THAT NIGHT — KIERAN'S ROOM
The sketchbook was open between us.
Not on the house pages.
Those had been turned over.
Tonight we were drawing something uglier.
Systems.
Routes.
Nodes.
Crowd flows.
Civic halls.
Archives.
Seed stewards.
Ritual structures.
Emergency message chains.
School curricula.
Public grief spaces.
A blueprint.
Not for a building.
For a society that could survive being edited.
Sera sat cross-legged on the floor, my charcoal pencil tucked behind one ear, silver hair falling everywhere because she had the posture of someone either inventing the future or planning arson and I had long ago accepted those were visually identical.
Mira had dragged in three legal codices, one municipal atlas, and a stack of blank cards she kept sorting into categories with terrifying speed.
I was on my third cup of tea and second existential realization.
