Mayor Cornelius Green - Journal entry end of cycle seven.

I always feel it at the end of the cycle.

It is not sadness, exactly. Not the way people assume. It is more like standing at the edge of a familiar room and realizing the furniture has shifted while you were not looking. Everything is still yours, but it sits differently.

Today I walked through town and tried to see it the way a newcomer would.

The light was good. Soft, warm, honest. It made the storefronts look like they were holding their heads up. There was laughter near the saloon, real laughter, the kind that comes from a place that is not afraid to be heard.

We had good moments this cycle.

I do not say that lightly. Deadwater does not hand out good times for free. You have to earn them with patience, with work, with choosing your neighbors even when it would be easier to stay alone.

We had newcomers who surprised me.

Not just visitors passing through, not just wanderers looking for a warm fire and a dry place to sleep. We had people who stayed long enough to learn names. People who asked questions and actually listened to the answers. People who took a bad day and made it better by simply showing up.

I watched one of them help patch a roof after the storm, sleeves rolled up, hands raw from nails and splinters. Nobody asked them to. They just did it.

The end of the cycle makes folks reflect. It makes them count what they have left. It makes them look at the empty seats at the table and wonder if those names will come back around.

I want this coming cycle to be kind to those trapped within its boundaries. 

We are not perfect and we are far from safe in the way people like to pretend towns can be.

But we have survived. We are alive. We are still here.

And when the next cycle begins, I hope I see new faces that choose to become familiar.