He was at the memorial field when she found him.
Early morning. The settlement not yet fully awake, the construction crews not yet at their positions, the kitchen smoke just beginning. The particular hour when the settlement was present but quiet, functioning but not yet loud about it.
Satou stood at the field's edge and looked at the five hundred fifty-nine markers.
He'd been standing there for twenty minutes. Not mourning — or not primarily. Something quieter than mourning. The specific activity of a person returning to a place that held something important after a long absence and checking that the important thing was still there.
It was.
All five hundred fifty-nine names. All the candles, low now and needing replacement, but present. The field exactly as he'd left it, maintained in his absence by people who understood without being told that maintaining it mattered.
'The settlement held itself together,' he thought.
