The wind was coming in from the east, pushing my hair behind me. The day was warm, the sun high in the sky. The spring days were welcomed after facing a particularly grueling last winter, one that lasted longer than I’d hoped it would. Winter was a drag before the flares, but now it was a test of survival. The sunny days of spring were a respite from the harshness of the colder months, one that was becoming harder and harder to take for granted.


    The rungs of the rusty ladder off to my right rang as two bodies climbed to the top of it. I kept my eyes forward, looking down behind The Castle into the field, past our massive storehouse.


    Two pairs of footsteps moved to join me, the pair in the lead more tentative than those trailing behind. I turned  to greet the two joining me up here.


    Rhea eyed me wearily as I took in her new look. She looked much better than she did when we first took her in. Five days after her adoption into The Sanctum, she looked almost healthy. New clothes, color in her face, and just enough weight returning to soften her frame. She was beginning to fill in, just barely, but she actually looked healthy. A stark contrast to the state she came to us in.


    Her hair was clean, free of the debris and dirt that filled it before, and it had been trimmed down, falling to the base of her neck. I hadn’t noticed it before because of the debris, but her hair was a really pale blonde that was comparable to sunlight catching through a waterfall.


    The cuts that once covered her arms had begun to fade, and she seemed a lot more comfortable here now, despite her wariness. I could see it in her posture.


    She was on increased rations to fight the starvation, and had been checked over by one of the nurses from the Medicus team. By some miracle she was free of any real infection, I silently thanked whoever was up there. We didn’t have much to spare in the case of antibiotics, even our topical ones were running low. The majority of what we did have was past expiration, but functioned enough to provide some benefit.


    “M’lord,” Kai said, bowing as she stopped some feet away.


    I caught a twinge of what might have been disgust on Rhea’s face. I winced at the reaction, just barely.


    That was not the sort of impression I wanted to give Rhea, considering I was trying to curry favor with the new arrival. Especially considering the fact that I was trying to get her to open up to me.


    I brushed off her reaction, pretending not to notice.


    “Kai, thank you. You are dismissed,” I said kindly.


    She nodded in response, turning to disappear down the ladder. I had no doubt she would be waiting for us at the bottom, not that it was necessary but she had insisted when we were orchestrating this meeting.


    “Rhea,” I said, calculating the best greeting in my head, a quick moment as I watched her face, seeing her reaction I took a gamble extending my hand, “I am Lord Sol, or rather just Sol, and I am the one behind our efforts here at Sol Sanctum.”


    She took my hand, cautiously, “Rhea.”


    A simple reply, but one that I accepted graciously.


    I could see her eyeing the fields below us, the expanding agricultural area that sprawled further and further back, towards an abandoned development of duplexes at the far ends of the field. They were on the schedule for examination and were being readied for people to start moving into them.


    I looked out into the field, making her feel comfortable doing the same, her body turning as she stood next to me. Workers toiled down below, weeding between the varying crops that were springing up.


    Cucumbers that grew at surprising speeds, watermelons that were a particular favorite in The Sanctum, rows of corn that were rising higher by the day, carrots that were becoming larger and larger with each generation, rows of green beans being my personal favorite. There were others, smaller patches of colored peppers, hot peppers, heads of lettuce and cauliflower, cantaloupes, and berry bushes.


    She cast her eyes out over the workers. Off to the side stood the massive storehouse, previously the warehouse for the store that we now inhabited, which was where we stored the majority of our excess foodstuffs. Cans and boxes of pre-flare foods, bottles and jars of longer lasting foods like jellies and jams. It was slowly being filled by our newly produced food, jerkies and jarred vegetables mostly.


    The whole of the storehouse was managed by Maeve, our hoardwright. Everything in that place was dated, datechecked, accounted for, and organized to her insanely anal standards. Maeve had a severe case of OCD, which made finding people to work under her sort of difficult but not impossible.


    Ivan was actually in control of the storehouse at the very beginning of The Castle’s establishment, but Maeve was  a much better fit for the job.She was particular, but mostly fair. The oddest part about her was her faded-purple dyed hair. She was one of the few who insisted on dyed hair during an apocalypse.


    At first she was hoarding boxed hair dye but the stores eventually ran out. In a stroke of genius I harvested some wild pokeweed, a toxic plant that possessed toxic berries, but were safe enough to dye cloth and apparently bleached hair. She had a small container of bleach that she reused and now had a stash of pokeweed juice that she replenished during the summer. The dye didn’t last longer than a few months before it started to fade, but it was something she insisted on. I made the accommodations, sending special scout teams to gather them for her, as well as forage for other wild growths.


    A new foray that was becoming more and more necessary. The town''s supplies were beginning to run dry, and we needed to start adapting on that front. Scout teams were turning into foraging parties, and the scavenger teams would soon follow if we kept looting at the same rate.


    Rhea glanced at the building, two Enforcers stood at the main entrance, a wide open bay door. She paused for a moment. Then her eyes followed some of the field workers, watching them with interest. She was taking in the whole operation, or at least the part of it that was being revealed. I wanted to show her some of what went on around here, offering explanations when applicable.


    Though I didn’t particularly trust her with everything. There were some things that I knew I was going to withhold, like our water purification system, or our medical stash.


    I wanted to let her see what we were — what we weren''t. I’m not entirely sure how they operate up north, but the things I’ve heard haven’t been great.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    I wondered what she thought of the children working in the fields, none of them were forced of course. Some worked alongside their parents, others just wanted to help out. Those reasons were why there were so few.


    I watched her out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge a reaction. But it was difficult. Supposedly she was a very empathetic person, from what I’d been told. It was a little immoral, But I had one of Kai’s informants help her along, or perhaps apprentice is a better term.


