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“Build wild bricks of unity. We need this site!” He was foaming at the mouth from screaming so much. There are two types of leaders, the “Follow me!” type and the “Go there!” type. Franz is very much the latter.

*Wild bricks of unity?* I think Franz has been out in the sun too long. The team is building a retaining wall to extend our terraced gardens within our hilly community. Not a brick in sight, we’re using stone. A lack of large rocks has never been a problem here. We used to plant our crops on the flatter land down near the river, but marauders put an end to that. The land there is just not defensible. Three years ago, marauders stole most of our crops on a full moon. Most of us barely survived the winter, six did not.

Katherine had the worst of it. Both of her daughters died that hard winter, her husband the next spring when, weakened by malnutrition, he fainted and hit his head on a boulder. But she had recognized one of the marauders as a resident of the village two days walking north of here. She traveled there and stabbed him dead at night when he walked out of his hut to relieve himself. There’s another thing, too. Just between us, it wouldn’t surprise me if she is going to get herself locked up. Turns out that the man she killed was the nephew of the regional governor. It’s been long enough since then that she’s *probably* in the clear. But if the governor ever puts two and two together, there’s no way we can protect her. She’s got a distinctive scar on her left arm from the broken tip of a knife that he used to try to defend himself. She was too fast and he was too drunk. But she didn’t think to dispose of the knife he’d wounded her with and just left it there beside his body. Katherine is the best healer we have and her loss would be a huge blow to the village, but even Franz wouldn’t be able to talk us out of trouble if the governor’s men ever show up.

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*Written in response to the #freewrite challenges that @mariannewest has been posting.*

This #freewrite was done as three 5-minute writing sessions, each of the three prompts (*”Build wild bricks of unity. We need this site!" He was foaming at the mouth from screaming so much.*, *There’s another thing, too. Just between us, it wouldn’t surprise me if she is going to get herself locked up.*, and *the broken tip of a knife*) being revealed before each of the three writing sessions:


*Pixabay photo*