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The Kid had let the first few fountains fall at the loss of their Cores, but nowadays he takes the time to break them, sorting through the resulting fragments to take the bright flake of waterstone that powers the thing.
Getting it back to the Bastion is easy once it’s been dried off, but sometimes it’s more difficult (one memorable occasion involving a marsh that needed to be slogged through); he’d left a trail of fresh water where he walked, arriving back at the Bastion half-soaked.
The bath-pond he builds with said fragments is more than worth it; not having to rely on the water they find or the fitful ashy rain that falls from the sky is a relief, a weight off of everyone’s shoulders. (He builds a lean-to around it, just a roof and enough wall to keep out some wind, the warm brick solidity of the Forge half of it.)
He starts on Zia’s house once the pond’s done, taking stone back on the skyway (he’s figured out through trial and error that the most he can carry is his own body weight), marking where the foundation and walls would be. The Kid considers weight distribution, schematics, talks it over with Rucks (being the only other Mason around), collects enough stone to get started, and wakes up the next morning to the Bastion having half-built the thing already, foundation laid and walls up to knee-height, the machinery thrumming impatiently underneath the grass and their feet as though asking why he didn’t find enough rock to finish the job all at once.
The Kid laughs, and startles himself with the noise. There hasn’t been nearly enough laughter around these parts lately.
(He brings back stone for the Bastion and sets it inside the walls where it’ll disappear into the structure overnight, until the walls are waist high and Zia pitches her tent inside them.)
He flies the skyway at Rucks’ guidance, joined by Zia as she learns how to pilot the Bastion, and Zulf, too, once he’s recovered enough to even hold the brass telescope the Kid had given him, what felt like a lifetime ago.
(The Kid also helps Rucks put up railings. Falling off the Bastion while it was stationary was bad enough; doing it while it was moving would be disastrous.)
He pretends to not see the concern that fills Zia’s face before each flight, the way she chews her lip; the agonized, mostly-hidden emotion in Zulf’s, as though he’s torn between worry and something else; the pang that furrows Rucks’ brows and tugs at the corners of his mouth when he comes back battered and bruised. (By some unspoken agreement, the three of them never send him far enough away that Rucks isn’t able to reach him through their Seals, speaking to him through the symbol of what’s left of their city along the channels that Masons had once filled with chatter, casting their voices to the air to be carried off on the winds.)
He takes his hammer on such journeys, has his shield strapped to his back, switches between bow, carbine, pistols, musket, repeater, pike, machete, more, as the situation calls for it.
Zulf is the one that eventually ends up doing most of the surveying; he makes maps on paper, vellum, hide, with ink, charcoal, more esoteric substances they find, plots their course and strains to see anything about the strange new lands the Kid will visit, peering through low-hanging clouds.
(The first month, they just pick a direction and sail, Rucks at the helm and Zia at his elbow, scavenge and try to not get their hopes up about seeing any sight of civilization. The Calamity’s done more than kill two cities, peoples; it’s withered some of their dreams even as its birthed, nurtured, new ones.)
(After all, ash produces the most fertile ground, ages after the destruction of the volcano has faded with time.)
But the Kid builds. And fights. Hunts. Searches for materials the Bastion and its occupants need.
It’s his place on the place they call home, and he’s content with it.
For one that’s had so little, he’s certainly ended up with a lot.