2.1 Dirt Poor

Sunsrise over Nowhere brought the cockcrow and a crisp wind. Western Bronelle was an extreme land: arid and baking in the summer, frozen and barren in the winter. Inside the final days of Reiti - the third month of the year - there remained enough spring chill before summer cooked the Falussan wastelands in three weeks. A deadline looming over the restive head of the newly minted farmer.

Qastael never paid much mind to changing seasons and weather. What was cold morning compared to flying into black space and clouds became memory far below? What was the heat when swimming in molten metals beneath Heheim’s Abyss? What was a year to immortality? Today, time and seasons mattered anew when she didn’t have enough of either. With more anxiety than Qastael experienced in centuries, she shook out fur and felt the tick then tock in an urgent countdown to her new life.

“Wasn’t getting much sleep anyhoo,” Qastael muttered, slowly looping her neck around in a coiled spring, each vertebrae in her neck detonating with a loud *crck!* the volume of snapping trees.

“Ah! Help! Don’t hurt me!”

Blinking sleep away, Qastael discovered Thexi sprawled on the grass wearing only intimates, rolling out of a pile of blankets. The sudden rude awakening induced blind panic from the former housewife. Smirking, the lengthy Qastael curled her body around to enclose the smaller girl in the garden. “I thought you were sleeping in the house?”

Thexi, not entirely awake - mussed bright pastel fur and tall ears twitching madly in the air - peered around in early dimness, confronting burnished glow of citrine eyes above bare sharp teeth. “Eep!” Thexi gasped, quickly nabbing a blanket and using it to cover herself, as if the comforter was a shield for more than modesty. “I was, I did, I mean I…” She paused with mouth open, unsure what to say until shameful truth won out. “I got lonely.”

Thexi’s reply sobered Qastael’s mood. “I can understand that,” she replied, Qastael’s eyes resolutely fixed away from the otherwise unmarked patch of dirt on the side of the garden. It was one thing to bring a new farmhand into Nowhere, it was another to let a stranger know about the large golden egg buried in claw’s reach.

Leaving Farthest From two days previous, both women spent those days in awkward silence. Qastael wasn’t sure what to say and Thexi sank into shock. Necessity forced some conversation, the newly hired farmhand understanding she needed to read through Plone’s notes and help where she could. Maybe Thexi should have asked more questions, maybe Qastael should have done more talking. Silence stretched like taut hide in the sun, which became more reason for both to live inside their lonely heads until the sky darkened and the shadows of Nowhere stretched into sight.

Exhaustion the final conversation, the pair parted near the main house. Qastael dunked herself in the lake to wash away travel stains then huddled comfortably into the grass around the graves of Plone and his family. Protective magics of the Breath warmed the air, enough that after the last week with all the emotional and physical ups and downs, Qastael fading quickly into peace. The weary and wounded giantess partially remembered Thexi hopping into the home, announcing a relief for bedding after traveling via cleavage and sleeping on cold dirt. For all Qastael recalled, it was more dream than real.

Tick-tock, Qastael thought towards eastern rising suns, sitting up gingerly because of pulling stitches and looping her tail down the side of the house, wary of another infection in the wound. There wasn’t any sharp or heated pain anymore, only a gentle ache. Another pain, however, pinched distractedly between her wings and tightly furrowed into ribs. Grimacing, she hefted the red silk constricting itself around a tender chest, compressing her bosom into twin hills nearly avalanching out of garmented restraint. “I can’t understand how common races wear clothing. Is it supposed to shrink? I thought spider silk was stretchy.”

“Um…” Thexi didn’t know where to look with eyes the size of dinner plates, there was too much jiggling Qastael. Glancing frantic side to side, up into frightening predator eyes, down where the short skirt flipped completely open… “I don’t know anything!”

Qastael’s smirk bloomed into snarky grin along her snout as she teased, finishing mammary adjustments so the brazier neither conflicted with black and white fur or rainbowed scales. “I hope you at least remember how to read, because that is why I hired you. Reading and math. Probably put you in charge of milking, my claws won’t do well with tiny udders.” Tilting her head towards the barn and lowing animals, Qastael nodded and stood on her hind legs. “Good idea to take care of those animals right now. Should have done that last night, though I was plumb tuckered enough. As likely eaten them as fed them.”

