Bramwell's POV
The second family, the Morrans, responded with a message that wasn't a response at all.
It was a request. They wanted to meet. In person. At the location their family had been living when the original suppression order was issued forty years ago.
That location was a cliffside settlement in the western territories, three days' travel from the confluence.
We went.
The Morrans were not warm. They were not cold, exactly — they were careful, in the way of people who have been careful for so long that it has become their default state. Eight adults, five children, a settlement of extraordinary practicality. Every structure built to be functional and repaired rather than replaced. Every person moving with the economy of motion that comes from having exactly the resources you n
