Quote + A basic outline of the episode, to have the episode posted so the post has a music embed ready, a pre-release date and a hyperlink to the pre-loaded Quote Post.
Description of quote + hyperlink to Quote Post 4.
EPISODE FOUR: SIGNS IN THE SKY
The light changes first.
Lina is the first to notice. She always is.
She sits on the rocky outcrop that overlooks the sea, her notebook resting against her knees. She has been here for an hour, maybe more, tracking the movement of the birds. The patterns are wrong today. They are flying inland, away from the water, their dark shapes cutting across the pale sky in rapid, hurried flight.
She presses her pencil harder against the paper.
The air feels thick, heavier than usual. The ocean is calm, too calm, the waves rolling in without their usual force.
She tilts her head, watching the sky, watching the slow, deliberate drift of the clouds.
Then she sees it.
A shape. Far, far above, barely more than a flicker against the vastness of the sky. It is there, then gone.
A trick of the light? A bird too high to make out?
No.
Lina knows what a ship looks like.
She snaps her notebook shut and slides down from the rocks, her bare feet kicking up dust as she lands. She moves quickly, her heart pounding in that strange, excited way that comes when she has noticed something no one else has.
She does not know what she has seen, but she knows what it means.
Something is coming.
The village does not notice.
Morning turns to midday, and life continues as it always has.
Sarah and Susan gut fish in the shade of the smokehouse, their hands moving with absent efficiency. The scent of salt and brine fills the air, mixing with the faintest trace of burning wood.
Susan nudges Sarah’s arm. “So, have you convinced her yet?”
Sarah glances up. “Convinced who of what?”
Susan smirks. “You know exactly what I mean.”
Sarah sighs. “I have tried, but she’s stubborn.”
“She’s scared.”
“She is not scared. She just refuses to admit it.”
Susan wipes her hands on her apron and gestures toward the docks, where John is hauling crates of supplies from his boat.
“He likes her,” Sarah says.
“And she likes him.”
“So why will she not just say something?”
Susan shrugs. “Same reason he won’t. Some people are idiots about love.”
Sarah laughs, shaking her head.
Across the village, Jonas and his friends gather behind the storage hall. Their voices are hushed, their movements careful.
The bow in Jonas’s hands is crudely made, its wooden frame uneven, its string slightly frayed. But it works.
He pulls an arrow from the bundle at his feet, testing the weight of it. Mira, watching from a distance, crosses her arms.
“You are going to get into trouble,” she says.
Jonas ignores her.
His fingers tighten around the bowstring, pulling it back, feeling the tension, the power.
He releases.
The arrow flies, striking the wooden target they have set up against the wall.
The boys cheer.
Mira shakes her head, but she does not walk away.
The world feels different today.
She does not know why.
That evening, as the sun sinks below the horizon, Lina sits with her father by the fire.
She does not mention the ship.
Not yet.
She does not know why, but something inside her tells her to wait.
Instead, she listens as he speaks, telling her the old stories, the ones about Earth, about the way the stars looked from another world.
She watches the flames flicker, watches the shadows stretch across the sand.
And she wonders how long their peace will last.
EPISODE 4: ECHOES OF THE PAST
The old records are kept in the meeting house.
Mathew runs his fingers over the spines of the worn books, his brow furrowed in concentration. The colony does not keep many written records—most knowledge is passed through word of mouth, through shared stories and lessons taught by experience.
But there are some things that must be written down.
He finds what he is looking for.
A journal, bound in faded leather, its pages brittle with age.
He turns to the page he remembers.
The first settlers. The ones who came before.
It is a story rarely spoken of.
Sarah knows the version the elders tell—the simple one, the one made to sound like history rather than warning.
They arrived on this moon decades ago, long before the Perseverance. They built homes, they lived, they worked, just as this colony does now.
But they did not last.
No one speaks of what happened to them.
There is no memorial, no graves, no remnants of their presence. Only the stories, vague and unfinished, passed down through whispers.
Jonas leans over Mathew’s shoulder. “What does it say?”
Mathew hesitates. “Not much. Just that they disappeared.”
Jonas frowns. “All of them?”
“All of them.”
Sarah watches them from the doorway, a strange unease settling in her chest.
She does not believe in ghosts.
But some stories feel like warnings.
EPISODE 5: THE FESTIVAL NIGHT
Once a year, they gather.
It is a tradition carried over from the earliest days of the colony, a celebration of survival, of community, of everything they have built together.
The fire burns high in the centre of the village, sending sparks spiralling into the night sky. Music drifts through the air, laughter mingling with the rhythmic beat of hand drums.
Children weave between the dancers, their feet kicking up sand. The smell of roasting meat fills the air, mingling with the sweetness of fermented fruit.
Sarah watches from the edge of the crowd, smiling as Lina tugs on Mira’s arm, pulling her into the dance.
Jonas leans against the railing of the storage hall, watching the flames.
“Something feels different,” he murmurs.
