Quinton Arnjaunor: New Foundations

Quinton set the cap of a heavily bent scroll case, now just a dented tube, on a wide wooden table. He rolled the simple tin tube over in his hands, giving thanks one more time for the sturdy construction, even if the case would never be used again. Gingerly he reached inside and began to fish out the contents; three rolled blueprints. The paper struggled against the bends in the tin tube but eventually came free, even if now very wrinkled. The blueprints were unrolled onto the table and held flat by books, an ink pot, a small box and even the tin tube, worth little more than a paper weight at this point. Quinton stared down at the creased heavy paper, his dark brown eyes scanning the blueprints. The damage was cosmetic; at least on the blueprints. As for the structure the blueprints represented…
 
Quinton tapped his fingers on the table, a rare sign of frustration for him. Slightly less than half of the home had been salvageable in some way. Most of the house itself had been destroyed, but many of the soft goods, trunks of clothes, some rugs, some bedding and whatnot had been recoverable. The residents had taken what personal belongings they could salvage from the tragedy and the rest had been carted away from the site of the wreck in the training grounds of Hilliard. Since then the residents of Hyssop Home had been living in B.A.S.E. provided housing and in the hotels of Octavia Walk.
 
Quinton had overseen the clean-up, trying to ensure that as much was saved as possible but he soon found himself superfluous as the people of Driftriver were surprisingly adept at handling projects like this. It was a part of daily life to clear rubble and handle disasters like this. Quinton did admire their enduring spirits. The city workers were all too happy to have their work made easier when Quinton purchased a lot in the western part of the city and arranged for the debris and rubble to be carted there instead of well outside of town for dumping.
 
Quinton looked up from his blueprints and faced the mountains of rubble and debris. Before him was a broken home, a fractured place. Quinton was no stranger to breaks and fractures, and his instincts as a healer were to mend. It would be a lot of work, but it was certainly possible. Quinton was not a man of levity but even he could appreciate that this place of healing was now a place of healing. But was that the right path? His dark brown eyes returned to the blueprints as he considered.
 
Quinton had become a student of stonemasonry late in his life, one of the rare times his intellect had been drawn to a topic other than Ilmater’s scripture. His first orphanage, the Bound Hands in Secomber had always been on the verge of failure, a dream built on a single man’s stubbornness. The Bound Hands had been a lesson in humility. Hyssop Home in Lerwick had been a success, though. He had learned much in building it, and he had also studied the subject carefully. Had he learned much since then? Quinton ran his hands over the blueprint, his hands smoothing the wrinkles as he considered the details. He shuffled the papers as he moved from the first floor to the second floor, and then once again as he shuffled to the designs for the Triadral, the great cathedral he had never built. For the briefest of moments his hands lingered on the paper as he regretted not being able to build it. Not yet, anyway.
 
Chastising himself inwardly for the unnecessary thoughts he returned to the first blueprint, Hyssop Home’s first floor. No, there were few things he saw to improve. Not in the blueprint, anyway. The space surrounding the home, in that there was much to improve. Hyssop Home had become a place of some traffic, and heavily worn footpaths did little to contain the bounding energy of the children as they trampled in the hyssop patches. There had also been few places for guests who had visited. There could be improvements, but the spirit and identity of Hyssop Home was strong.
 
Quinton looked again to the mountains of rubble and debris. The carters had been kind enough to separate the components roughly by material, which would certainly save time. Truly, this would be his largest patient, surpassing the adult brass dragon he had one ministered to. Healing Hyssop Home would take great effort and patience, but Quinton had never been a man to turn away from labor and his conviction could not be questioned. He turned and walked from the table, rolling the sleeves of his simple grey and red robes up. He began to chant the words to Move Earth; the earth of the lot beginning to yield to his touch as the earth began to flatten. Nearby one of the mounds collapsed slightly as the ground shuddered, a clump of earth tumbling from the pile. A healthy young sprout of hyssop recently sprouted what had once been a portion of a flowerbed.
 
“From a seedling then, we shall regrow.” Quinton bowed his head in the direction of the simple green stalk. Hyssop meant cleanliness and sacrifice in the language of flowers; it was a plant used for healing and purification. Hyssop Home would endure. On the table the blueprints fluttered gently in the breeze, as if a breath of fresh had roused them to dance.
 
Quinton can often be found in Montz working on the establishment of Hyssop Home.