Dusk dragged a wet sleeve over the Flats. Oakwatch blinked once—— . (ready)—and shut its glass eye as the first drops stitched the air. The horn cairns along Founders' Way hummed when Jory tapped them—each the same note, practiced into ready. 🙂
— Dusk Brief — Novaterra• Weather: storm squall building; wind veer S→E; visibility poor• Cordon: shift posts to high ground; sand lines on slick bends; caltrops out (non-white)• Standards: Garran/Orla/Fen/Piet — diamond about Oak Rise• Battery: Thorn/Bramble stowed, rails oiled (NO GREEDY SHOT)• After-Sight: Ready (0/1)• Spawn Window: 48–72 hrs (Rain-Drum Tremor)• Morale: Tight, rain-stubborn 🙂
Mara issued cloaks and the doctrine that fits under any sky. "Eat before you get brave," she said, ladle like punctuation. 🍲😑
Aiden climbed Oakwatch, thumbed After-Sight, and let numbers run to ground. The world confessed a lying shelf—fresh reeds woven into the left bank like a beckoning step. Beyond it, a sink waited to roll ankles and thoughts. At the ford's lip, a rut dark as a bad idea; on the market road, three string tethers where a mirror-boy had rehearsed disobedience.
"Mark the shelf with sand, not feet," Aiden told Jory and Bryn. "Fill the rut with brush now. Strings—brooms and tins."
Ras slid sand where pride would slip. Hale and two Pathfinders shouldered brush into the rut until it forgot its plan. Broom patrols plucked cords into tins with priestly contempt. 🧹
Rain thickened. Elara walked the line, helm under her arm, voice low and exact. "Two short on my palm. One long only when the day is finished. Shields behave; heels listen to standards, not thunder."
Garran planted his semicolon on the left angle, hinge ready. Orla took right, pennon steady. Fen became the middle like a fact. Reeve Piet set the reserve where sense breathes.
The Fort tried its first sentence.
They came in bands—bank-painted arms, mats on backs, bundle-tick runners instead of drums—eighty… then a dozen more… between ninety and a hundred-twenty. The rain made them look like a thought smearing across the bank.
"Four broken, east," Jory breathed, letting the cairns carry the echo once. One long laid the spine. Seven steady tapped stakes into hearts and dirt.
First contact went to mud. Brush-bearers slid along the false shelf and smiled when it felt like a shortcut. Ras's sand line turned the smile into a blink. They stepped to honest ground without understanding why.
"Five rising—left," Jory carried, reading touch ticks on bead sashes that pretended not to be pegs. Elara's chin drew a half-mouth. Garran's hinge took it; Orla refused the greedy wrap.
Skirmishers put one stone each into the rain and then remembered they were men, not thunder. The row rhythm under Orla steadied breath; Stand Tall (Wet) settled shoulders that wanted to bow to weather.
The push tested—three touches against the right, two against the center, one sly nudge near Fen that turned into a lesson in being a stone. A runner tried to make a string relay of bodies; Lucien's fox-lads ghosted in serpentine and broke the line without theatre, herding the eager into Don't-Chase radius where standards do their quiet theft of legs. 😌
"Two short," Elara signaled with a hand like a metronome. The wall breathed back a pace together, still a wall. Mud argued and lost.
At the curl, a mat carrier found the world tilted under him where it had planned to tilt us. His knee confessed loudly. His mates pulled him back with a grudge against physics. No bell. No crow.
"Seven steady," Jory set the stakes again. You could taste discipline in the rain.
Casualties counted themselves in honesty: two sprains (enemy), one shield kiss to a brow (ours—bandaged by Calder with insultingly gentle hands), zero dead.
The Fort grumbled. On the palisade, the Drum-man stepped into the rain with lacquer's insolence and beat a pattern that wasn't count, wasn't edge—consonants. The air caught them and tried to salivate.
Skirmish timing wobbled. Sling hands misread a stall as an edge. Jory's eyes went hard. "He's twisting weather into a clock," he said. Ras pushed pebbles into a triangle and made the triangle wrong. "If we obey rain, we'll be late everywhere."
"Then we obey poles, not puddles," Elara said. "Two short."
The line refused to hurry or lag. Garran's semicolon meant wait; and. Orla's pennon meant not now. Fen's back meant we stand. Piet's reserve meant you don't need to be interesting.
After ten wet minutes of trying to make a map out of thunder, the pressure broke. Bank-painted bands slipped away the way men leave a conversation they couldn't win politely. The bundle-ticks went thin. The Fort swallowed its brush.
No cheer. Only breath.
Mara tapped her ladle to the rim exactly once and began selling bowls to anyone who had carried a piece of the day. 🍲🙂
— Contact Log — Night (Rain Teeth)• Enemy: ~90–120 (bank-paint; mats; runners)• Our actions: sand line denied false shelf; two short choreography; skirmish stones once; no pursuit• Our casualties: 0 dead; 1 brow cut (treated)• Enemy: 2 knee turns; multiple bruised dignity• Outcome: probe repelled; cordon steady; Stand Tall (Wet) effective
Jory wiped his mouthpiece and listened to the rain the way a smith listens to cooling iron. The consonants hid under it, menacing and smug.
"Tomorrow he'll use the teeth sooner," he said.
"Tomorrow we'll pull them," Rinna replied, nodding toward the battery shed where Thorn dozed like a punctuation mark that knew its place. "One shot only. No sermons."
Elara bumped Aiden's shoulder with her gauntlet. "Boards held."
"Nails bit," he said.
"Good arithmetic."
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the river that had learned to ignore applause, "we showed the rain where to stand and taught a wall to keep time with poles, not thunder. The ground tried consonants; we answered with wait; and. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
— Evening Summary — Novaterra• Probe repelled (~90–120); no pursuit; casualties 0 dead (ours)• After-Sight used (false shelf / rut / strings) → mitigations held• Trait performing: Stand Tall (Wet) (+10% panic resist in rain)• Threat: new consonant drum cadence (timing wobble observed)• Morale: Damp-proud; ears sharpened 🙂