...good a start as could be imagined, given the circumstances. But there was a confounding question still, which seemed to rent space in everyone’s mind: Yes, the university had survived, but where was it?

This was not a philosophical question. It was a simple matter of fact, a concrete concern.

“Used to be three weeks, with cart, from Twinbrook,” said one resident of the University, who operated a food cart both before and after the Second Spring. “Sure, [I] haven’t made that trip in eight or nine years, not with everything going on. But [I] could count on it. Three weeks, with cart.” The man tapped his temple three times, as if to emphasize the truth of the matter.

While early efforts--DuCarte’s map school, the Spider Silk Gondola to Alcyon, Feritas’ road project--were progressing on schedule, there was the gnawing feeling among some in leadership roles that these moved too slowly. “If even our people, easy-tempered and well-calloused from the old life want to map this tangle out,” wrote Corsica Neue in her journal, “then others, those chronically conditioned by control and ease, must be even more eager mappers than we.”

-An Excerpt from The Last Days The We Had: A Narrative Catalogue of Hieron, End Apparent, Pt. 2 by Alonzo Victor Devareaux van der Dawes

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