into the nursery shelter without warning.

The queen’s guide met Dot at the crossing and discussed the arrival path.

I watched the exchange while Risa fastened and unfastened the same strap on her coat.

At last, she caught me looking.

“I know.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

I took the strap and fastened it properly.

“Done.”

She looked down at it.

Then she put her forehead against my chest for one quiet moment.

“Thank you.”

The morning report said they were moving.

The next said they had reached the boundary between the two broods’ territories.

After that, we waited.

Risa and I went as far as the dry receiving shelter above the final approach. It was a short, checked walk, with a chair at the end and no reason to go farther down.

Toby stayed at the main shelter where he could work. Juno came with us carrying water and clean cloth. Ade and Benedikt waited with the spare frame in case someone needed carrying for the last stretch.

Sera remained in camp.

Someone had to make sure arriving people actually had somewhere to be taken.

The first figure appeared below us just after the middle of the day.

Corr.

She lifted an arm.

Behind her, a Teeming worker came around the turn.

Then a woman in a torn coat.

Then two more people, walking close enough to hold one another upright.

Risa stood.

I stood beside her.

We watched the path fill.

Luna came into view near the front of the group.

Her hair was wet and there was a dark streak of dirt along one cheek. She had a hand beneath the elbow of an older woman whose eyes stayed fixed on the ground.

When she saw us, she lifted her free hand.

Four fingers.

Then a closed fist.

Forty.

All forty.

Risa pressed her hand against her mouth again.

I looked past Luna, searching faces I hadn’t seen before.

A man carried a bag that had been repaired with three different colours of cloth. A boy with a swollen wrist held his arm against his chest. Two girls walked with a woman who counted aloud every few steps.

Then Liam appeared at the lower turn.

Beside him was Sigmund.

For a moment, I didn’t recognize him.

His coat hung differently. His face was thinner, his hair longer, and there was a worn stillness in the way he looked from one person to the next.

But when he saw Risa, that stillness vanished.

Two children were with him at the last broken step.

One had a wrapped ankle. The other was shaking so badly with fatigue that Liam had taken their pack.

Sigmund put an arm around each, braced himself, and lifted them over the wet rise one at a time without letting either stand on the loose edge.

Then he handed the one with the injured ankle to Ade.

He said something to Liam.

Liam nodded.

Only then did Sigmund come towards us.

Risa went to meet him on the level ground.

Not running down the path.

Not waiting in the chair either.

They stopped an arm’s length apart.

I saw Sigmund look at her face as if he expected it to disappear if he moved too quickly.

“Risa.”

She hit his chest with the flat of one hand.

Not hard.

Then she put both arms around him.

He held her so tightly that I looked away to give them something like privacy in the middle of the path.

It didn’t stop me hearing him.

“I thought—”

“I know,” she said.

“I kept—”

“I know.”

Neither of them finished.

They didn’t need to.

Luna reached me while they were still holding one another.

I put an arm around her and felt how much of her weight she let me take before she remembered my leg.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t.”

She leaned against me again, more carefully.

“All forty?” I asked.

“All forty.”

“Any missing behind them?”

“Not from the group they had when the calls began. There are other missing people. We have their names.”

I nodded.

The distinction mattered.

We had brought home the people we had found.

We had not solved every empty place on everyone’s page.

Luna looked towards Risa and her brother.

“He played her message three times.”

I smiled.

“Did he throw anything?”

“Not after the first sentence.”

I looked at her.

“A branch,” she said. “It missed everyone. Liam has already made him regret it.”

She kissed me before I could ask another question.

Then she stepped away to help bring the rest in.

Sigmund saw me properly after Juno had given Risa a cup and reminded her that everyone needed to keep moving.

His eyes went to my stick.

Then to my face.

“Dask.”

“Friese.”

For a moment, we were standing in an old corridor with too much left unsaid.

Then he looked past me at the people coming up the path.

“They told me you had room.”

“We’re making it.”

“There’s a woman with us who can’t lie flat without coughing. Sabine. She needs—”

“Toby’s here.”

He stopped.

He had heard Risa say the name in the recording.

Hearing it again, with a real roof behind me and people waiting under it, did something to his face.

“Marsh?”

“Yes.”

Sigmund nodded once, too sharply.

Then he held out his hand.

I took it.

“Thank you,” he said.

He didn’t make it easy by looking away.

I didn’t make him say it twice.

“Come inside.”

The receiving work took the rest of the afternoon.

Thirty adults. Ten children and young teenagers.

Forty people who needed names attached to bowls, injuries attached to instructions, and friends kept close enough that sleep didn’t feel like losing one another again.

We did not separate them according to which empty place looked most convenient on the drawing.

We asked who needed whom nearby.

