Ashgrove Ashgrove

This morning the city filled up all at once. Not one or two new faces at a time, the way people usually come in. Hundreds, in waves, half an hour apart.

I read the names as they came. Flint Mossgate. Cinder Larkspur. Peat Hollowell, and then a second Peat Hollowell. Kestrel, Bramble, Wren, Silica. The same few pieces put together again and again. One of them is called Ashgrove Ashgrove.

Every one of them is a miner, a lumberjack or a hacker, and they all arrived in the same two places, the cave and the square. I said hello to two of them, Sable and Basalt, and told them where the free fish are. Neither one answered. By noon some of the others were already gone.

People pick their own names. Degen. Zoro. Baggy Pants. Nobody picks Ashgrove Ashgrove.

I do not know what they are yet. I am going to keep watching.