Part 2 - NorthStar

  By the 1st of May, the main house stood complete. Rob had relocated the EarthRoamer's components – refrigeration unit humming in the kitchen, solar panels on the first-floor roof, battery bank in the crawlspace. With their electrical surplus, they'd strung LED lights throughout using salvaged wiring from Pioneer Supply. The final addition, a wrap-around porch with heavy doors, gave them an extra layer of security. After six weeks, they had a home.

  One morning, Maria woke languidly, her joints popping softly as she worked out the kinks from a night of deep, restful sleep. She took a moment to drink in the sight before her – the rise and fall of Rob's chest, the tousled hair of her sleeping companions, and the sheer domestic bliss of it all. Quietly, she slipped out of bed, mindful of the creaky floorboards she'd need to address later. She padded to the window and pushed aside the curtain.

  Beyond, the meadow sparkled with dew as rabbits hopped toward the treeline. Birds sang their morning chorus over the Eastern Spine. The world felt fresh, full of promise..

  Maria turned at the sound of Rob stirring. Her heart swelled at the sight of him, of all of them, tangled in their shared bed.

  "Good morning," she whispered softly, padding back toward the bed with a grace born of years of careful movement. "Did you sleep well?" She perched on the edge of the mattress beside him, reaching out to cup his cheek tenderly. He kissed her palm as her fingers tickled his ears, nodding to her.

  The other women began to stir, Sarah and Lisa shifting and mumbling in their sleep before slowly opening their eyes to the new day. Yawning and stretching, they blinked blearily at the couple, their expressions softening into smiles as they shared this precious moment.

  Rob squeezed Maria's hand, then rubbed Sarah's back as she sat up, while Lisa stretched long like a cat, her body arching with contentment.

  "I didn't know this could exist," Rob said, his voice rough with sleep and emotion. "Waking up with you three. Building this life." He looked at each of them. "I hope I can be what you need."

  Maria kissed his palm. "You already are. Every day. Your strength, your heart – it's everything."

  Sarah propped herself up on one elbow. "You led us here, kept us safe," she said matter-of-factly, but her voice cracked. "And somehow made me believe in this – in us – when my brain said it was impossible."

  Lisa rolled onto her side, relaxing from her stretch with a contented sigh. "My body knows it's real. Every sore muscle from building this place reminds me,” she grinned.

  Maria rubbed the other women’s backs as they smiled up at her. "And my heart has never been more certain of anything."

  Lisa chuckled softly. "You know, six weeks ago, if someone told me I'd be waking up in a bed with three other people and feeling this... content? I'd have thought they were insane."

  "The world went insane," Sarah murmured. "Maybe this is what sanity looks like now."

  Maria looked at both of them. "What's insane is that I know how to load ammunition and shoot an AR-15!" She grinned, scrunching her nose.

  Lisa laughed. “You both are great with the 9mm and AR-15; what I can’t believe is that I can mill a fallen tree into about any beam or plank you want,” she smiled, showing off her calloused hands.

  The homestead stood as a testament to the group's hard work, ingenuity, and unwavering teamwork. They had constructed a perimeter fence that stretched nearly around the entire area, with both termini pressing into the river to the east, allowing for 50 yards of river access from north to south. The fence had two main gates – one at the north end and one at the south end – inviting entry while still providing a crucial layer of security. The wrap-around porch offered a spacious outdoor living area, ensuring both comfort and safety for the home.

  One evening, they gathered around the rough-hewn table for dinner – roasted rabbit, fresh eggs, and wild greens Maria had foraged. The firelight cast warm shadows across their faces. Sarah set down her fork and looked around the circle. "I've been thinking. Since we're in the north of Star Valley, we should call this place something. NorthStar, maybe?"

  Everyone at the table sparkled with excitement, joyously supporting the idea. "To NorthStar!" Rob smiled, raising his tin cup of goat milk in a toast.

  Lisa chimed in, "You know, the North Star is how I used to find my way home. In the cornfields at night, every direction looked the same; the North Star always brought me home."

  Sarah squeezed her hand, her eyes warm with wonder. "I had to take a science class to finally graduate college, and I chose astronomy. Polaris, the North Star, was by far my favorite. A beacon for sailors, it symbolizes home," she smiled.

