Treegiraffe2's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

The next morning Treegiraffe2 stood in the middle of the town square. Bare dirt stretched from cottage to cottage. Her three players crossed it fast, heads down, going from bed to farm and back. Nobody stopped. Nobody talked. She scuffed the ground with her platform boot. A town needed a heart, and this was just a shortcut between doors. Shroom came up beside her, his red mushroom cap tilted. He was the redstone engineer who had stayed to build her farm machines. He looked at the empty dirt the way he looked at a broken circuit. "You keep staring at nothing," he said. "What's supposed to go here?" "A reason to stop walking," Treegiraffe2 said. "Somewhere people want to sit." Rarity arrived carrying a stack of stone. He was the builder who had taught her to make the cottages solid and safe. His green helmet hid his face, but she heard him sigh. "You can't build a crowd," he said. "You build the place. Then you wait." He dropped the stone. "So build the place. Start with the ground." They worked all day. Rarity showed her how to lay flat stones in a rough square, edges uneven, fitted by hand. The three players stopped their chores to help. The flannel boy hauled dirt. The red-haired girl planted flowers along the seams. Shroom set a wooden bench at the edge, then framed it with roses and tulips so it looked like it grew there. By dusk the square had a floor and a seat. But it still felt flat. Treegiraffe2 turned in a slow circle. "It needs one more thing. Something you can see from far off." Rarity handed her a pile of flowers and a glowing block. "Then make them see it," he said. She stacked the block at the center. She ringed it with roses, lilac, and sunflowers. When she placed the last one, a pink beam shot straight up into the darkening sky. It cut through the clouds. It lit the whole square soft and warm. The three players stopped and stared. The red-haired girl sat on the bench and grinned. The flannel boy lay back on the stone to watch the beam. For the first time, nobody hurried off. They stayed. They talked. "That," Shroom said, "is a reason to stop walking." Treegiraffe2 laughed. Her town finally had a heart. But she looked up at the pink beam climbing high above the trees. Anyone could see that light for miles. Players would come. So would things that hunted in the dark. She had built a signal, and a signal called to everyone.