Now living in a small village consisting of 9 houses and 13 people total, the folks I welcomed have started calling me Lord. It's not bad—they say it out of respect for being the one who gave them shelter and showed them how to survive here—but I still feel awkward every time the words leave their lips. Back home, I was just someone who fixed things and paid their bills on time. Here, I'm somehow the heart of our little community. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it, but I let them be—if the title helps bring us together, then it's worth the discomfort.
Living here isn't bad after all. We've established a rhythm to our days: the sun rises, we work, we share our meals, and we gather at night to talk or tell stories by the central fire. Having mutual respect and harmony is a must—with so few of us, any conflict could tear us apart. Torvin keeps our tools sharp and has even made us each a sturdy knife for hunting or protection. Marina tends to our health, using the plants she and others gather to treat everything from sore muscles to fevers. We all take turns maintaining the fishery, and our food stores are growing steadily with dried fish, preserved berries, and root vegetables from our plots.
But I think we're missing something crucial. We have shelter, food, and safety—but the only thing we are lacking is a purpose beyond just surviving. I understand it clearly after watching our people work: we need something to bind us together as more than just a group of refugees and a lost man. So I devised a brilliant course of action, gathering everyone in the central space on a clear morning when both moons were still visible in the pale sky.
"Let's construct a monument!" I announced, my voice carrying across the quiet village. "A structure to rally our spirits together and to mark this land as our new home—something future generations will look at and know that this is where we built our lives from nothing."
The idea spread like wildfire through our small group. Torvin suggested we make it from stone and wood, so it would stand strong against time and weather. Marina proposed we carve symbols into it—representing the stream that feeds us, the forest that shelters us, and the mountains that watch over us. The kids were especially excited, chattering about how tall it should be and what colors we could use to decorate it.
First, we needed more materials than our small-scale gathering could provide. So we start planning, and we decide to build a lumbermill along a faster-moving branch of the stream that would give us the power to cut and shape wood more efficiently. It took us ten days to clear the land, build the water wheel, and set up the saws—every one of us pitching in to carry stones, weave the water troughs, and fashion the blades from iron Torvin had smelted from ore we'd found in the hills.
Once the mill was running smoothly, I assigned Luke and Bryan to oversee the production of boards and treated woods. Luke, a former carpenter from the Golden Confederacy, knew exactly how to season the lumber so it wouldn't warp or rot. Bryan, who'd worked on ships before the wars, had a keen eye for measuring and cutting—ensuring every piece was perfect for our needs. Their work kept the mill humming from dawn to dusk, stacking neat piles of planks and beams near our building site.
While they handled the mill, Chuck was assigned to expand our farm fields into a proper plot that could feed us through the harsher seasons we'd heard about from the older refugees. He'd been a farmer his whole life, and his hands moved with practiced ease as he tilled the rich soil, planted rows of grain and legumes, and built fences to keep wild animals away. Sometimes I smiled whenever his sons are happily helping him farming—their small hands pulling weeds or carrying baskets of seed with more enthusiasm than most adults could muster.
And sometimes his kids Levi, Alan, Connor, and Charlie keep me company as I work. They'd follow me around the village, asking endless questions about how things were built or what lay beyond the hills. Levi, the oldest at seven, would try to carry small stones for the monument, puffing with effort as he hauled them one by one. Alan and Connor, twins at five, loved to collect colorful pebbles to decorate the base. Charlie, the youngest at three, would just sit on my shoulder or hold my hand, pointing at birds in the sky and chattering in a mix of their native tongue and the common speech we'd all adopted.
While his wife Georgette helps Arianna, Marina's Sister look for medicinal plants and herbs in the deeper parts of the forest. Arianna, a young woman who'd been traveling alongside her sister and with the merchants, had a gift for remembering where each plant grew and how to harvest it without harming the roots. Together, they'd bring back armfuls of healing leaves, bitter roots, and fragrant flowers that Marina would dry and store for when we needed them. They even found a patch of plants that could be pressed into a dye, giving us vibrant blues and greens to color parts of our monument.
With the mill producing wood steadily and our farms and foraging parties keeping us supplied, the other 6 free workers including me start to build our very own monument after collecting enough resources to build it. We laid the foundation with massive stones we'd rolled down from the hills, setting them deep into the earth so the structure would never shift. Luke designed the frame—tall and wide, with a peaked roof that would shed rain and snow. We raised the beams together, our hands linked as we lifted each heavy piece into place, singing the work songs the refugees had brought with them from their homelands.
As the monument took shape, standing tall in the center of our village, I felt something shift within us all. We weren't just a collection of survivors anymore—we were a people building a legacy. The stone on my wrist glowed with a steady, warm light as we worked, and I could swear I felt the land itself responding to our efforts, as if welcoming us truly home at last.