The hardest part of winter was not the cold itself.
It was the time just before the cold ended, when the stores began to shrink and spring had yet to show itself. The community knew this period well. You could not see it in their faces or hear it in their conversations, but it revealed itself in small changes—the portions became slightly smaller, the meals slightly less frequent, and the way Jorcx and Morra opened the supply crates grew more careful, more deliberate, as though each time they had to weigh again whether what they were taking was justified.
Samuel noticed.
And he adjusted accordingly.
He did not ask about it. He observed and adapted.
One evening, Gustov mentioned in passing that every winter had a phase like this, right before the earth opened again. That everyone knew it. That everyone got through it.
Samuel nodded and did not ask further.
During those weeks, he got to know Keth.
Keth was one of the few people in the settlement who regularly ventured outside—not for firewood or water, but for longer periods, carrying a bow across his back and a bag that sometimes returned full and sometimes did not. He was lean for an Orc, with long, measured movements that reminded Samuel of Bercx with the animals. No unnecessary gestures. No wasted effort.
He spoke little, and when he returned from a hunt, he usually only said what he had brought back, handed it over, and disappeared into his shelter again.
One day he returned with very little.
Two rabbits.
Nothing more.
He set them down in front of Ystra without a word.
Ystra looked at them.
Then she looked at Keth.
Keth met her gaze.
"More tomorrow."
Ystra nodded.
Keth left.
Samuel had watched the entire exchange from a distance.
I think Keth never gives himself excuses.
And he expects none from anyone else.
Then there was Sarva.
An older Orc woman whom Samuel had previously only noticed at the edges of things. She was small for an Orc, with a broad, calm face and a way of moving that always seemed slightly slower than necessary, as though she had learned long ago that haste rarely improved anything.
She was the person everyone sought out when they were sick or injured.
Not because she had the equipment of a doctor, but because she possessed knowledge built from experience and a small collection of dried herbs and tinctures stored in a wooden chest.
Samuel met her properly when Dravan cut himself with an axe.
It was not a serious injury—a slanted cut along his forearm, not deep, but bleeding heavily enough.
Dravan came to Samuel because he happened to be nearby.
Samuel immediately pressed cloth against the wound and held it there until Sarva arrived.
Sarva knelt down.
She examined the cut.
Then she glanced at Samuel's hands, still applying pressure.
She nodded once.
Then she took over.
She cleaned the wound, applied something from her chest, and wrapped it neatly.
Throughout the process, Dravan wore the expression of someone who was in considerably more pain than he intended to admit.
When Sarva finished, she looked briefly at Samuel.
"Well done."
Then she stood and left.
Samuel stared at his bloodstained hands.
That's the first time someone has said that to me without being asked.
He washed them and said nothing.
Dravan looked down at his bandaged arm.
"Thanks." "You cut yourself with an axe." "Yeah." "How?"
Dravan hesitated.
"I wanted to help." "With chopping wood?" "I thought I could do it."
Samuel looked at him.
"You couldn't." "I know that now."
Samuel dried his hands and said nothing more.
Dravan remained seated, studying the bandage with a mixture of pain and the lingering pride that remains when someone has done something foolish for a brave reason.
Nogg appeared shortly afterward.
Samuel identified him as Dravan's father not because anyone had told him, but because he had the same face as Dravan—just twenty years older and considerably broader.
He approached with the steady gait of someone who had worked all day.
He looked at Dravan's arm.
Then at Samuel.
Then back at Dravan's arm.
"What happened?"
Dravan explained.
Nogg listened without interruption.
When he finished, Nogg gave Dravan a brief tap on the head.
Not hard.
More like a statement.
Then he looked at Samuel.
"You kept pressure on it?" "Yeah."
Nogg nodded once.
Then he returned to his work.
Samuel had the feeling that, for Nogg, that counted as a thank you.
The late winter also brought the last few names Samuel still did not know.
Tira and her husband Brox—a young couple with two small children still too young to pay much attention to him.
Tira was lively and spoke more than most people in the settlement, with a directness that could be surprising but was never unkind.
Brox was the opposite.
Broad, quiet, always working near Torck, and apparently learning his trade from him.
One morning, while Samuel was collecting water, Tira spoke to him.
"You've been here for quite a while now." "Yeah." "And?" "And what?" "How is it?"
Samuel thought for a moment.
