Last edited by 97cweb at 2026-08-16 02:13:08.197832
Over the next few days, the air begins to warm, and people start hanging rugs and comforters outside to air them out. I am still unsure what I have with Lena, but just sitting and holding her at night on my chair has been nice. If we are to do much more, I am going to have to strengthen the furniture due to my weight. The legs of the chair I sleep in have never been reattached since I came into this village.
As I wake up, I hear Thallion through the school door, teaching again. Speaking quietly and deliberately as final tests approach due to the school season wrapping up for planting. Lena told me she would be heading out early to gather some plants for later, and start sowing the few medicinal ones she plants regularly, and a few trials of the plant we found that seems to grow well with everything.
After grabbing a bit of breakfast stew, I head out the door and over to the fields. Eventually, I see Lena struggling to push a thing through it.
“Need help?” I ask.
“You know what? Sure. Eldrin just sharpened this last fall, but it is being as stubborn as ever.”
“Ok.”
I pick up the handles, and start walking in the direction she was going.
“Put the blade in the dirt! You need to turn the soil over! I could’ve just walked it myself.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a plow!”
“Ah.” That makes more sense. I walk backwards to where she stopped, and notice the little dent in the ground where the blade cuts in. I lower the blade into the trench, and start to push it, the big wheel rolling forward and the plow diving deeper into the dirt. I press it further down until I feel more resistance and the depth bar hits the surface. For a wheelbarrow that is being forced into the ground, it is not that bad.
I head out, and turn around. Lena shows me how far apart the rows need to be and I continue. Back and forth, back and forth. Slowly the sun rises higher, and I start to sweat. Thinking nothing of it, I just keep going across the field, and my mind shuts off in repetitive monotony.
Some time later, Lena shows up at the edge of the field, holding a basket. I continue pushing the plow to the end of the row, and stop.
As I walk over to her, I notice her eyes have been on me the entire time, and looking me up and down.
“Nope, not going to get tired of that,” she says, as she gives me a quick peck on the cheek. I freeze, unsure what to do.
“Bleah, you still taste like cured ham though. We need to figure out something about that.”
She sits down on a round rock, and I lean against it, as she unpacks the basket containing some bowls and a container of more stew. It’s the same stew as this morning, but I am hungry enough to not care. I devour it quickly and start heading back to the plow.
“Keep this up, and we’ll only need to plow for today, rather than the normal three it takes. I’ll be right back, with the seeds,” she calls after me.
I continue pushing the plow through the field, and see her return with a hoe and trowel, carefully burying each seed and doming the earth above it.
Eventually, I finish the field by mid afternoon. Sore, but in a good way, I drag the plow behind me to her.
“Great! You’re done! That saves so much time. And...” She turns to me and sniffs the air loudly, “boy do you stink! Let me just... there” as she repositions herself upwind of me. “That’s better.”
“Price of having the stamina to do the entire field in a day without an ox or mule.”
“Ox?”
“Large animal to pull the plow, could also use ones you could ride, but they were more expensive historically.”
“How historical are we talking here...” she asks, one eyebrow raised.
I hesitate for a moment, wracking my brain, “Sometime about 90 to 100 years ago they were almost all replaced, but numbers were dropping for over 50 years before that I think? Even a steam tractor can do more than horses, which can do more than a person. Why? Where are your beasts of burden? I have not seen one since I came here.”
She stops for a moment, thinking about what I said.
“More powerful than a beast...more powerful than...you. Over 100 years...” She mutters to herself, then speaking at full volume, “We have none.”
“I got that, as I said, have not seen one since coming here. Are they too expensive? Too short stamina?”
“No. We have none. Not just Thallion and I, or this village, none. No ‘beasts of burden’ as you put it. Biggest thing we have is a fox.”
“What?!”
“Yep, supposedly lost them all during the calamity. Whatever affected us, affected them too.”
“But... agriculture, power multiplier...”
“Nope, just arms, and dragging that horrible plow. But that’s why you’re here today, with those big...strong...muscles.” She looks down at my arms and chest.
“You seem more distracted lately.”
She snaps to my face, blushing a little. “Well, maybe if you didn’t...I don’t know, smell so...much and do the work of four of us in a day...just...help me plant these.”
I gingerly grab the offered jar from her, filled with seeds, and following her lead, place them in the ground and cover them up.
I quickly fall back into a trance, thinking about the lack of animal power multipliers until Lena beans me with a larger seed.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“I think I should continue planting the rest.”
“Why? I cannot put seeds in dirt?”
“No, you got that part right, but the dirt is so squished after you walk on it, I cannot dig it up and there is no way they are going to pop through this.”
I turn back and look down the rows we were working on. Hers are nice, mounded, with soft, barely visible footprints down either side of the row. Mine, well mine looks like I paved the row, and just had a concrete crack form where the row mound should be.
