For a while, Bellweather worked.
Not perfectly.
Not easily.
But enough.
The houses multiplied.
The roads became less like paths carved through wilderness and more like streets.
People began recognizing one another at the market, children started playing together, and the little community they had imagined from a distance slowly became something with its own heartbeat.
And somewhere in those first years, the eight of them stopped being eight people who had decided to build a town together.
They became a family.
Not the kind that shared blood.
The kind that knew which person would answer the phone at three in the morning.
The kind that could walk into one another's houses without knocking.
The kind that argued over nothing and forgave each other before the argument had even properly ended.
Harold and Ezra were inseparable.
