Spring arrived at Ashveil the way significant things arrived, quietly and then all at once.
The snow pulled back from the northern approach over the course of a week, revealing ground that had been waiting underneath it with the patient certainty of something that knew its season was coming, and the fortress that had been running at the compressed intensity of a place managing an extraordinary winter exhaled into the longer light with the specific quality of a community finding its permanent rhythm after months of operating in emergency configuration.
The Remnant had settled into Ashveil's eastern quarter with the thoroughness of people who had been living in temporary configurations for forty years and had strong opinions about what permanent looked like. Vesta ran the quarter wit
