Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

A year after the [Lifebringers].

The [Lifebringers] changed everything. It was hard to overstate their impact. From roosters crowing to wake us up to logs in the fire, from all the food we could want to mundane segisaurs nipping at the edges of herds, from milk to cocoa to sugar beets resulting in tasty, delicious hot chocolate, everything was different with the wave of a Classer’s hands.

The sudden abundance took some getting used to, but it was like tens of thousands of people crawled out of their hidey holes, the [Lifebringers] heralding a new era. Many of them flocked to Orthus Town and tried to settle down, to varying degrees of success. There was friction between the new and the old, and the cynic in me said it would last until there was another wave of immigration, and it’d be the same thing once again. Everything was different.

The grumpy old lady in me - I swear it was just a part of me, and I wasn’t a grumpy old lady, no matter what number the System was trying to put next to my age - said there was a distinct difference between the people who’d spent years sheltering, and the people who’d left the bunkers and worked their asses off through the apocalypse. Sitting around doing very little for years left an impact on people, especially those in their formative years, and I felt proper work ethic was simply rarer. Then again, I reminded myself I was being a grouch and potentially biased, and I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, nor let myself become prejudiced.

With the spare wood and time, Iona and the rest of the village wasted no time building out and expanding the town, erecting strong walls that we could scurry behind should disaster befall us. What sort of problem would be slowed down by wooden walls barely reinforced by skills but not immediately removable by the Eventide Eclipse, I had no idea - but the safety and reassurance was there. Not only did we make the walls of Orthus, but close to 200 buildings were erected, waiting for a better future. Most of them were townhouses, but we hopefully set up a smithy, a tannery, a drydock and other fishing buildings, a market square, a printing press - sans machinery - a brewery that was getting put into action before it was even half-assembled, a number of storefronts for whoever wanted to use it, and more!

Build it, and they will come.

Skye’s belief proved to be prophetic. Days after the drydock was complete, a pair of brothers were trying to get a fishing boat built. Auri’s burning desire for a bakery saw the rest of us making her dream a reality, the building standing alone deep in the future heart of the city. The prevailing wind did have the delectable smells wafting over, the phoenix working a quarter of the time. We were still small enough of a village where everyone just about knew everyone else, and we didn’t really have money yet. I knew I was sitting on enough coins to trivialize values, but releasing it all had dozens of problems. For now, barter, favors, and simply being a good neighbor carried the day, and I wasn’t going to be the one to start raising walls in the name of better flow of goods.

My personal favorite? The library.

I breathed in deeply as I entered, the smell of freshly varnished wood heavy on the air. There was a powerful feeling of wrongness to the library though, and I could immediately identify what it was.