“So, what now?”
“What do you mean by that?”
Rethais had been on guard for hours now, standing at the newly erected guard tower at the town gate since it had finished being built that very morning. He had given out his orders for the day, handing out tasks for every able-bodied Rethan around, before claiming that he needed to be left alone for a few hours. He had initially stated that he needed to “plan for the future”, but in all honesty, he just wanted to be on his own, with his thoughts.
Night had fallen a while ago, but the high winds meant the sky was pretty clear, and the stars were bright enough to walk with only a small torch. Portalia had no moon though, so, in Rethais’s eyes, the sky always seemed rather empty. The sudden voice, cutting through the cold wind, was a sudden yet somewhat pleasant distraction.
Elkay had brought up two steaming mugs of… something. From the smell of them, it was some kind of meaty soup. Probably leftovers from the boxes of rations that had been used for dinner that night. Rethais suddenly remembered he had not eaten anything all day.
“Are you going to take the mug or are you going to stare at it until it goes cold?” Elkay asked, pushing the mug into Rethais. Rethais finally accepted the mug, then awkwardly drank some of it.
“Thank you, Elkay. I thought you were returning to Palaestra today?”
“I did. I came back with supplies. Like you asked. Enough toilet paper to last a month. Hopefully.”
Rethais closed his eyes, sighing. “We cannot last on this charity forever though. It is bothering me greatly, especially since we cannot do much here in Hertany, aside from grow rice. We will have to import a huge amount of items in the coming months, up until we can stabilize a bit… We are…” Rethais sighed again, this time looking off into the distance. “I doubt we will last long.”
Elkay though seemed less… worried. “I think we will be fine.”
“You do?”
“We have a lot of existing infrastructure. We have power. We have water. We have a whole city, designed for 10,000 inhabitants, and we are only using… what, a tenth of it?”
“It is not sustainable.”
“How do you know?” Elkay grunted. “Have you done the calculations? Have you accounted for what we can bring in and what we can export? Once we have the basics covered, we can begin to find products we can export. Sure, we are a very, very small group, but most of Hertany is rather untouched, due to Thre-Hertany only being a military base designed to protect the region, rather than use it.”
“I admire your optimism but…”
“But what?”
Rethais shrugged. “I do not know. I feel like… like this is an obvious trap. Kenon left us here to obviously fail, so he can prove that his society is better. I have already heard mutterings of how the past was better.”
“That is to be expected after all that has happened!” Elkay snapped. “But do not fret. We will prove him wrong.”
“You think?”
“I do think!” Elkay smiled, sipping his own drink. “We have to be optimistic. Yes, we lost Retvik, and I am very upset about that, but… I think we will survive. We have to survive, to make his sacrifice worth it.”
“You are right…” Rethais sighed, putting his arm around Elkay. “Thank you for being right…”
Elkay though smiled again. “You know I am always right. Speaking of which, when can I be the leader again, considering I am not dead and all that…”
Rethais paused, thinking for a moment, then shook his head. “Once we are settled down, we will have ourselves some democratic elections. Fair?”
“Fair.”