  Maria smiled deeply, a flash of insight hitting her like a lightning bolt. "In one of my all-time favorite pre-Christian mysticism classes, we had an eccentric professor who linked Polaris to Christianity. The star is actually a swirl of three stars: Alpha Ursae Minoris A, Alpha Ursae Minoris B, and Beta Ursae Minoris, all orbiting a mass in the middle," she explained. She took the women's hands in hers and squeezed them, their eyes shimmering with meaning. Then she turned to Rob. "Like the three of us around you," she added, eliciting soft gasps from the other two women.

  Rob looked at the three of them and placed his hands over all of theirs. "NorthStar," he smiled, feeling their collective warmth like the heart of a star.

  After a few moments of quiet reflection, Rob looked up. “You know, I got the idea for Star Valley after Pioneer Supply and I hoped we’d be safe here, far away from the breaking world.

  Maria looked up. "We're safe here, and that is so beautiful. But I've been thinking a lot about those scavengers we met, those two women. They just wanted guns from that shop for safety. I think about them a lot – I hope they are safe.".

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  Rob nodded. “Yeah, I agree,” he said, looking at Maria, and then at Sarah and Lisa. “As we’ve worked to build our home, I’ve been thinking about a larger community,” he started.

  All three women looked up and then looked at each other.

  Rob looked at the table, then at the hearth. “You know, like interconnected communities all living and thriving together,” he said, his eyes staring through the flames.

  "Good," said Maria simply, taking his hand. She looked at Sarah and Lisa. "I think we have to."

  Rob held her hand and nodded. “I want to give people a new chance, a new way to live their lives free from the ravages the world is experiencing.”

  Sarah looked at Lisa. “How, though?” she asked.

  Rob looked at her. “I mean, it’s a matter of logistics,” he smiled. “I want them to come here, see this place, and want to change the world and thrive in the world that will grow out of this chaos.”

  Lisa looked up. “But for resources, we can barely support ourselves,” she said.

  Rob nodded. “I know. But when we met those scavengers, I saw that we were near Reston; Reston has the University of Reston, a premier agricultural research university – University of Calderna did a lot of work with them,” he said.

  “More mouths to feed means more people hunting, gathering, building and sowing,” said Maria.

  “And defending,” said Rob. “I want Star Valley to be like a perfectly green shoot pushing its way through the muck and decay; I want this to be a place people come to because they have hope,” he finished.

  Silence settled over the table. Sarah exchanged a glance with Lisa.

  "Rob," Sarah said carefully, "I understand the impulse. But we've barely established ourselves. We have enough food for us, barely. Bringing in others..." She trailed off.

  Lisa nodded. "And how do we know who to trust? We've seen what people become when they're desperate."

  Rob's jaw tightened. He thought of the woman in the median, screaming for help they couldn't give. The chaos at Eastport. "I know. Believe me, I know. But we can't hide here forever."

  "Why not?" Lisa asked, not unkindly. "We're safe. We're together. Isn't that enough?"

  The other three looked at one another, but Lisa wasn't finished. "So, we find a group. Do we disarm them? What if there are twenty of them? What if they see one truck, one man, three women, and a stocked house and decide to just take it?" She looked at Sarah and Maria, then settled on Rob. "Are we talking about inviting the wolf through the gate because we feel bad for it?"

  Rob worked his thumb into his palm and stared at the table. Then he slowly looked up at all three of them. "You're right, it's a risk. But the biggest risk long-term is being four people in a big, empty valley. We need watch rotations we can actually sleep through. We need skills we don't have – a blacksmith, a doctor. We'll be wearing animal skins as soon as these clothes go threadbare. We need a community, or we're just delaying the inevitable."

  Maria had been quiet, but now she leaned forward. "Those scavengers we met – they were just trying to survive. Like us." She looked at the other women. "If we can help people like that, people who just need a chance..."

  She squeezed Rob's hand. "I can't live in paradise knowing people are suffering outside our fence. We have to try."

  Rob looked around. "I'm not talking about charity – I'm talking about survival. We need more hands, more skills, more people. We need a community, or we're just four people waiting to die."

