The Ace of Spring: Are there distinct family units in the community? If so,
what family structures are common?
~~~
The mortals of Mainspring, barely fifty in number, had a very strange experience simultaneously: They did not exist one moment, and now, they do. The dwarf Quartz knows that Nickel is his wife and Marble is their son, and the carven all know that they do not bind together in that way, but none of them know where the knowledge came from. Over the course of their first few days the community discovers things about each other, like the differences between the plants that the dwarves hungered for versus the ones the elves preferred, or that the dryads are all one grove who are expecting another sapling soon.
It's clear to the community that their priority should be to get solid roofs over their heads, but the lack of lumber and tools make building their own seem practically impossible. In search of an alternative solution, a few dwarves head into the western cave to investigate whether it's suitable for a less temporary shelter, while the others huddle under young trees at night to keep dry.
~~~
The 9 of Spring: A charismatic young girl convinces many to help her
with an elaborate scheme. What is it? Who joins her
endeavors? Start a project to reflect.
~~~
A young elven woman is fascinated with the carven and with trying to communicate with them. (She is young by elven standards, as she is only 75 years old, and also young by literal standards as she winked into existence a week and a half ago.) She is distressed that an entire quarter of their small community has been unable to communicate with the rest via anything but charades for an entire week, and she rallies some of the dryads to work with her on understanding the hand symbols they use to communicate amongst themselves.
A few others among the elves, and one carven with lichen growing on its shoulders, get the idea to trap some seafood using nets below the high tide line. Given the scarcity of fish in the area there is no guarantee they'll be too productive, but they know the nets will be useful eventually one way or another so they start drying and weaving together some tall grasses.
~~~
The 10 of Spring: What belief or practice helps to unify your community?
~~~
Each evening, as the sun begins to set and the night chill blows in, the members of the community group together for warmth and protection. What started as several small groups each under their own ramshackle lean-to grew into a couple large groups, and has finally led to everyone all together huddling for warmth. They still don't have any type of structure that would do anything against a heavy rain or strong wind, but piling side by side keeps the warmth in their bones from seeping out. It's during one of these twilight times that a cheer is heard from the cave to the west, and sleeping is put on hold to welcome the returned explorers.
The explorers are clearly glad to be above ground, and the leader of the expedition explains: "When we entered the cave, we shortly found a smooth dead end, but when we tried to return, out way out had been sealed off as if it was never there. For days we looked for an exit, the walls changing and the corridors twisting in knots each time we turned. We've determined that, though the walls of the cave seem to be made of hard stone, they are actually made of trickery, moving and reforming whenever they aren't being watched. Despite the deceitful nature of the cave, we believe we could still use it as shelter from the elements as long as we sleep in shifts so watchmen can keep their eyes on the walls." The dwarves are quite happy to sleep with stone over their head, but many of the others are uneasy from the threat of the cave swallowing them.
Of the four species, the dryads are the most uneasy about the sleeping-cave, including four who outright refuse to sleep in it. This saddens the others of the dryad family, and when the sun comes up half the dryads set out north towards a young forest, hoping to commune with it and learn a way to coax trees into growing faster to be used for lumber for houses above the ground.
~~~
The King of Spring: A young boy starts digging in the ground,
and discovers something unexpected. What is it?
~~~
When the sun is rising and the dew is cool on the grass, the community wakes up and forages. Later in the day, once they've eaten enough to feel satisfied, many of the community members move on to various projects to pass the time, but many others continue looking. "The ground gives us so much food", they often think, "it likely has more it wants to offer us." The most thorough forager of them all is a dwarf named Copper, so young his bright-orange beard doesn't cover the filters on his neck when he braids it. Copper likes to dig in the dirt and see what worms and bugs and roots are hiding just below the grass, but today he feels something different, a tingling at the back of his neck telling him that he'll find something important just a little deeper than the roots dare to dig. He goes out a little farther from the cave than usual and finds a wide area where the grass is a little yellower than the rest, more sickly-looking, and starts to dig with his hands.
The sun is hanging low in the sky and Copper has hollowed out a hole deeper than he is tall when he finds what the tingle in his neck prophesied: A pebble half the size of his fist that catches the sunlight with a sparkle in some places, and with greenish and reddish tinges in others. As soon as he holds it to the light, Copper knows that it is his, that he was named after the rock or that the rock was named after him, and he sets his mind to excavating more of it. He tells his mother about his discovery and she feels the same deep instinct, so true it could be her own memory, of extracting the stones and crushing them to powder to separate the dull from the sparkling, of burning the sparkling part so incredibly hot that it runs like water into any shape she asks. She instructs her son to keep looking for more of the stones in the same place while she works on making some crude tools from wood to help dig it out more efficiently.
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