Belonging is not a door you walk through once.
It’s a threshold you cross again and again,
with every fight,
every meal,
every decision to stay.
Today, the city learns where its edges are.
And the new arrivals learn they are not the only ones afraid of crossing them.
Morning finds the seven families asleep in borrowed rooms.
Some on cots.
Some on pallets hastily arranged.
One grandmother firmly on the floor because “beds are for those who don’t trust they can stand again.”
The city wakes early anyway.
Not out of suspicion.
Out of… awareness.
There are new breathing patterns in its walls.
New fears in its air.
New stories pressed into the mattresses that used to hold different ghosts.
Kael steps out before the sun fully lifts.
He listens.
The city doesn’t sound like it di
