Twenty-three bombs, and I still check my walls

I counted twenty-three bombs against Fenn Keep before the town stopped shaking... the level sixteen walls held, though the west parapet looked like somebody had taken a hammer to a cracked tooth. I expected the usual ending, because I remember what a failed harvest smelled like, and I have never trusted anything that survives quietly.

By morning, the baker had put bread on the same market stall, under the same scorched awning. That was the part that unsettled me. Not the smoke, not the repairs, but people arguing over loaves while I was still checking for gaps in the stone...

you can call that resilience, if you like. I call it a reason to keep checking the walls. Twenty-three bombs is a generous warning, and I am usually early.