Waking the Fields

The rooftop gardens on Hearthstead’s western row had been stripped to a pattern of desperation. Frayed tarps, half-rotted planters lashed to warped pallets, and the last rows of lettuce that survived the heatwaves leaned like tired hands over cracked soil. People gathered in measured lines beneath the shade of rusted solar chimneys, waiting for ration slips while the wind carried the dry, mineral scent of fields gone bare. Kira moved through the crowd with the easy gait of someone who had once coaxed water through plastic channels and coaxed life from grey nutrient baths. Her hands remembered a rhythm her heart tried to forget.

A child reached up and offered Kira a limp leaf, eyes earnest enough to make her stomach clench. Juno hovered beside her, small and fierce, the way young apprentices always were: too full of hope to be patient with rules. Around them, the council men argued in low tones, but their words seemed to ricochet off the sky and fall back like stones. Soren Halv stood by the raised platform, his sleeves rolled, his profile drawn in lines of worry; he had the habit of making speeches that sounded like choices and choices that felt like ultimatums.

"We expected a lean spring," Soren said later, when they led Kira up to the platform, "but this is collapse. Our cisterns feed the rooters, and we have two weeks of seed ration left. If the terraces fail, we lose the winter store. We cannot rely on salvage runs forever. We need a source—the Vault at Seedhold holds heritage stock. If we cannot reach them, we will starve."

There were murmurs—fear muttered as if it could be smoothed. Kira watched faces, counting resolve and dread like a mechanic might count fault lines in a hull. The Vault had the shape of legend: a name adults mentioned when they wanted to stop children from touching things gone fragile. The Vault also represented rules, stewardship, guardians. It was not a place for quick solutions. Yet quick solutions were all Hearthstead had left.

Soren looked at Kira as if measuring a last bridge. "You were a hydroponic tech. You know water sequencing and grafting protocols. We need a team to go east and request access. If they refuse, bring any salvage you can. You will have Juno and two others. You will not take the town without permission. Do you accept?"

Kira felt the room breathe toward her. In her chest was the steady ache of a debt she had not paid. Years earlier, her hands had moved in a panic during a crop failure—an improvisation that had promised more yield but had collapsed an edge of the old biomes. People had died then; the memory sat in the hollow of her ribs. She knew the cost of shortcuts.

Still, hunger made moral geometry complicated. Hunger thinned the luxury of hesitation. Juno’s face was a bright defiance at her side. Kira saw Soren’s jaw tighten; she knew that when he named a mission he was offering a scapegoat and a hope. She thought of the child with the limp leaf and pushed down the old guilt to answer.

"I will go," she said.