This is revision 2 of The Freehold, saved by nuxtre (the record, brought up to date) — the current one.
The Freehold
A freehold is a holding up the valley road above the Hollow, on the mountain's lower shoulder: a house, the ground round it, the roshi on the ground, a stream, a shrine, whatever else its people have built or let stand. The valley has many; each belongs to somebody. A member's freehold was the Vetti child's parents'. Their letter — the one that waits at the gate — leaves the house and the ground in the member's care along with the child, for as long as it takes; the village calls the place by the child's name from then on: Wren's Freehold, Brindle's Freehold.
What is on it
The house — the big hut, where the Vetti has a room of their own — and the Plot: the ground where the roshi live, with the stream and its wheel, the fruit trees, the ovens, the incubator, the splicer, the little shrine, and the caves and doors that open on rooms of their own. The road runs down from the gate to the Hollow; the pads to the Wilds are at the village's edge.
The neighbours
The other freeholds of the valley are other members' — the valley road passes their gates, a dozen or so to each fold of the mountain (the Low Valley, the Second Fold, Kestrel Valley… the next dozen to come open the next). The members whose children came to them around the same time are neighbours. From your own gate the valley can be seen — whose freehold is whose, and whether the child is home — and a neighbour's freehold can be looked at from the road: the ground as it is, the roshi, the Vetti if it is home. The hand cannot reach in; a note goes to the gate by the Messenger. What waits in the wilderness between the gates, and whether the road can be walked, the record does not yet say.
What the parents left
A house with the furniture in it, the ground, a straw bed, a biscuit tin that is never empty, a shrine that has always been shut. Where they went, and when they come back, nobody in the village will say.