Chapter 67: 67 - From the Hilltop Office

Callida sat poring over the maps, inventories, settlement reports, and various points of data she’d meticulously collected over the last… Primordials, have we really been here a whole year?! She checked the date — March 21st, 790 A.P. — and sat back in her chair. Almost a year. Give it three more weeks. Wow, really?!

But it made sense as she scanned the stacks of papers littering the desk of her recently constructed office… cabin… shed… thing. Rogue had gotten tired of her papers on the dining table, and the commanders had gotten tired of Rogue complaining about her papers on the dining table. This was the result: a tiny, office-like, single room structure with two open-air windows with locking shutters, a giant, sturdy desk taking up almost the entire room, a chair, a stack of shelves mounted to the wall above the desk, and a fireplace tucked in one corner. This was her sanctuary. Built atop a small but steep hill with unobstructed views from both windows of the mountains and valleys, Callida was already coming here almost daily to escape and think and work.

She’d come to the realization just the other day while talking with Rogue that having an office made their shared compulsory obligation of “colony leader” feel a lot more like a job than just some ambiguous role she was filling. Stopping to think about it, being a colony leader wasn’t all that different from being a general, at least in the capacities she’d taken responsibility for. Callida oversaw population deployments - erm, settlements - their resource needs and contributions, personnel, numbers, movements…. She spent an inordinate amount of time crunching numbers, pouring over maps, and identifying areas of land that might be worth developing for when the next batch of Primordialists inevitably arrived wanting to settle in the colony. And she administered orders through almost the exact same chain of command she’d used as an actual general.

There were now standard protocols in place for receiving new arrivals, identifying a settlement site, preparing settlement infrastructures for them, assigning resources for each settlement to develop…. That was a huge relief as she was no longer required to make up those orders on the fly, and her men now knew exactly what each order meant.

Somehow they’d survived the winter without anything exciting happening. No one had starved, (which had been Callida’s number one fear), though it had been an extremely lean winter. No new beasts had threatened the peoples’ safety, no settlements had been destroyed in a freak accident or at the whim of nature, and no one had frozen to death. Except for the regular, unexpected arrival of desperate people wishing to join the colony, it had been a very boring year in the best possible way.

And things were looking good for the coming year. That’s what today’s session had been about: taking stock of the big picture and planning the year’s resource and agricultural development. Their winter stores were quite dry, but in every settlement, fields were being tilled already, gardens were being planted with seeds that could withstand the fluctuating temperatures of early spring, and Callida had preemptively deployed men to build the next three settlements. The colony was in remarkably good shape.

Callida stretched and stood up to do a lap or two around the outside of her office while she internalized her findings. If the colony continued to swell at the current rate, food would forever be a struggle. Maybe she should order all the settlements to plant a certain percentage above their anticipated needs? What percent though? As it was, she’d already ordered recommended that the settlements overplant in the hopes that they’d build up a buffer within their individual stores. But this would look more like a tax to help the colony absorb more settlements worth of people gracefully without having to ration the entire colony through the winter again. Hm. Something to calculate tomorrow.

She locked up the office and set off down the hill for home, observing the areas still patchy with snow, the men laboring in the damp gardens, and the herds of animals grazing on the tender plants in their fenced off fields. And she sighed, finding a sort of peace in the simplicity of it all. After nearly a year, this was finally starting to feel like home. Maybe it had something to do with her new office. Callida snorted at that thought. Rogue would feel validated if she admitted that giving her a designated work space had made this valley a place she could call home. He’d been insisting for years that she was a workaholic.

A repurposed war horn sounded in the distance — a single blast alerting the main settlement of incoming people from the east. Well, those preemptive settlement builds were already proving wise. Accelerating from a casual stroll to a purposeful jog, Callida watched for the anticipated company of people to emerge from the treeline.

There weren’t very many of them. In fact, it looked like a single family’s worth of people, but they’d brought many, many carts with them. Carts and animals and… a trade caravan?! That would be a first — an exciting first! But a first. Callida’s jog became a full run, and she arrived at the rows of buildings several minutes later with an invigorated pulse and cold-chapped cheeks.

