I didn't plan to build it.

The fortress was burnt down more times than I can count. Things were smuggled in: horses, gifts, the kind you thank someone for at the gate and find out about at night. After enough of that, you start building without deciding to.

This year I noticed I could see the raids coming. Call it a third eye. Not before every one, but before enough of them.

The walls are thirty feet thick now. They're slippery. Nothing gets a grip. Whatever gets thrown at them, a spear, a rock, a word, doesn't stick and doesn't fall. It goes straight back to where it came from.

And there is the moat. It is infinitely deep. There are crocodiles in it, and other things I don't look at too closely. I didn't stock it. It filled itself.

I want to be honest about it, because a fortress is easy to describe as a triumph and I don't feel triumphant. I don't always sit with it easily. Sometimes someone is drowning in the moat, and from the wall it looks cruel, and maybe it is. I didn't dig it to drown anyone. I dug it because the alternative was being burned out again.

It was necessary. It has been the only way I've kept going this year. One of the ways.

There is still a drawbridge. It still comes down. It just doesn't come down for a horse anymore.