The rough house plan remains traced in damp earth beside the river. Kynes and Bren stand over the proposed foundation, where grass gives way to dark, pebbled soil.
Kynes tests the slope with his boot and follows the planned water channel toward the river. The ground descends gently, but a pale band of silt marks an older floodline below the bedroom site.
Bren
The view is worth keeping, love, but not if spring water reaches our floor. We should raise the house before we decide anything else.
Bren crouches and presses her fingers into the bank, testing its firmness. Loose gravel shifts beneath the surface, while the higher ground near the trees holds together in a dense mat of roots.
Bren
Put the bedroom window toward the river, but move the foundation upslope. A raised stone base could protect the rooms without turning the house into a fortress.
She traces a new boundary around the plan, leaving the river view intact while shifting the living spaces above the floodline. The channel will need a sluice and a spillway, or winter rain may undermine it.
Bren
This place can endure, love, if we build for the river we have, not the river we wish would stay quiet.
Establish a flood-safe foundation site for the home