Rain fell through the night and spilled over the courtyard gutter before dawn.
Water ran from the roof edge into the lane. One neighbor had set a basket beneath the drip at her door; another stood by the shared well and watched muddy runoff crawl toward its stones. Deme arrived with two apprentices, carrying a ladder and a coil of rope.
Ning asked the households nearest the lane to move their firewood. “Put it against the stone wall, not under the eaves. The water is coming through there.”
Yan reached for the wet beam where it met the roof. Deme stopped him. “Pass the tools. The apprentices are setting braces first.”
“The beam’s shifting.”
“I see it. We’ll take the weight off it before we move anything.” Deme directed one apprentice to brace the wall while the other anchored the ladder on dry stone. He asked Yan to hold the ladder base, not the beam.
The neighbor with the basket wanted to move it closer to her door. The other household objected that the basket blocked the runoff channel. They argued over where to put their firewood as well: the stone wall belonged to one family, but the dry patch beside it was used by both. Ning asked them to mark the shared strip on the lane map. They chose to move the wood to the higher path and set the basket against the neighbor’s own step. The water still ran toward the well until the gutter was cleared, but…