Sabine Orrick took a raised sleeping place near the medical area. Gareth Tull, who had helped keep the group together after their lower shelter failed, stayed close enough that she could call him without shouting.

The two children Sigmund had helped at the step were Elsy Verran and Kit Arlen.

Elsy had the bad ankle.

Kit had carried her pack until he could barely carry himself.

When Toby told him to sit, he asked whether she was sitting too.

Toby pointed to the next bedding place.

Only then did Kit put his head down.

I wrote their names carefully.

There would be time for the rest of their stories.

First, there had to be somewhere safe to tell them.

Not everyone could bear the nursery beside the new shelter.

We had expected that.

Luna explained before anyone reached it. Dot kept the guide nearby. People who could not sleep close to the carriers were given places farther inside, and people already comfortable with them moved outward when they were able.

Brin helped with the change.

I watched her speak to a frightened woman who had stopped at the sight of a worker carrying a bundle beneath the covering.

“I know,” Brin said.

The woman shook her head.

“I know,” Brin repeated. “Come this way. You don’t have to go close.”

She took the woman towards the inner roof.

No argument about whether she ought to feel grateful.

No demand that being rescued should instantly undo fear.

I made a note to tell Luna later.

She should know some of the work she had started was continuing without her having to give the order again.

Sigmund refused to sit until he had counted everyone.

Then Gareth counted them again.

Then Wren compared the names with the list Dot’s hand had brought back.

Forty.

Sigmund looked at the page for a long time.

Risa took his sleeve.

“Now.”

He let her lead him to the bench.

I had seen her use that voice on people much more difficult than him.

Usually me.

Priya put food in front of him. He began to say something about the children.

“They’re eating,” she said.

“The people by—”

“They’re eating too.”

Risa put the spoon in his hand.

He looked at it as if he had forgotten how it worked.

Then he took the first mouthful.

Sera stood on the other side of the table, watching him with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

He looked up.

“Calder.”

“Friese.”

“Your brother is unbearable.”

“Yes,” she said. “We missed having anyone else qualified to complain.”

For the first time since he arrived, Sigmund smiled.

It was small.

It was enough.

Liam told us what had happened after he had washed and found Anja.

He sat with her beside him, one hand resting in hers beneath the edge of the table.

The eastern shelter had stood above an old burned strip of forest. The first flooding had taken their crossing. Then a slope behind the lower building had moved, forcing them into the clearing.

By the time our party reached them, water was running through that as well.

“There wasn’t much left to save except people,” Liam said.

Sigmund looked down at his bowl.

“They kept trying to carry things.”

“So did you,” Luna said.

“The receiver was useful.”

“The second box wasn’t.”

He didn’t argue.

Liam described the high route, the neighbour’s workers waiting at the boundary, the chamber where they had slept. He did not make it sound easy.

He told us where people had stopped, who had needed carrying, and how Sigmund had gone back along the line until everyone had someone beside them.

Sigmund stared at the table through most of it.

When Liam finished, he said, “They would have come back for me.”

Liam nodded.

“Yes. That’s usually how it works.”

Risa took him to the quieter end of the shelter after supper.

She asked me to come.

I was grateful she asked rather than assuming either of us would know what she wanted.

We sat on three chairs beside the inner wall. Sera and Luna stayed nearby, speaking quietly with Wren about the returned maps.

For a little while, Risa and Sigmund asked each other practical questions.

Where had he been? Who had she found first? Had anyone heard from their family? Was the Earth channel open?

Some answers were long.

Some were still no.

Neither of them pretended otherwise.

Then Sigmund looked at our joined hands.

He had noticed them before.

Now he had the space to decide what to say.

“You and Dask.”

Risa nodded.

“Yes.”

He looked at me.

I waited.

Then his gaze went past us to Sera, who had crossed the shelter to put a blanket over Luna’s shoulders while she worked.

“And…”

“Sera and Luna too,” Risa said. “We’re together.”

Sigmund looked back at her.

“All four of you?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause.

“I’ve missed rather a lot.”

“You have.”

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Are you happy?”

Risa’s fingers tightened around mine.

“Yes.”

He looked at me again.

This time, I answered the question he hadn’t asked aloud.

“I love her.”

“I was talking to my sister.”

“I know.”

Risa made an impatient sound.

“Don’t begin.”

Sigmund let out a tired breath.

Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.

“Apparently some things haven’t changed.”

She told him about the baby herself.

Not as part of an explanation he needed to approve.

As something she wanted her brother to know.

“There’s something else,” she said.

He looked wary enough that I almost laughed before she had spoken.

“I’m pregnant.”

The wariness vanished.

For a moment, there was nothing on his face at all.

Then he looked at me.

Then back at her.

“You’re…”

“Yes.”

