*****
"You're choosing the long patience."
"I'm choosing not to make our first outside trouble a legend before we have a full roof." I tipped my head toward the north path. "Bjorn's waiting. We bring beams down today or the hole keeps owning the hall."
She went for the sled straps without another word.
---
The north pines did not care about our patience.
Bjorn had the saws ready and Alfred already sweating at a trunk they had notched at dawn. Liam and two of the older boys held wedges. Tiril, who had stayed without being asked to leave, took a place on the drag line as if she had always known how to put her weight into wet rope.
The ewes were penned. The strip held a thin green blush where the earliest seed had decided the rain was not an insult.
