The first order of business as the Mayor of the new village was to decide what we needed to prioritize. Shelter, food and water were the major concerns. We could survive in the woods with the carts for a long time – but it wouldn’t be comfortable. People wanted something permanent. To make that happen we needed building supplies. The principle of which was wooden planks. We already had a contingent of expert wood cutters and carpenters on hand to make it happen.

Following a brief back and forth between the woodsmen and the hunters of the group, I made the first executive decision and designated our current location as the future hunting grounds. My godly eye told me that this was a perfect place for the wildlife to proliferate. For the woodsmen it wasn’t so convenient to traverse the needed distance to find wood that they could cut down and use, but they admitted that going without meat would upset them greatly, so they agreed to my plan in the end.

As for where those houses would go. I had no idea. The best idea I had was to place them in locations where there were no natural resources that we needed. The waterfront would need to be kept clear of residential buildings. If the port and town ever got too large, it would become impractical, uncomfortable and noisy to live there, and I didn’t want to leave it to the magical hand of the free market to fix when I could make sure it never became a problem.

While the rest of us haggled and debated over where the centre of the town would be, the farmers and the builders set about the task of constructing the farmhouses which would eventually feed us. They needed places to live and room to store their produce and animals. I made sure that it was a priority that we got started on those things right away. Though it did elicit some credulous reactions when I announced it, since they’d supported me in the election.

An unexpected issue soon arose. Jerimiah approached me as I was trying to organize my thoughts, “Hey. What are we going to call this place anyway?” That struck me as a rather important question! I’d taken to calling it ‘the town’ in my head, but that wasn’t a very elegant solution. It needed a name.

“I never thought about it until now,” I sighed, “This is going to cause a lot of arguments again.”

“Some of the settlers have already started calling it Celeste’s Landing.”

“Why’s that?”

He shrugged, “The Laddites think Celeste touched this place and gifted us it’s bounty. I’m not one for that kind of tale. We came here because of the Kingdom…”

I unfolded a roll of parchment I borrowed from one of the settlers. I needed to take down some notes about my plans. “If that’s what they’re calling it though, I don’t see much of a reason to turn them down,” as if to confirm it, I scribbled the name down at the top of the page.

Jerimiah stared at my writing for a moment, but didn’t comment. “I guess you’re right – most of the folks here are very religious. Been talking about picking a good spot for a chapel already.”

“A chapel huh? I better take that into consideration when I’m picking out plots for houses.”

“That eye of yours is mighty handy,” Jerimiah nodded, “Can it do anything else?”

“To be honest, this is all new to me too. I’m sure there’ll be other powers hidden in this thing.”

“Makes me wonder what happened to your old eye.”

“You’re not the only one,” I muttered. Maybe Celeste threw it in the divine trash or something. I flipped up the leather patch that covered it and stared at my newly entitled document. The moment I did so, the title lit up in a golden glow. The eye was having some type of effect on it. Under the heading I scribbled down a sub-title, ‘population,’ I wanted to put together a breakdown of all the people in the caravan, employed or otherwise.

It turned out that the eye could do that for me. No sooner than the quill left the page did a long list of statistics emerge from nothing. It was exactly what I wanted.

Celeste's Landing

Unincorporated Territory

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