Sarah glances at him. “What do you mean?”
He shakes his head. “I do not know. Just… something.”
Lina stops dancing.
She looks up at the sky.
The stars are bright tonight, the sky clear.
But something is there.
High above.
Watching.
Waiting.
I will let you read through these, take notes, and we can expand and refine them together once you are back. This will help shape the pacing of the story and give us a clear direction moving forward.
The morning air carries the scent of salt, damp earth, and the faint smokiness of last night’s embers. Sarah moves through the village with a woven basket in her arms, its rough fibres pressing into her skin. The coolness of the sea breeze lingers, but the warmth of the rising sun is already claiming the rooftops.
Their home is a place built by hand, not inherited, not bought. Every beam, every stone, every plank tells a story of struggle, adaptation, and survival.
The village itself is an evolving testament to their ingenuity. When the first settlers arrived, their homes were crude—shelters cobbled together from scavenged ship parts, tarpaulin stretched over metal beams, cargo containers repurposed into makeshift bunkers. These were meant to be temporary. But when the first storms rolled in, they realised that nature had its own plans.
The forests inland provided an answer. The trees—thick-trunked and resin-heavy—were unlike anything on Earth, their bark dark and fibrous, their roots sprawling deep into the rich soil. Cutting them down was no easy feat. Their axes, designed for Earth-grown wood, blunted quickly. Their saws gummed up with sap. It took weeks of trial and error before they learned how to properly work with it.
Mathew was part of the first logging expedition. Sarah remembers the way he came home after those long days—hands raw, shoulders aching. He was one of the strongest among them, but even he admitted defeat more than once.
Jacob, their carpenter, had been the one to crack the puzzle. The trick wasn’t in brute force, but in patience. The wood had to be cut slowly, methodically, allowing the saws to bite without clogging. It was Jonas, only eleven at the time, who found a way to refine the process. He suggested drying the timber for a week before cutting, reducing the resin flow. It worked.
Bringing the logs back was another challenge. They had no heavy machinery, no haulers. What they had were their backs, their hands, and the old carts salvaged from the Perseverance. They fashioned a system—ropes slung over shoulders, wooden skids dragged over sand and dirt. The journey from the forest to the settlement was half a day’s trek, and every trip left them exhausted.
But they were not just workers. They were families. When one group carried logs, another prepared meals. When the men pulled carts, the children filled water jugs. The older women mended torn clothes, soothed aching muscles, tended to those who overexerted themselves.
Susan, long before she had ever sorted fish, had been one of the best at hauling. It surprised everyone—her small frame seemed ill-suited to the work. But she had endurance. “It’s all in the rhythm,” she had said once, rolling her shoulders after a long day. “You breathe with the weight, not against it.”
When the village started taking shape, the first buildings were communal. The smokehouse, the storage hall, the meeting house—structures meant for survival before comfort. The homes came later.
Now, years on, the village is no longer a rough collection of shelters. It is a place of permanence.
Sarah passes a row of houses with slanted roofs thatched from woven sea grass. The walls are reinforced with a mix of timber, clay, and stone. Some homes still bear pieces of the Perseverance—hatch doors now serving as entryways, metal plating repurposed into window shutters. Others are indistinguishable from the land, their walls blending into the natural tones of the island.
She stops at Jacob’s workbench, where the old carpenter is sharpening a blade. His hands, weathered and scarred, work with steady precision.
“You’re early,” he says without looking up.
“The fish are already in the smokehouse,” Sarah replies, leaning against the edge of the table. “And Mira has stolen from you again.”
Jacob snorts. “What was it this time?”
“A chisel.”
“She is ambitious.”
“She is trouble.”
“A talented kind of trouble.”
Beyond them, the village stirs. The communal ovens are already in use, the scent of baking bread drifting through the air. Children dart between the buildings, their laughter bright against the morning stillness. A trio of fishermen prepare their nets, checking for frayed sections before heading out to the shallows.
Lina is perched on a crate nearby, her notebook balanced on her knee. She scribbles furiously, pausing only to brush a strand of hair from her face. Her mind is always working, always watching.
The marketplace will open soon. Once a week, the villagers bring their goods to trade—dried fish, woven baskets, preserved fruits, hand-carved utensils. It is a system built on trust, not currency. There is no wealth here, only necessity.
Mathew emerges from their home, rolling his shoulders as he walks. His hair is still damp from washing, and he carries himself with the ease of a man comfortable in his place.
“You left without waking me,” he says.
“You were sleeping like the dead.”
He glances at the basket at her feet. “I can take that to the smokehouse.”
Sarah hands it over. “You’re a good man.”
“I try.”
She watches as he walks away, the familiar rhythm of his movements reassuring in a way she does not fully understand.
The village is alive with routine, with laughter, with the quiet strength of a people who have built something real.
But even as Sarah stands in the morning sun, watching the day unfold, a whisper of unease lingers at the back of her mind.
Something is coming.
And soon, everything will change.