She spent a moment stabilizing her breath before rounding the corner of the last building, only to break into a run again the moment she saw what, or rather whom had rolled into town and were now chatting with the (former) lieutenant on watch duty. “Gravis! Spahen!” Both of them got hugged. “What are you doing here?!”

“Ahem….” She turned and made eye contact with Erkunden and then Ablenkung, and her jaw dropped to the ground. “Yeah. We’re here too,” Stag teased, arms open for his own hug. Callida obliged most willingly and then moved on to Shield.

“But, wait. Why are you here?”

“Ah! Straight to the point, like always,” Stag accused with a wink.

“Actually, we have several reasons for coming,” Professor explained vaguely, “though we might be better off taking this conversation somewhere more private.”

“Of course! The house is this way. It’s a bit overrun with children, but I don’t think they’ll be much of a security risk,” she teased. “And holy Primordials, I almost forgot! Gravis! Congrats on the new — relatively new? — wife!”

“Yeah, thanks,” Gravis blushed.

“How’s Belle?”

“Good.”

“While we’re congratulating people,” Shield chimed in, “Erkunden has some news.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Callida’s whole face lit up with a guess. “Is Delila pregnant?!”

“Was,” Stag said sheepishly.

“Was. Was?!” Callida balked and then smacked Stag’s arm excitedly while he laughed. “When?! Boy or girl? How’s Delila recovering?”

“Well, uh… Stetson was born a while ago. He’ll turn two this spring… in April.”

“So this is old news,” she realized with a snort. “We really suck at long distance communication…. That’s unreal though. I can’t believe you’re a father!”

“You can’t really talk though, can you? Miss Overachiever.”

“Fair point,” Callida grouched facetiously. “It’s not as though I planned for things to happen that way. I guess, do you boys want to meet the family?”

“That’s one of the many reasons we’re here,” Professor said with a grin.

The excited energy at seeing this group of friends so unexpectedly added little hops and skips to her step as she led them through the very uncomplicated “town square”, which, honestly, was still only a few neat rows of bunkers, storage rooms, the odd family home, and a few barns for the animals. These predominately log structures were arranged in an enormous L-shape around an open and undeveloped stretch of land currently sporting a fenced off duck pond and little else.

“Rogue, I’m home! And I brought some friends with me,” she called to the open window as they approached the little house at the very end of the row, and Rogue met her at the door to peck her forehead and then do a double take when he saw Gravis standing in the group behind her.

“Gravis?! Welcome back, man!” A giant bro-hug later, Rogue realized that the other three dudes seemed vaguely familiar too. “I’ve met you all before.”

“You have,” Professor confirmed with a shallow bow. “My name is Brennan Spahen, though most people just call me Spahen, and this is Stetig Erkunden, and Erzammer Ablenkung.”

“Erzammer?” Callida repeated, one eyebrow quirked. “Ablenkung, I don’t think I ever knew your first name before.”

“Yeah,” Shield shrugged. “Went by Zam growing up.”

“Cool,” she nodded and then turned to her husband. “They’re members of my old Bear Tribe squad, Rogue. Remember, you met them when they came to the Lion Tribe that one time? Right after Tatio was born?”

“Ohhhhh,” Rogue nodded as the memory finally resurfaced. “Right! Your Bear Tribe bonus brothers. Yeah, it’s coming back. They call you Beta. It’s a little on the nose now, don’t you think?” he teased, and then gestured back into the house. “Well, come in. Tell me what brings you here. Actually, Gravis, where’s your wife?”

“Leader’s Lodge,” Gravis muttered.

“She didn’t come with you?”

“Not that kind of trip.”

Callida frowned at that, not really sure what was meant by such a comment, but picking up a subtle, significant undercurrent in it. It would seem that this was a business trip rather than a family visit.

