He said the settlement's name.
He said it the way he said it every morning now — the morning routine having added the name to itself naturally, the way things that belonged somewhere found their place without being assigned it.
The name stayed.
'This is what it is,' he thought.
Five hundred sixty-one names in the field.
A child reading temporal depth at thirty feet.
The Thursday meal.
Kelvin's supply protocols.
The Fenryn delegation who had come to honor a birth.
Eight new arrivals in the past year.
Cael's thirty names in the margin.
Freda writing.
Lyra working.
Jessica checking.
Morgana building frameworks.
The settlement that had a name in the council's records.
The argument that had been made and was still being made.
Not by him specifically.
By all of it.
By the field and the markers and the Thursday meal and the morning routine and the child who was going to know all of it as home before they had words for home.
He put the Fenryn figure in his pocket.
