The community assembled at the memorial field — not all of them could stop their work entirely, but representatives from every unit, the specific gathering that the settlement had developed for this over years.
Satou stood at the field.
He said the name.
He said what the name meant — not in generalities, in specifics. Harven specifically. What he'd been, what he'd contributed, what the eastern wall had been for five years with him on it.
He placed the marker.
Five hundred sixty-one.
He looked at them.
At the new marker in its position.
At Cassius's at the south edge.
At five hundred fifty-nine others.
'There you are,' he thought.
The community was very still.
Then it was not still.
It was what it was after these things — the specific quality of a community that had processed loss before and knew how to hold it and continue.
They continued.
The wall was manned.
The kitchen made food.
Kelvin updated the registry.