***

The guys had played happily with her boys while she and Rogue made dinner, and the meal had been spent in pleasant conversation, catching each other up on all the personal updates. Spahen was now very single again after both the girlfriend and her maid hadn’t worked out, Ablenkung’s contract with the Bear Tribe military had expired, and he was debating renewing that contract or starting some ambiguous, new adventure, and Erkunden was enjoying the family life, hunting, and “other things” which everyone in the former Squad 14 knew meant the occasional covert ops for the military.

“Parrot sends his regrets, by the way,” Stag mumbled to her privately over sudsy dishwater while Rogue got the boys to bed and Gravis helped Shield unload some things from the carts parked outside. “He wanted to come, but he promised Treu he wouldn’t travel during the last trimester of this pregnancy, and that’s coming up quick.”

“That’s more than understandable,” Callida pardoned their absent friend readily. “Is Ruhe excited to be a big sister?”

“I think she’s still too young to really understand what that means, but my understanding is she gets very excited about babies. We’ll see how she feels when a baby starts monopolizing her mom.”

“That is one thing I haven’t had to deal with with my boys, for better or worse.”

Stag chuckled and returned to scrubbing the cooking pot in front of him while Callida dried the plates she’d just finished rinsing of soap suds. “It would be fun to get our boys together someday… and Parrot’s kids too, but I was just thinking that Stetson fits right in between your two sets of boys age-wise.”

“Almost perfectly,” Callida nodded. “I still haven’t met Delila. I need to do that.”

“You know, I’m here in an official capacity which you definitely don’t know about–”

“Spying on the colony for Bear Tribe intelligence?”

“In so many words,” Stag snorted. “But I’m also here in an unofficial capacity.” Callida waited for him to continue while he organized his thoughts. Meanwhile, Stag finished washing the pot and moved it into the rinse basin, rinsing and drying his hands before turning to meet her eyes. “Beta, Delila is a Primordialist. But she’s far from a zealot. Actually, most bears have struck this peculiar balance when it comes to religious things. For the most part, we are content to wait and watch and work on our own spirituality and enlightenment until something significant happens. Delila is that kind of Primordialist. Actually, I am too to a lesser extent.”

“So what are you saying, Stag?”

“Delila’s been wondering if it would make sense for us to join the colony. I’m here to scout out that… potential. Though my own motives for making that move would be much less religious.”

“You…” Something fluttery and distracting blossomed in Callida’s stomach. “You’re considering moving here? Permanently?!”

“Possibly.” Callida was speechless and stood blinking at him dumbly with a dripping plate in her hand. “It might take a while, and I’d have to convince Delila, but she asked me to return with a report on the colony and whether I thought it would be a good move for our family.” He snorted at her continued muteness and jokingly bent down to scoop an imaginary something off the floor to offer to her. “Here’s your jaw.”

“B-but, when?!” Stag merely chuckled and nudged her shoulder. “No. I mean, how serious are you about this?”

“Beta, if it were just me and I didn’t have a family to consider in all of this, I’d have joined you last spring — that’s when I first mentioned the idea to Delila. A year later, she’s finally warming up to the idea. But you know I’m a hunter by trade — an outdoorsman. Exploring a new frontier is every outdoorsman’s dream! Add the fact that you’re the one leading this circus, and yeah. I was ready to sign up the moment Professor told me about it.”

“Well, in that case, what does Delila need to be convinced?!”

“We’ll talk later. Looks like Rogue got the boys down, and I know Professor has about a million things he needs to discuss with the two of you.”

Almost on cue, Spahen called to her (quietly so as not to disturb the children trying to sleep in the next room), “Hey, Beta, come join us.” Erkunden took the drip-drying plate and dish cloth from her with a nod of encouragement.

“Thanks, Stag.” Callida entered the tight circle of chairs Spahen had arranged while she was talking to Erkunden and took the seat between Spahen and her husband, leaving one half of the circle unoccupied for when the other three joined them. Rogue snagged her hand as soon as she’d settled. “Alright, Spahen, what brings you here?”