Location:Ashford Crossing — Construction Site, Community Center, Main Gate, Bess's Home
Date/Time:TC1855.05.26
Bess Cade woke at four-thirty because her body had forgotten how to sleep past it.
She lay still for a moment in the narrow cot at the back of the construction crew's rest station, listening to the sounds of Ashford Crossing before dawn. The settlement had its own rhythm — quieter than Seven Peaks proper, less structured than the modular housing districts, built in the space between a river bend and a forested hillside that Silas's formation network had reached three months ago. A hundred and forty families lived here now. A year ago, it had been a waystation with a bridge and a general store.
