The Empty Bridge Vigil

During a flood, three shelters depended on divine grants to keep rain and runoff out of their roof seams, smoke vents, and thresholds. The grants supplied neither food nor fuel. They kept the shelters’ ordinary stores, bedding, and fires usable as the water rose.

The high bridge also needed protection. Watchers had reported damage to its approaches, a household in the low settlement had begun evacuating, and a Prophet warned that people would die if the deck failed while they crossed. The available reserve could maintain the three shelter workings or reinforce the bridge through the night.

A divine intermediary transferred the shelters’ grants to the bridge. The shelter flames went out one by one. The bridge deck held.

Water from the mill

Upstream, a Channeler felt that a debris dam was turning the current toward the mill settlement’s homes and burial terrace. No warning from the cult or its Prophet had reached the mill.

The Channeler cut a spill to divert the water, sending the first surge through an older channel. That channel crossed the bridge approach.

Along the ridge

The evacuees turned toward the shelters, which now depended on ordinary work to keep the water out. At two shelters, workers dug trenches at the thresholds, covered roof seams, moved bedding, and bailed water until the stores and fires could be used.

The third shelter had sent workers to the bridge. Its fuel was wet, supplies stored on the floor had to be moved, and it could not take everyone in.

Households from the low settlement along the evacuation route still keep departure times, lists of missing people, and claims on behalf of those who carried the injured along the ridge. Their records and the cult’s copies disagree about how many died.

After the water

When bridge keepers inspected the crossing, they found scour marks and works that would not have survived the night without aid. The mill settlement’s homes and burial terrace had survived too.

The low settlement took its lists of missing people and its shelter claims to three different jurisdictions.

Return to Gods and the Dead or Kalsa.