By day three of Operation Do Not Get Sabotaged Again, Wren has developed strong opinions about fence posts.
“Deeper,” she says, watching Casimir wrestle a post into the hole they’ve dug along the back wall.
“If it’s not deep enough, first strong wind knocks the whole line down, and then we’re right back where we started, except now we’re also embarrassed.”
“It’s deep enough.”
“It’s deep enough for a fence that keeps out polite people.
I want a fence that keeps out people who dumped a rat in our well out of spite.”
He gives the post one more solid shove, packing dirt around the base with more force than strictly required, which Wren suspects is at least partly directed at the memory of said rat.
“Better?”
“Marginally,” she says, echoing his own favorite word back at him, and gets a flat look for her trouble that doesn’t quite hide the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Mei’s twenty feet down the fence line, working her own post with the brisk efficiency of someone who’s stopped needing instructions for most of this by now.
Two weeks ago she’d have waited to be told exactly what to do.
Today she’s the one who suggested staggering the posts closer together near the gate, where anyone determined enough would actually try to force their way through.
“You’ve gotten good at this,” Wren calls over.
“I’ve had a good teacher,” Mei calls back, and there’s something in her voice, easy and proud, that wasn’t there the first week, back when every sentence came out careful and small like she was waiting to be told she’d gotten it wrong.
By afternoon, the fence line’s solid all the way around, real wood instead of crumbling stone, tall enough that climbing it means committing to the attempt rather than strolling over like Casimir did that first night.
Wren stands back and admires it with the deep, uncomplicated satisfaction of someone who built a thing with her own hands and watched it actually work.
“Phase one, complete,” she announces.
“Phase two.”
Phase two is the catchment system, and it turns out Casimir’s northern territory knowledge, while theoretically sound, translates into practice about as smoothly as his first attempts at thatching. Read the latest chapters at novelping dot com.
“The angle’s wrong,” Wren says, eyeing the length of gutter he’s rigged along the eastern roofline.
“Water needs somewhere to actually go, not just somewhere to sit and think about its choices.”
“I followed the design exactly as I remember it.”
“Then your memory’s got a design flaw, because right now this thing’s going to fill up, overflow sideways, and soak the wall instead of the barrel.” She climbs up next to him, adjusting the angle herself, and he watches her work with an expression that’s stopped bothering to hide how much it’s enjoying being wrong about something, apparently, for once, without consequence attached.
“You know an unsettling amount about water management for someone who claims to have been a hunter and forager in her old life.”
“I contain multitudes, Casimir.
Also I once did a whole video on rainwater collection that got way more views than it had any right to.
People love watching water go where you tell it to go.
It’s very calming, apparently.”
“I don’t know what a video is.”
“You will one day.
It’s a long story, and also not one I can fully explain without sounding like I’ve lost my mind, so let’s stick with barrels for now.”
By the time the sun starts dipping low, they’ve got a working catchment system tucked behind the east building, out of sight from anyone glancing over the wall, feeding into two sturdy barrels that’ll fill steadily with the next decent rain.
A second water source, hidden, redundant, exactly the kind of insurance policy Wren’s been chasing since the rat incident.
“There,” she says, wiping her hands on her already ruined trousers.
“Now they can foul the well all they want.
We’ve got a backup.”
“You’re already planning for the next attack.”
“I’m always planning for the next attack, that’s just how my brain works now.
Keeps me sharp.” She flops down onto the garden bed’s edge, muscles pleasantly sore in the way that only comes from a full day of real, productive work.
What Mei’s got cooking, it turns out, is a genuinely impressive stew, thick with the last of the good root vegetables and seasoned with a small hoard of spices Tan smuggled over last week in exchange for a basket of scallions, and the three of them eat it sitting outside as the light goes gold and low, Duchess and her two increasingly plump companions pecking around their feet for scraps.
“We did good work today,” Mei says, licking the last of the stew off her spoon with zero shame whatsoever.
“We did great work today,” Wren corrects, leaning back against the fence post she personally sank into the ground, feeling the specific, deep satisfaction of a day spent building something real.
“Fence, catchment system, and nobody died.
Solid Tuesday, all things considered.”
Casimir, sitting close enough that his shoulder brushes hers when he leans back too, huffs out something that’s almost a laugh.
“You have a strange way of measuring success.”
“Nobody dying’s a pretty high bar in my experience.
I’ll take it.” She glances over at him, catching the last of the sunset painting gold across his face, and something warm and unguarded settles in her chest that she’s been very carefully not examining for about a week now.
“You’ve gotten better at all this, you know.
The manual labor.
The not panicking when things go wrong.”
“I’ve had good teachers,” he says, echoing Mei without seeming to notice, and the look he gives Wren when he says it isn’t quite about fences or gardens at all, and for a second neither of them says anything, the air between them gone quiet and charged in a way that feels like it’s about to tip into something neither one’s quite ready to name out loud.
“So,” Wren starts, “about—”
“There’s a spider on your shoulder,” Mei announces, entirely unhelpfully, and the moment shatters instantly as Wren shrieks and swats at absolutely nothing while Casimir, betrayer, does not hide his laughter fast enough.
“There was no spider,” Wren accuses, once she’s confirmed this with a thorough, undignified self pat-down.
“There might have been,” Mei says, entirely too pleased with herself, and Duchess lets out a loud, judgmental squawk that Wren chooses to interpret as agreement, and whatever almost happened dissolves into laughter instead, warm and easy under a sky just now starting to fill with stars.
Later, maybe, Wren thinks, watching Casimir climb back over the new fence out of stubborn habit despite the perfectly good gate three feet away.
For tonight, this is enough.