"Different than I expected." "Better or worse?" "Different."
Tira looked at him as though she did not consider that evasive at all.
As though it were a genuine answer.
"Fair."
Then she picked up her bucket and walked away.
And finally there was Orva.
A middle-aged woman who was usually involved in preparing meals and whom Samuel rarely saw elsewhere.
She hardly spoke.
But she remembered what everyone liked and what they did not.
And whenever Samuel collected his food, there sometimes seemed to be a little more on his plate than on anyone else's.
He did not know whether it was intentional.
Or coincidence.
He never asked.
The days slowly grew longer.
At first, you noticed it in the evenings.
The light lingered a little longer than the day before.
Then a little longer still.
And eventually Samuel realized that when work ended in the fields, there was still daylight where darkness would once have been.
Jorcx noticed it too.
He worked differently during the final hours of each day.
More deliberately.
As though he were rationing the light.
The snow covering the plain began to melt at the edges.
One evening in the middle of late winter, Samuel sat beside Gustov. Both of them drank the bitter herbal infusion that had become a regular part of their evenings.
The settlement was quiet.
The fire smaller than it had been during deep winter.
Gustov sat with his legs stretched out, staring into the flames.
"Gustov." "Hm." "When did you know you were going to stay here? At the new place?"
Gustov did not think long.
"When I stopped thinking about it."
Samuel looked at him.
"That's not an answer." "It is."
Gustov took a sip.
"As long as you keep asking yourself whether you'll stay, you haven't arrived yet. When you stop asking, you're there."
Samuel considered that.
"I'm still asking." "I know."
Gustov said it without judgment.
Simply as a fact.
"But you ask less than you used to."
Samuel wanted to disagree.
Then he thought about it.
And said nothing.
Gustov was right.
The question was still there.
But its weight had changed.
Before, it had felt like pressure.
Like an open wound that could not be ignored.
Now it felt more like an object carried in a pocket.
Still there.
But easy to forget for hours at a time.
He thought about the merchant at the market.
About the Great Library.
About everything he still did not know.
I'll have to leave someday.
That hasn't changed.
He let the thought remain unfinished.
Dravan stopped by briefly, holding his bandaged arm out in front of him as though it were a trophy.
He sat down, finished the rest of his dinner, and disappeared again.
Yeva followed at a distance that suggested she would never admit she was following him.
Orva stepped outside for a moment, checked the fire, added another piece of wood, and went back inside.
Wunn made his usual circuit around the settlement, silently inspecting whatever it was he always inspected.
He nodded to himself and vanished into the dark.
Keth returned from a night hunt.
Samuel saw him passing along the edge of the settlement, a silhouette against the bright snow.
Silent.
The bow still slung across his back.
The settlement was alive.
Samuel sat at its center.
And that was no longer a contradiction to who he was.
Not home.
But a place that knew him.
Spring did not arrive that night.
But it was on its way.
Spring arrived over the course of several weeks.
First as meltwater, flowing across the plains in narrow streams.
Then as a smell—a damp, earthy, living scent that reminded Samuel of something he could not quite place.
A spring morning somewhere in another world.
A world that seemed farther away every day.
Then came color.
First at the edges of the fields, where grass emerged before anywhere else.
Then farther inward.
Then everywhere.
On the morning the snow finally disappeared from the fields, Jorcx was already outside at dawn.
Samuel arrived shortly afterward.
Jorcx stood in the middle of a field with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the earth.
Samuel stepped beside him.
Jorcx said nothing.
Samuel said nothing.
For a while they simply stood there, looking at the soil.
Brown.
Damp.
Ready.
Then Jorcx picked up his spade.
Samuel picked up his as well.
Spring work began.
It felt different from the previous autumn.
Samuel noticed it immediately.
Not because the tasks had changed.
But because he knew them now.
The motions felt familiar.
Not perfect.
But familiar.
He knew how deep to dig.
When the ground was too wet to work properly.
How to pull a row that was straight enough without using a guide.
He still made mistakes.
But they were different mistakes than before.
Not mistakes born of ignorance.
Mistakes of inattention.
And those could be corrected.
Morra noticed.
She worked in the row beside him and did not correct him a single time during that first day of spring.
Samuel only realized it later that afternoon.
He paused and wondered whether he had overlooked a mistake.
Then he wondered whether Morra simply had other things on her mind.
Then he wondered whether she no longer needed to correct him.
