NEVA POV
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Three ordinary days passed.
I'm going to note that specifically, not as a countdown but as evidence — three days in a row of nothing requiring emergency response, which was, in the context of the last several weeks, genuinely remarkable. Tea in the morning. Ryke at the window before I woke, a habit I'd stopped trying to identify the start of. Ziko doing something loud at an hour that still surprised me regardless of how many times it happened. Silo at the perimeter, always, until mid-morning when he came in for coffee and stayed longer than the coffee warranted.
The compound had a different texture in the aftermath of the convening. Not softer — it wasn't a place that did soft — but more settled. The specific settledness of people who'd been running toward something and ha