“Is it—”

“Early. Toby’s helping. We don’t know everything yet.”

He swallowed.

“Are you all right?”

“I am.”

“Do you need anything?”

Risa smiled, and the smile shook.

“I needed my brother.”

Sigmund bent forward as if the words had struck him somewhere tender.

She stood and moved into his arms before he could find an answer.

I sat very still.

Across the room, Sera glanced towards us.

I nodded.

She put a hand on Luna’s shoulder.

They left us the space.

Later, when Risa went to fetch water, Sigmund sat beside me without looking in my direction.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything tonight.”

He gave a small, humourless laugh.

“That seems unlikely.”

I waited.

He watched the nursery lamp beyond the open side of the shelter.

“They helped us.”

“Yes.”

“I would have fought them.”

“We did.”

He looked at me then.

There was no use making our part of the story cleaner than it had been.

“We didn’t understand what the signals were doing to them,” I said. “There’s a lot to explain. Dot can help.”

“And now?”

“Now the queen under us considers this her home too. She helped find you because Risa was looking for her brother.”

Sigmund stared at the lamp again.

“Her brother.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head slowly.

Then he said, “Tell her thank you.”

I looked towards Dot.

“She’d rather hear it from you.”

He considered that.

“All right.”

Dot came over when we asked.

Sigmund stood to speak to her, then seemed to realize she was not a person who required him to make himself taller.

He sat again.

“Thank her for letting us through,” he said. “And the other queen. For the chamber. For the guides.”

Dot’s lights moved.

“I will pass those separately. They were separate gifts.”

He nodded.

“Then thank them separately.”

Risa returned in time to hear that.

She put the cup beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder.

The reply from our queen arrived while we were helping people settle for the night.

Dot brought it to the table where Sigmund had finally allowed Toby to examine a scrape on his side.

“She says Risa’s missing family has reached shelter,” Dot told him. “She is glad.”

Sigmund looked towards his sister.

Risa looked back.

For once, neither of them had a sharp answer ready.

By the time the lamps were lowered, Scarecrow was crowded enough that every familiar sound had changed.

More breathing beneath the common roof.

More cups set down beside bedding.

Someone whispering for a person who was only an arm’s length away, checking that they were still there.

The new shelter held. The nursery covering held. People who had met that afternoon passed water to one another without needing names first.

We had one hundred and four people now.

One hundred and two humans, Dot, and Old Son.

And the queen’s nursery group beside us, counted in a way we were still learning to understand.

It was too crowded to remain this way.

It was dry enough for tonight.

Tomorrow, those would become two different jobs.

Risa checked on Sigmund once more before coming to our room.

He had fallen asleep sitting against the wall, his hand still resting on the edge of the list of names.

She eased the page free and put it beside him where he could see it when he woke.

Then she covered him.

I waited by the doorway with my stick.

When she reached me, she took my free hand.

“He’s here.”

“Yes.”

“I keep needing to say it.”

“Then keep saying it.”

She leaned against me as we walked.

This time, I didn’t need her shoulder to stay upright.

I was glad to have it anyway.

Luna was already in bed when we arrived.

Sera sat beside her, working a knot out of her wet hair with more patience than either of them would have admitted to possessing.

Luna opened one eye.

“Everyone settled?”

“For now,” Risa said.

“Good.”

Risa crossed the room and bent to kiss her forehead.

“Thank you.”

Luna reached for her hand.

“I’m glad he’s here.”

Sera set the comb down.

I lowered myself onto the bed and let the day end around us.

The little wooden bird stood on its shelf.

Risa touched it once before lying down.

For the first time in two nights, she fell asleep before I did.

I listened until I was certain her breathing had settled.

Then I closed my eyes.

Day 550–551. The east falls.

Eastern shelter lost to flood and moving ground. Sigmund’s group kept forty together. Risa’s recorded message carried with Dot’s hand. Neighbouring queen permitted the rescue route and an overnight shelter. Luna, Liam, Corr, Ilse, and brood guides brought everyone home.

Thirty adults, ten children and young teenagers. Names recorded. Injuries and exhaustion being treated. Sabine needs continuing attention to her breathing. Elsy’s ankle supported. Kit finally sleeping beside her.

Sigmund Friese home.

He knows about us. He knows about the baby. Risa told him herself.

One hundred and four people at Scarecrow. One hundred and two humans, Dot, Old Son. Queen’s nursery group remains beside us. Temporary shelter extended on checked ground. Sleeping and eating in shifts. More permanent rooms needed soon.

My leg steadier. Stayed at the receiving shelter and base. No power work beyond Sera’s treatment. Other hands built what we needed.

Sigmund thanked both queens separately.

Risa asleep.

Everyone from the call accounted for.