[Guest post via ‘United Kittydom’]

The morning after the Nor’easter, Alaraf did not hold an emergency meeting.

That alone was how everyone knew something had changed.

Classes resumed on schedule. The heating grates were warm. The radios stayed quiet due to remaining on safe VPN nodes. Officer Reichhörnchen checked the locks and drank his hot chocolate with runic sprinkles from his squirrel thermos without commentary. Mango taught from the orchard steps with an outdoor space heater, where the Wi‑Fi was intentionally bad and the questions were good.

Zahir met students one by one, without spectacle. Loki filed a maintenance request that would later be described as a coincidence.

No one checked the feeds.

Ruh noticed first. The absence of counter‑moves meant there was nothing to play against. Without resistance or rescue, the storm spent itself quickly, like weather over open water. By the third day, the noise had burned out.

At week’s end, the faculty gathered, not for crisis, but for governance.

Kafka chaired. Reichhörnchen minutes. The agenda was short.

1. What protected students? Private channels. Clear boundaries. Silence during escalation on public channels


2. What prolonged harm in the past? Heroics. Public rebuttals without protective allegory,  Unofficial containment that still allowed innocents to absorb undeserved harms.


3. What do we do next time? The same thing. Duck & Cover, then reassign responsibilities to cover gaps, proceed life as usual with an eye to caution.

The vote was unanimous.

They formalized the doctrine. During disruption, the community would narrow, not expand. Care would be local and quiet. Authority would be procedural, not performative. Documentation would exist, but it would not become theater or set in stone, adaptable to each new crisis.

Sroasha approved the minutes with a single gold-leaf embossed paw print, seconded by Fylgia in silver, and reminded everyone that governance was a practice, not an identity.

Mango planted more trees. Kore reopened comments with filters that worked. Gibran cooked for the night shift security guards attempting to patch tge connection to United Kittydom with less NDH screaming. [Wolfe had moved on to sermons.  Also in German].

Students noticed what did not happen.

No urgent announcements. No dramatic reckonings. No calls to handle or contain the chaos directly, only to avoid it entirely until sanity was restored.  New Dhikr was taught as reminder that not even kitties can create a Deux ex Machina, as  Learning continued, as Trust stabilize and The school once again outlived the bad weather.

In Alaraf, recovery was not marked by celebration but by boredom, which was how they knew it had worked.