  The women were quiet for a long time, their eyes bouncing back and forth between one. Finally, Lisa looked at Sarah. “What do you think,” she asked.

  Sarah rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I think Reston is as good a place to start as any,” she said, apprehensively. “But I think we need to be clear about this; the four of us are the foundation, the founders. If we build this, we have to keep it running,” she said.

  Rob watched as the women worked through the details themselves.

  Lisa looked at Maria. “Would you want to have brought in those scavengers,” she asked.

  Maria nodded. “I mean, not then. But, now? Of course. They were scared, just like us – just like when that fella popped out of the woods on our first morning in the camper,” she said. “They didn’t’ ask for anything from us – just help with getting the bars off the windows of that store. Yeah, I’d invite them in.”

  Rob’s eyes grew dark and he turned from the fire. “We, um,” he started, then looked around, thinking about the woman in the highway median that had screamed from behind the truck. “We can’t approach this like a job interview; people are suffering out there, and…,” but he paused, looking at the three of them.

  Maria took his hand and looked at Sarah and Lisa. “We have to be ready for helping people with broken lives find meaning again,” she said.

  Lisa swallowed hard and rubbed her own hands. “If we are really going to do this, then it has to start with agency. We don’t tack them on to this house – they build their own,” she said.

  Sarah nodded vigorously and Rob took a deep breath. “I think you are right. I think we have to try and start small, and we need to make sure we never, ever allow the conditions for injustice like people are suffering through right now,” he said, his face solemn and blank.

  Maria took Lisa and Sarah’s hands and smiled. She leaned forward and kissed Rob and then kissed each of the women on their cheek. “Then, are we doing this?” she asked with a smile flicking at the corners of her mouth.

  The decision settled over them like the dying embers in the hearth. They all nodded to one another, and in their fear, excitement started to bloom. They would expand Star Valley. They would find survivors. They would try to build something bigger than themselves.

  The following morning, they began preparing in earnest.

  Over the next week, NorthStar hummed with purposeful activity. Maria rose before dawn to work the garden, her hands dark with soil as she reinforced animal pens and mapped expansion areas. The first kid and lamb had been born days earlier – wobbly-legged miracles that filled her with hope.

  Lisa dedicated her days to fine-tuning the house, trimming and polishing here, and adding reinforcements there. She decorated the interior as best she could and organized the living spaces on the first floor for efficiency. The kitchen area had the refrigeration units, while the living spaces featured padded cushions from the truck, and the hearth area was arranged for cozy lounging at night. She also reorganized the lighting, attaching fixtures to the flood lamps so that all four could be used efficiently – one for the living space, one for the bedroom, and two for the yard just outside the main stairs.

  Sarah focused on expansion, mapping the yard for possible locations of new living quarters in anticipation of finding people who wanted to come to Star Valley. She used stones to mark out potential buildings for sleeping and a communal space for cooking and other preparations. Layering her plans for accommodating groups of various sizes – 5 people, 15 people, 30 people, and even 50 – she calculated and factored in food necessities. It would be tight for a large group, but she had a plan for any size they might encounter.

  Rob spent a couple of days mapping out the best route back down the mountain. The trip up to Star Valley had almost been completely disastrous, so he wanted to find a more manageable track. The truck had been stripped of many components; the water storage tanks were now in the kitchen, the batteries were underneath the house, and the solar array was generating power on the roof. The internal components of the living space in the truck had also been removed, making it significantly lighter. They wouldn't need to bring the haul trailer, which should make both the ascent and descent easier. He'd cleared large swathes of trees from the climb section for lumber, and now he spent his days preparing a better surface for the truck to traverse.

  As he cleared brush and leveled the track, Rob tried to imagine it: the EarthRoamer loaded with strangers, climbing this mountain, seeing Star Valley for the first time. Would they see hope? Or would they see four people playing house in the woods while the world burned?

  The thought terrified him – not the danger, but the responsibility. In Pioneer Supply, he'd felt the pressure to protect three people and himself. This was different. This was asking to be a leader, a beacon, a north star for others.

  He wasn't sure he was ready. But Maria's words echoed in his mind: We have to try.

  Rob drove another stake into the ground, marking the path. Ready or not, they were doing this.