By the following dawn, the grassy expanse of the lower valley had transformed into a marvel of orderly town logistics.
Under the sprawling canopy of the weeping willows, twelve office registration kiosks had been established. Each kiosk consisted of a broad cedar frame stand table shaded by woven reed awnings. It was flanked by banners depicting the green leaf-and-water droplet crest of the Myriad Spirit Commonwealth. Behind the tables sat teams of literate fox maidens and sharp-eyed wolf scribes, their inkstones ground smooth and their camel-hair brushes flying across scrolls of durable bark paper.
Every family that passed through the kiosks received a stamped wooden registration slip. The slip recorded their names, origin village, trade skills, and medical condition. Within twenty-four hours, all two hundred and fourteen thousand refugees had been cataloged, assigned to specific tent quadrants in Camp Hope, and provided with clean woven grass mats and clay pot drinking bowls.
Sanitation trenches had been dug along the lower limestone ridges, treated twice daily with wet lime plaster and cleansing pine resin by badger-kin work crews. Water chutes diverted from the Seven Cascades bubbled past each residential row, guarded by gentle otter guards who ensured that bathing and laundry occurred strictly downstream from the drinking basins.
