Chapter 27
When I was a small child, the thought of leaving home was unfathomable. We belonged to the farm in the way that the trees did. We were planted there, driven up from the soil to hold our arms out and say, “This is our land, our air, our dirt.” We carried a flame forward not only for ourselves, but for the animals we raised and the food and grain we harvested. The farm was our spot on the planet, a place to live and die.
Despite the almanacs lining the shelves, our concentrated attention to the seasons of year and passing seconds of the hours, we never understood the mortality of the farm itself, that we could be standing at the end of its story.
In Peorth, the Citizen brigade dismantled Cherish the Past and, with it, our ownership of the property. We would live as equals among
