Location:Ashford Crossing → Seven Peaks — Gate Security Office, Command Center
Date/Time:TC1855.05.29
Bess left Lily at the community center at six-thirty, kissed the top of her head, and told her she'd be back by lunch. Lily accepted this with the unquestioning trust of a child whose mother had never failed to come back, and returned to the paper crane she was folding — a blue one this time, because the community center had received a shipment of colored paper and Lily had declared blue to be the morning's official color.
Bess walked to the transport platform.
She'd thought about this for three days. Not in the frantic, circular way she'd thought about things in the first months — the lying-awake-at-night thoughts that chased their own tails and never landed anywhere useful. This was different. Structured. The way she thought about construction now: identify the problem, assess the materials, determine the load-bearing elements, build.