“I...see. Guess I may need snowshoes for the garden.”
“Something to look at. Later. I need to get these in though.”
Taking that as my cue to exit, I try to gingerly walk to the edge of the field and out back to the main road. The village is quiet save for the few craftsmen working, most others are getting their plows and other farming equipment ready or using them in the fields. Unsure of where to go, I wander through the village.
I stop in front of Silvra’s shop. I am still upset at the betrayal, but her eyes, when she saw me come out. She...she seemed surprised, and I cannot get them out of my vision. Peering in the window, it is still dark as when we first found the note on the door. The note is still there too, just half soaked and partly fallen away.
I continue wandering, following the sounds of metal on metal and arrive at Eldrin’s workshop. He’s heavily focused on something on the anvil, but as I enter, he shouts “I’ll be with ya in a momen’!”
A few minutes later, he plunges the metal into a bucket of water, and a small cloud of steam billows up.
“There we go, now, wha’ can I ‘elp ya wi- Ethan! Good ta see ya!”
“Hello Eldrin. Just finished plowing the field for Lena, but she does not want me planting. Just wandering around otherwise. Have a few ideas I would like to run by you.”
“Sorry, Ethan, bu’ I don’ have tha time to do tha’ righ’ now. Constan’ farm repairs ‘ere to Sunday. Bu’ maybe later?”
I lean on the counter, and hang my head. “Just need something to do. Thallion’s teaching, Lena’s sowing, you’re here, and the old generator needs a major rebuild if I am going to be doing more than charging my phone.”
“Sorry, still canno’ help. I’ll keep thinkin’ ‘bout the generata, but without more coppa, no more wire. Say, I could use some ‘elp clearing a dead tree though. Could ya fell it for me?”
“Sure, it’s at least something.”
“Ya ever chop a tree before?” Eldrin asks, passing me an axe.
“Not a large one, but I know how.”
“Good, just watch it, they can be tricksy.”
“...sure, Eldrin. Which tree is it?”
Eldrin leaves me at the base of a tree near where his back yard meets the tree line. In front of me is a normal-sized pine, but with no green needles. It is dead. It must have died through the winter.
I check for axe clearance, prune some smaller branches that are in the way, and start making the mouth for the tree, hoping to send it down the treeline. Upswing, downswing, carving the mouth deeper into the tree. I fall into a steady rhythm, and the light glints off the axe as I work my way into the centre over the next while.
Once I am more than halfway through, I go around to the other side of the tree to make the back bite, a shallow cut to sever the last of the tree’s trunk from what will be the stump.
I fall into the trance, and hear the tree groan as it starts to give out. More light glints off the axehead as I continue to swing.
Suddenly, there is a loud crack and I step back.
“Timber!” I shout, as I watch the tree begin to move.
The wrong way.
Everything slows down, the tree is falling towards the last cut I made, rather than the mouth. A sound of groaning wood and sandpaper scratches is all I notice as the trunk gets bigger. I quickly step back, and am swatted by a few of the lower limbs as the tree comes down. It knocks me to the ground as it falls.
Just as fast as it started moving, it stops. Fallen, lying in the wrong direction than what I wanted.
Eldrin runs out.
“Wha’s tha matta?! Heard ya screamin’, e’en ‘fore the crash.”
“The tree... fell the wrong way.”
“Oh? Is tha’ all?”
“Yes...but trees are not supposed to fall backwards!”
Eldrin comes over, and inspects the stump. “Looks like I’ fell the righ’ way ta me.”
“No, the bite sets the direction, the back bite just cuts the support.”
“Na, tha bite severs tha wires, and the back bite shoul’na exis’. Tha tree will lean on its own, jus’ keep cuttin’ through it. They pull ‘emselves over with the wire in ‘em.”
“Wire?!”
“Yep, wire. Nearly pure iron that too, roast down a good tree and get a few hundred metres of good iron wire out of it. Better than pickin’ through meat.”
“The trees...have wire in them.”
“Sure do, give ‘em their strength. Only good until enough are cut though, then they pull the tree over from tha inside.”
“Trees shouldn’t have wire in them.”
Eldrin stares at me for a moment, then replies, “Well, these ‘ere ones do.”
He picks up the axe, tries to help me to my feet, stumbles and tries again. He then heads back in to the forge.
“Prolly a good idea ta le’ tha missus know ‘bout you and trees. I won’t be givin’ ya an axe any time soon.”
“She’s...not my ‘missus’?”
“Sounds more like a ques’ion ta me, anyway. Go get suppa.”
I head back to the room at the back of the school. Still slightly in shock of the tree nearly falling on me, and what I still don’t understand about this world. Metal literally grows in trees.