By summer the settlements hummed differently. Workshops clustered like small beehives, supply caravans carried knowledge as readily as cargo, and children learned the names of allies as easily as they learned the names of their grandparents. Old grudges softened because they no longer mattered to survival; new debts became threads of mutual obligation. Allies taught each other to read the sky and to mend a plow blade at midnight; they taught each other how to ask for help.