Year 15... Home.
Around the fifth year, the island stopped being a settlement, but no one said so or gave a date. When you stood at the harbor and watched supply ships come in from four different kingdoms, or when you walked the main road in the morning and counted the faces you didn't know next to the ones you had known for ten years, the word "settlement" just didn't fit what you were seeing anymore.
Now, one thousand two hundred forty-seven people live in Home.
The three original buildings were still there, but they had been absorbed into bigger buildings nearby, like how younger trees grow around older ones.
The workshop had grown a courtyard and gotten bigger twice. The kitchen had turned into a full-fledged cooking school, with Thomas Chen's name above the door and a reputation that spread to kingdoms that weren't even close to the sea.
