Every answer took something.
Time.
Attention.
Energy that could not be spent elsewhere.
The city was learning this not as theory, but as fatigue.
Rhen felt it in the slowed pace of conversations, in the way people paused longer before volunteering to speak. Answering back—to contradiction, to need, to consequence—required presence. Presence, unlike authority, could not be delegated indefinitely.
"They're tired," he said one evening, watching lanterns flicker along the lower walkways.
Nymera nodded. "So are we."
"And yet they keep responding."
"Yes," she said softly. "That's the cost."
The strain surfaced first among the listeners.
Facilitators burned out quietly. Translators missed nuance. Those who lived at the edges of disagreement found themselves holding tensions others could step away from.
A steward stood during an assembly and said plainly, "We're running out of people willing to stay in the middle."
The room stilled.
No one disagreed.
The old instinct returned—for structure, for rotation, for something that would solve the burden of care.
Nymera felt it tug at her. "We could formalize response teams," she said, almost to herself.
Rhen looked at her carefully. "And make answering someone's job."
She sighed. "Yes."
He shook his head gently. "Then we lose what we gained."
She closed her eyes, acknowledging the truth of it.
The city chose a harder path.
They made rest part of response.
Not scheduled breaks.
Not mandated rotations.
But explicit permission to step away without guilt.
Assemblies paused mid-discussion when listeners flagged overload. Decisions were deferred—not avoided—when attention thinned. Silence was logged as data, not failure.
Nymera watched the first paused assembly with apprehension.
It resumed two days later—with clearer voices.
The deep observed, its tone cautious.
You allow non-response, it conveyed. This creates gaps.
"Yes," Nymera replied. "So people can return."
Gaps risk drift.
Rhen nodded. "So does exhaustion."
A pause.
We register reduced throughput.
Nymera smiled faintly. "And increased survival."
A test came quickly.
Two crises overlapped—minor alone, heavy together. The city slowed deliberately, refusing to fully engage both at once.
Criticism followed. "You're choosing," someone accused.
"Yes," Nymera said calmly. "We are."
Rhen added, "Answering everything is how we fail quietly."
The city held—one response at a time.
No collapse followed.
That night, Nymera stood at the unbuilt space, watching fog roll in from the fjord. Rhen joined her, their silence companionable.
"Do you think this will last?" he asked.
She considered. "Not like this."
He smiled. "Then what lasts?"
She gestured to the city—uneven lights, scattered voices, pauses where no one rushed to fill the air.
"The willingness to pay the cost honestly," she said. "And to stop when we can't."
He nodded. "That's a hard answer."
"Yes," she replied. "Which is why it matters."
The city learned to count costs without turning them into debts.
Some answers waited.
Some were never given.
Some were revised when energy returned.
Responsiveness became humane—not constant, not heroic.
Sustainable.
In the ledger, a new line appeared—simple, unadorned:
CARE HAS LIMITS.
LIMITS PROTECT CARE.
Nymera read it once and closed the book.
What answers cost was no longer hidden.
The city paid it together—
in pauses,
in honesty,
in the courage to say not yet
without meaning never.
And in that balance—fragile, lived, renewed—the city remained answerable
without being consumed by the act of answering.