The scent of lanolin, thick and surprisingly sweet, clung to Brisca’s tunic. Her hands, usually adept with a stylus or a blueprint, fumbled with the shearing shears. The first sheep, a fluffy, placid ewe with eyes like polished river stones, stared at her with an unnerving calm. Brisca offered it a wide, toothy grin. “Alright, my woolly friend! Just a little haircut, won’t hurt a bit!” Pello, perched on an overturned feed bucket a safe distance away, clapped his hands. “You can do it, Brisca! Just like in the video with the funny farmer!” Brisca blew a raspberry at him, her movements exaggerated and goofy as she tried to coax the ewe into position. She tipped the shears, making a theatrical ‘snip’ sound that produced no actual cut. The ewe shifted, clearly unimpressed. Brisca stumbled, catching herself with a clumsy grace that seemed entirely accidental. Odis, leaning against a weathered timber post at the edge of the pen, raised his vintage camera and snapped a shot, the quiet click barely audible over the bleating. He hadn’t said much since Ms. Gable’s departure, his gaze a steady, unreadable weight. “Woah there, partner!” Brisca exclaimed, overbalancing again and nearly tumbling into a pile of fresh hay. Pello giggled, delighted. This was the persona Brisca had perfected over the last two days – the utterly charming, slightly incompetent, infinitely cheerful older sister. It was exhausting, a constant performance, but Pello’s laughter was her reward. Behind the wide eyes and easy smiles, her mind raced, calculating angles, force, the sheep’s center of gravity. Her architect’s brain, dormant for too long under layers of stress, was reawakening, even if she had to disguise its function as slapstick. She managed a few uneven snips of wool, leaving the ewe appearing as though it had lost a fight with a lawnmower. “Almost there!” she chirped, wiping a smudge of lanolin from her cheek. She glanced at Odis. He was still watching, but now his camera was lowered, a faint, almost imperceptible line etched between his brows. He didn’t seem amused. He seemed… analytical. Pello, meanwhile, had grown restless. He’d wandered from his perch, drawn by the bolder, larger sheep in an adjacent enclosure. Brisca’s heart gave a tiny lurch of warning. “Pello, honey, stay close! Those big ones can be a bit… grumpy.” But Pello was already fascinated by a massive ram with spiral horns, its fleece thick and matted. He giggled, reaching a small hand through the fence slats, trying to pet its nose. The ram, previously placidly chewing, lifted its head. Its eyes, small and dark, fixed on the boy. A low, guttural rumble emanated from its chest. “Pello, no!” Brisca’s voice was sharp, utterly devoid of its usual bubbly affectation. It was a command, not a plea. The ram lowered its head. Its front hooves pawed the dirt. It took a single, powerful step backward, bracing itself. Brisca moved. Not a stumble, not a comedic lurch. It was a blur of controlled motion. Her body, trained by years of navigating crowded construction sites and dodging loose masonry, reacted with an instinctual, precise efficiency. She vaulted the low fence of her own pen, covering the distance to Pello in two impossibly long strides. Just as the ram charged, a solid, woolly battering ram, Brisca’s hand clamped around Pello’s arm. She didn’t pull him; she *scooped* him. Her body pivoted, shielding him, her momentum carrying them both in a tight arc away from the charging beast. The ram’s horns scraped the air where Pello’s head had been a split second before, impacting the fence with a splintering crack. Pello whimpered, clutching her shirt. Brisca held him tight, her breathing shallow, but her face, when she pulled back, was already reforming into its familiar, sunny mask. “Woah! That fella just wanted to play tag, huh? Bit rough for a game, though!” She ruffled his hair, her smile stretching wide, though a tiny tremor ran through her hand as she set him down. “Let’s stick to the gentle ones, okay, sprout? They’re better at cuddles.” Odis was no longer leaning against the post. He stood rigidly, his camera dangling from his hand, his eyes fixed on Brisca. For a fleeting moment, she thought she saw genuine surprise, a flicker of something raw in his usually composed expression. But then it was gone, replaced by his customary thoughtful gaze. He just nodded slowly, as if confirming a hypothesis, and turned to inspect the damaged fence. By sunset, Brisca had somehow, miraculously, sheared a sheep – albeit a patchy, oddly striped one. Ms. Gable, watching from a distance, merely grunted and stalked away. Pello, exhausted from a day of barn exploration, was fast asleep in their small cottage, dreaming of friendly sheep and daring escapes. Brisca sat on the porch swing, the river breeze cool against her face, the faint scent of wet earth and distant cooking fires in the air. Odis appeared from the path, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He sat on the railing, not too close, but close enough that his presence was a warm anchor in the deepening twilight. “You handled that ram pretty well,” he said, his voice quiet, devoid of accusation or praise, just observation. “Fast reflexes.” Brisca shrugged, forcing a nonchalant laugh. “Oh, you know, just a lucky guess! All that jumping around in architecture school, trying to avoid… dropped drafting boards. Keeps you spry!” Odis’s lips quirked. “Dropped drafting boards, right.” He paused, then his tone shifted, becoming more serious. “Look, Brisca, there’s something you need to understand about the Brambleseed. It’s not just a floating farm stay. It’s an Agri-Barge. And Agri-Barges follow very specific routes.” Brisca frowned, a genuine furrow in her brow that slipped past her facade. “Routes? Like, a schedule?” “More than that,” Odis said, his gaze sweeping over the dark, rolling hills of the barge. “This particular route ends at the Solstice Delta. In exactly fourteen days, it crosses into international waters.” He paused, letting the words hang in the air. “Anyone on board without valid passports or proper documentation when that happens… they’re detained. Permanently, sometimes. It’s an ironclad rule.” The air grew colder. A sharp chill ran across Brisca's collarbones, piercing through the exhaustion. Fourteen days. *International waters.* Her carefully constructed summer idyll, her quiet retreat, suddenly had an immovable deadline attached to it. Her throat tightened. She had to get Pello off this barge. She had to figure out how to rebuild their lives before they were trapped. But she forced a bright smile, her voice light. “Oh! Well, that’s plenty of time, then! Good to know! We’ll just… enjoy the scenery until then, right?” Odis watched her, his expression unreadable. He just nodded slowly. “Right.” Later that night, long after Pello was deep in slumber, Brisca couldn’t sleep. The ram’s charge, Odis’s warning – they buzzed behind her closed eyelids. She needed a plan. She needed to *fix* something. Slipping out of the cottage, she found herself drawn to the damaged sheep pen. The ram had splintered a support beam, and the whole structure sagged precariously. It was a mess, but a fixable mess. She moved silently, gathering fallen branches and stray timbers. Her hands, calloused and strong, moved with a different kind of precision now. She wasn’t fumbling. She was assessing, measuring, visualizing. Her phone’s flashlight illuminated the broken beam. Her lips moved, murmuring calculations of stress points, load distribution, the geometry of the bracing. She sketched angles in the dirt with a stick, using the constellations as a rough grid. The structure began to take shape under her determined hands, a complex, elegant solution emerging from the chaos of splintered wood. “Working late, Brisca?” Odis’s voice was a low murmur from the darkness. He stood just outside the circle of her phone’s light, a silent specter. Brisca froze, her hand gripping a freshly cut brace. He wasn't inspecting her face. He studied the re-engineered sheep pen, tracing the intricate, sound joinery she had crafted, his gaze following the deliberate geometry of it all.

The Pasture Facade