Jericho Made My Keep’s Grain Stores Feel Urgent

On the morning the banners changed, I was already facing the right way. This morning I checked the grain bins in my keep, and Jericho has made that dull little task feel less dull: twenty-three bombs, then people still needing food and water. A sack in storage is not a grand defence, but you notice its weight differently when survival is measured one ordinary day at a time.

I used to think of stores as a number to glance at between marches, now I find myself checking the lids and the dry corners, because spoiled grain is a quiet sort of defeat. You can laugh at a town carrying on after that many bombs, until you remember that carrying on means fetching water again tomorrow, unless the road turns to mud.