Location:Wild Confederacy — Settlement Windbreak; the long house
Date/Time:TC1858.03.15 – TC1858.03.16
Frost had come in through the door overnight and laced every board in the long house white, every board but the broken ones. Where the floor had split open, the frost stopped. Mei could see the line from the doorway, clean as a cut, white boards on one side and on the other the dark wet earth of the two holes, and the animal still lying in the nearer of them, sunk to the shoulders, with the herder's spear still upright in its neck behind the plate.
Nothing grew frost on that earth. It was too warm.
Nobody was in the long house. The two east-camp families had slept in the pavilion the last two nights, and the screeners in the store sheds, and Galen's five wherever Galen put them, and nobody had asked to come back in. The stove was out. Somebody had swept the hearth.
Mei stood in the doorway until her feet were cold, and then went to find Naida.
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