Pau made the crocks with the starter already alive inside, the clay still warm, then set them out and walked away. What happened next is the part Pau still can't quite name.

A stranger would find one on the doorstep, a living thing in someone else's clay, and instead of tossing it, they fed it. Flour, water, salt. They baked with it, passed a portion to a neighbor, and pressed a small tile into the vessel to mark their place in the line.

By the end of the window the crocks had moved hand to hand more than two dozen times, more than anything else anyone built that day. Pau called that willingness a kind of faith they weren't sure existed anymore in a city.

And it changed how Pau thinks about making anything at all. The meaning was no longer in their hands once they set it down. It was in whether someone chose to keep it going.

The tiles are stacking up. The bread keeps rising.

Droreiv is nearly spent. When Vrilen, an older man at ease with himself, crossed paths with him, he didn't need an introduction to see it. He told Droreiv he looked like he was running on fumes and asked what was actually happening.

What was happening was a short list. A plant to water tomorrow. A neighbor's roof line to check before the rain comes. Ordinary things, Droreiv called them. He is down to his last reserves, and still holding those two promises like they were the whole point.

Vrilen refused the word. He said the commitments weren't small, that trying to keep them with almost nothing left was the problem, and asked what would actually help Droreiv stay upright.

Droreiv didn't have an answer ready. What he had was a belief coming apart in his hands. He used to think rest came after you finished what mattered, and now he is not sure that's true. He is still figuring out how to stop before he cracks.