Main World.
Konoha Year 30, autumn.
Country of Roran, Resettlement Zone.
At the desert's edge in autumn, the wind already carried a chill. Newly built houses lined the level roads of the Resettlement Zone, with freshly washed clothes hanging out front, lifted and dropped again and again by the wind.
The first residents had already spent a full summer on this land. The walls of their houses had blended into the surrounding landscape, no longer the jarringly pale color they had been when first built. Newly transplanted drought-resistant saplings lined both sides of the main road leading into the Resettlement Zone. Some had already grown a second tier of branches, their trunks a little thicker than when they were planted.
The wind blew from deep in the desert, carrying no sand as it passed through the gaps between the saplings. Beneath their crowns lay a thin layer of dry earth that had already been trampled firm, with a few damp marks around its edges left by yesterday's watering.
Toyotomi Shining Sand stood at the edge of a newly marked plot. Before him stood several rows of unfinished houses, their foundations leveled and their walls more than halfway built. Space for two extra rows of foundations had been reserved beyond the original plan, as though it had already been confirmed that those spots would have occupants and there was no need to measure the spacing again.
He was not looking at those walls. His gaze rested farther away-over a dozen people were unloading luggage from carts there, their movements carrying the stiffness peculiar to new arrivals, though they were a little faster than the previous group. A young woman holding a child got off a cart first and stood there for a while, waiting until someone came to lead her a