Friends At The Table

In the early days of the New Archives, the philosopher and historian Krent Kava wrote that the first sign that Hieron was on its way to recovery was the return of roadways that connect coast to heartland, city center to distant university. "There," he wrote, "Is civilization back again, drawn together by the eternal will of survivors trying to connect, one to another." Some of the roads, he reminds us, were highways repaired from the days before, and others were wholly new--as our times require paths that the past did not. It is noble thought, of course. But we know now that by the time Scholar Kava wrote those words, Hieron's road system had been rebuilt and destroyed dozens of times by fledgling--and eventually, failed--settlements. The truth, friend, is that our roads neither reflect nor protect any civility we've found. They are merely our footprints turned to stone and gravel, waiting to be covered and lost by the coming snow. This week on Winter in Hieron: An Arrow Let Loose Perhaps, Arrell, perhaps. B