The group’s history is short, but its members already remember it differently. After the arrival, each spent weeks or months learning the rhythms of a life they had not chosen: new speech, new names, new bodies, and customs that did not make room for modern explanations. Their shared knowledge of their old lives became both comfort and liability. Their first watershed moment came at the lower Rhine ford, where two members recognized one another by a private joke neither had any reason to know. They tested each other with memories, discovered the changes were real, and made a vow to find the others. That meeting transformed seven isolated castaways into a group. Since then they have sent cautious messages along roads and river routes, sometimes using pilgrims, traders, or travelers as go-betweens. Their first triumph was confirming that several of the others survived. Their first setback was discovering that the reunion would be slow and dangerous: a message could be lost, a traveler could be questioned, and a person asking after strangers with uncanny origins might attract the wrong attention. The group now tries to preserve both its friendships and the fragile cover each member has built.

A borrowed loft above a small riverside storehouse, reached through a narrow side passage and shared with the household that owns the building. The loft contains straw pallets, a box of salvaged scraps, a charcoal map of Europe, and a wooden peg with red thread tied around it. The group has no right to call it theirs and could be turned out at any time.