I don't know which of those three possibilities it is.
But one of them feels good.
Dravan appeared at midday.
This time without a bandage.
He took his place in a row near the edge of the field.
He still worked poorly.
But less poorly than he had in autumn.
And he complained less loudly when his back hurt.
That was progress.
Greth muttered the entire time he planted.
Samuel had long since stopped trying to understand what he was saying and accepted that it was simply part of Greth, like his beard and his habit of reaching for his tools three separate times every evening before finally putting them away.
By evening, when most of the others had already finished, Samuel stayed to complete one last row.
Not because he had to.
But because it was only half done, and leaving it that way bothered him.
Jorcx noticed.
He stood at the edge of the field, ready to leave, watching Samuel finish the row.
When Samuel finally finished and lifted his spade, Jorcx looked at him briefly.
He said nothing.
But he waited until Samuel walked past him.
Then they returned to the settlement together.
Not side by side like friends.
But at the distance Jorcx always kept.
Together.
I think this is the closest thing to warmth I'll ever get from Jorcx.
And somehow, it's enough.
The first spring evening felt different from every winter evening before it.
The fire was smaller.
The air milder.
More Orcs remained outside longer than usual.
There were more conversations.
More laughter.
A lighter mood that had settled over the settlement without announcement.
Tira was speaking loudly with Vranna about something Samuel did not fully understand, but whatever it was had both of them laughing.
Brox was working beside Torck on something that looked like a new rain collection barrel.
Barak spent his evening break outdoors and, for once, was not standing alone.
Instead, he leaned against a wagon and stared up at the sky.
Keth sat by the fire.
Which was unusual.
He rarely sat still.
His bow rested across his lap while he inspected the string with the kind of attention that made it look as though he were listening to an old friend tell a story.
Samuel settled into his usual spot.
Yeva appeared from nowhere and sat directly beside him.
No distance.
No explanation.
She held a small branch she had carefully stripped of bark, for whatever purpose she had decided it served.
Samuel let her be.
Dravan sat on his other side and examined his arm, which had long since healed.
"Sarva said the scar will stay." "Probably." "I like that."
Samuel looked at him.
"Really?" "Then I'll look like I've been through something."
Samuel considered explaining that a scar from accidentally cutting yourself with an axe because you thought you could chop wood was not necessarily the most impressive story.
Then he decided against it.
"True."
Dravan looked satisfied.
Later, Gustov joined them with his herbal infusion and silently handed Samuel a second bowl.
The stars above the plains were clear and distant.
The sky remained a deep blue, slowly darkening toward black.
At some point during the silence, Gustov said something Samuel did not immediately know what to make of.
"Urag will have to travel soon."
Samuel looked at him.
"Where?" "To the administration."
Gustov took a sip.
"The settlement has to be registered. Officially. Otherwise there'll be problems."
Samuel was silent for a moment.
"What kind of problems?" "Taxes they'll demand retroactively. Fines. In the worst case, expulsion."
There was a bitterness in Gustov's voice that Samuel rarely heard.
Not anger.
More like exhaustion.
The kind that comes from having experienced the same thing too many times.
"So they have to ask permission to exist."
Gustov glanced at him.
"More or less."
I'm trying to imagine what that feels like.
Having to start over every time and still needing permission first.
He left the thought unfinished.
"How long will he be gone?" "Four weeks. Maybe five."
Samuel nodded.
The silence between them was familiar.
Yeva had begun breaking her branch into smaller pieces.
Methodically.
Without any obvious purpose.
Dravan was nearly asleep.
The fire burned lower.
Orva stepped out of the shelter, tossed another piece of wood onto the flames, glanced briefly at Samuel, and nodded.
Short.
Casual.
The kind of nod you give someone you know.
Samuel nodded back.
Wunn made his rounds.
Keth set aside his bow and stretched.
Rhan carried a half-finished garment indoors.
Harra checked the water barrels.
The settlement was going to sleep.
Samuel remained seated a little longer.
He thought about the Great Library.
About the merchant with the damaged eye.
About everything he still did not know.
Everything waiting somewhere in a city he had never seen.
He thought about Urag leaving soon.
He thought about spring beginning.
About the fields that would soon need all of them again.
He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket.
Two stones.
One gray.
One red.
Dravan had been right.
They were good stones.
Then Samuel stood up and went to sleep.