Silas thornbush's Arc

Chapter 14 of 14

Silas worked the first two weeks at the market, then loaded his wagon and left for his settlement route. He returned fourteen days later to find the vendors had reorganized three stalls and resolved two supply disputes on their own. Lovelock handed him a single page of notes instead of a crisis. Silas spent the morning walking the market rows, checking what had changed. The pottery seller had moved to a better corner spot. Two rose vendors had worked out a shared water schedule. Near the entrance, someone had carved a wooden schedule board listing vendor days and market hours, decorated with painted sunflowers around the edges. He stopped to read it. The board showed which vendors would be present each week of the month, including the two weeks when he'd be gone. The system didn't need him watching it every day. It needed him to set it up right, then trust it to run. He opened his ledger and wrote the date at the top of a new page, then added a single line: "Two-week rotation holds. Vendors manage independently." He closed the book and walked back to the storage shed, where Lovelock was waiting with next month's vendor applications. The route and the market could both work, because he'd finally built something that didn't require him to choose. His wife had always said the garden would grow without her hands in the soil every day, and she'd been right. The vendors proved it. The settlements proved it. Everything he'd planted had learned to bloom on its own. He signed off on the applications and marked the calendar hanging inside the shed, circling the tenth of next month when he'd return again. The flower trade connected the towns now, not just him.