    Mei, a young Chinese girl that Kai had been taking under her wing in secret. She had hidden it from me for some while, but I’d found out nonetheless when I saw them conversing in secret one day and asked Kai about it.


    She came clean immediately, why she hid it I was still unsure. Mei was a mostly quiet girl, but she was kind, and seemed to take to Kai pretty well. She had been showing Rhea around, telling her about the people here and everyone’s roles. Rhea seemed to take a liking to her too, slowly opening up around her. Which was how I got the bit about her being empathetic, some conversation on morals or something from one of her nights here.


    Ideally I’d like more information to go off of, but there was the initial issue of our time constraint of not knowing Wally’s next move, but there was also the fact that I didn’t like to social engineer too much.


    I could see the words at the tip of her tongue, her curiosity piqued. But it was important that I let her speak first. I was getting better at dealing with people — not managing them, not maneuvering around them — just being with them. Manipulating words and telling people what they needed to hear was one thing, but understanding humans; their nature, emotions, feelings, what made them real.


    That part was tricky, especially for someone as introverted as myself. It was difficult to navigate those kinds of things, I could understand emotions, what caused them, why they happened. I wasn’t that socially dull. But navigating around them, handling people who felt extremes, was hard. For instance, if someone were crying that was always a hard one for me, comforting them.


    But I was getting better, I had to. Just as we all had to adapt to this new world, I had to adapt to this role. Slot myself into this position to be better accepted as a leader. That was also something I hoped to prove today, that I was a good leader, or at least one that tried to be good.


    “Why did you bring me here?” she asked, finally speaking.


    One of the questions I had prepared for thankfully, I was much better when I was prepared than when I was put on the spot.


    “I wanted to show you what we’re doing here at Sol Sanctum, show you around and answer any questions you might have. If you’re going to be staying here for the foreseeable future, it’d be good to know your way around the place.”


    She pondered that answer, I felt the next question coming, “But why you?”


    Her question was charged, skepticism and distrust. She was asking why she was getting a sort of special treatment, and her suspicions were correct, if she were someone else I wouldn’t be showing her around the Sanctum. More than likely it would be Kai, or one of the scouts. But I couldn’t tell her that, I needed her to trust me, I had to prove that she could trust me. But I had a line around her question, one that I’d prepped a few hours earlier.


    “Do you remember when you were first coming into town here?”


    She turned to face me now, “I do, yes.”


    “Are you aware that I was there when you were taken in?”


    She was silent for a moment, looking at me more deeply. I felt my chest slowly tighten, really getting a good look at her now. There was something about her, the way her eyes glowed and the way she traced the outline of my face with her emerald-hued eyes.


    She was a very attractive woman, her features were sharp, but she also seemed so soft, her paleish skin that seemed so inviting. My earlier observations were further confirmed, she was indeed more fuller now.  My heart rate picked up, the longer she stared the more tense I became. There was a tension in the air, but it seemed only I was under its effect.


    I kept my breath controlled, but my body was screaming at me. What was wrong with me?


    Finally she broke the silence, easing me out of the pressure.


    “It was you then,” she said, as if confirming a suspicion, ”I thought you looked familiar, but I was kind of out of it at the time.”


    “That did seem to be the case, yes.”


    Her eyes narrowed, and her weight shifted just slightly away from me..


    “You… confuse me,” she said simply, very blunt.


    I shifted my feet, put off by how upfront she was.


    “I do seem to get that a lot, yes. Perks of being an introvert in a leading role I suppose.”


    I revealed this detail about myself tactfully, to make her think I was being more open that I was letting on.


    “What, is it because you feel bad for me? Or you think you shouldn’t have killed those guys? What is it?”


    I noted the ‘those guys’ line, so there wasn’t any real attachment, good to remember. But this was not a question I was hoping to tackle, she really had me off my game here. If this were a conversation in logic I would have no issue, but her forward nature sort of startled me. It didn’t help that I was prepared to talk to someone that apparently was rather quiet and reserved, maybe I got to her just as she was settling in around here, giving her more confidence than she previously had.


    “It is true that I felt bad for you, yes. Though I do not regret giving the order to kill those men, anyone else in our command would have made the same call as I. I’m not quite sure why to be honest, you intrigue me, you and your story. And I felt it was my duty to take you on this tour, being the one in command when our party brought you in.”


    I held my breath, hoping that answer would suffice. The wind whistled in the silence as I awaited her answer. That skepticism was still there, but it seemed I’d maybe chipped the distrust, ever so slightly.


    This was a tricky game to play, even trickier when you didn’t know the other player. Usually I dealt with people I’d known for years, hell even months was usually enough time to figure people out, but she was something fresh.


    Her eyes dug daggers into me, but I held my ground. I didn’t like confrontation, but I could handle it well enough. Besides, I had to handle the likes of Freya and Abigail on the daily, this wasn’t too bad compared to their tempers.


    “So where do we start?”


    I let go of the breath discreetly, I silently rejoiced. I gestured out to the field, and she turned to look.


    “Well, for starters. From here, you can see the fields where we harvest new crops from spring until autumn. Then off to the right of that, is our storehouse, managed by a woman named Maeve, if you’ve heard of her yet. There’s not much to look at from up here, as the majority of the happenings are in buildings around  the area, but I like to come up here for some fresh air. It’s nice to get away sometimes.”


    Not that everyone could get up here, rooftop access was monitored around the clock, aided by the watchtowers that were on either end of the roof, and the padlock that caged in the bottom of the ladder.


    She turned back to me. Judging. Those viridian eyes never seemed to lose their edge. The tightness crept back in — slow and silent, like vines wrapping a tree that couldn’t move.


    “Alright then, where to next?”


    And here I thought I was ready for her.