Two weeks at the waystation and Hunter could almost pretend they were building something real.
The main hall had an actual roof now. Not the metaphorical kind, but literal wooden planks that kept the rain out like they were civilized people instead of medieval peasants who'd given up on life. Han had organized work crews with military efficiency that would've made drill sergeants weep. The twins measured and cut lumber with their weird shared brain cell working overtime, never arguing because apparently they'd transcended normal sibling dynamics into creepy hivemind territory. Chen Lao supervised with the patient wisdom of sixty years successfully not dying. Teacher Bai had somehow turned manual labor into education, complete with lectures about structural integrity and the philosophical implications of shelter.