Thexi blitzed into the house without a word, emerging soon after lacing a dark emerald dress with black ruffles that complimented her lighter green and pink fur. Though Qastael admitted no experience in these kind of matters, the design was far more enticing than Thexi presented moments before nearly naked, the dress clearly cut for her previous profession. Likely not practical on a farm, but either woman lacked practical options as the suns peaked the horizon and true dawns emerged. Qastael scratched a floppy ear and led the way towards the massive wooden edifice, contemplating if clothing really was something either of them needed all alone out here.

Looking down at Thexi and imaging the bunny naked, Qastael’s scales blushed and she hastily discarded the notion of casual nudity as unwanted distraction. Or, rather, unneeded distraction.

“What kind of animals do you have?” Thexi asked, hopping a half-skipping jog to keep up with the slow shuffle of the much larger woman, her breath labored. She also fixed her hair, which Qastael hadn’t noticed before, the short uneven locks only a slight shade darker than her pink fur. It wasn’t something Qastael noticed much anyway, trying to differentiate between fur and hair. Nevertheless, so many common races put stock into the care and style of head fur that she wanted to make an effort as part of her desire to conform.

“That is a good question,” Qastael said, surreptitiously adjusting her skirt lower to comply with modesty. “I remember cows. A nice aelf gentleman in Farthest called one of the carcasses Piedmontese. There was also…small birds? Sheep? I’m afraid I won’t be helpful, I have a better idea what they taste and smell like.”

A whiff in the air tickled Qastael’s nostrils, a familiar scent. Not a welcome odor, panic gripping her chest. Digging claws into the dirt and holding her side, she rushed ahead to to barn, throwing the doors open amid a cloud of flies and decay.

“…hph…hph…why did you rush…ahead?” Thexi huffed, skirts hiked up as she hopped next to the door and leaned against the post. She looked like she wanted to say more but stopped when she squinched her face at the smell and sight.

“Fiddlesticks,” Qastael sighed, her shoulders slumping while she shuffled into the barn, the stalls in front filled with dead sheep as the other animals protested loudly against the stink of death. “I had sheep.” Qastael buried her claws into her hands, stabbing into her palm tight enough to draw blood, the pain a penance she deserved. “Some farmer I’m turning out to be.”

Though normally dark inside the building, the large doors opened to the east and dawnslight flooded the space easily. Fourteen large sheep and five smaller lambs. One couldn’t be older than a month, it was so tiny, sickening black globs of black blood and chunks of lung splattered onto the ground. The loss of the older sheep was a blow, but seeing such young creatures bloated and unbreathing made Qast want to turn her back and run away. These were children, dead, and her fault. She should have been here, she was responsible. Qastael couldn’t breath properly, she needed to go to the garden and dig up Little Mouse, worried she might find another lifeless child. Her child!

Thexi pushed through her own ick and steeled her back, slowly studying the rest of the immense structure as a distraction. To Qastael, Thexi was seeking to find optimism within despair. “It’s like a castle, so much room.” She walked past sheep pens towards the cows. “You could fit thousands of animals in here, only a fraction of the pens have any animals, and they go up three levels on each side. I think those are chickens on the second level. Ramps near the doors, a few pulley lifts for feed, the back third divided into tall silos. I lived on a farm when I was young, before my mother married and we moved to Yrlmuh. It was nothing like this. This isn’t some country farm, this could feed all of Farthest, just from this barn.”

The bunny farmhand rambled and when she stopped, lack of words muted the other other animals ambient sounds. Qastael figured the barn was large enough she could stretch her neck upward and not touch the rafters, the stretch her entire body inside from tip to tail and with room to spare. Turning thoughts away from distractions, Thexi’s words galvanized Qastael towards a realization: if she wanted to keep her own child alive, she needed to learn how to be a proper farmer and fast. “I’m smelling death, but there is sweet purifications in the blood. This was an infection.” She glanced towards the center of the barn, where an old empty sack lay and tsked her teeth. “Might have saved some if I figured out they were sick early enough, separating them. Plone probably used his entire supply of herbs for infections on me six days ago.” Qastael leaned her neck around the other animals, inspecting them and sniffing the air. “Those sheep have been dead for days but it doesn’t look like the rest of the animals are sick. Don’t want to make any assumptions, so we need to get to work.”

“What do we do?” Thexi asked, her mien projecting she had no idea where to start.

“Everything comes down to food,” Qastael replied, having put a lot of thought into Nowhere’s priorities. “How much we eat, how much the livestock eat, how much food is stored away and how much we’ll get from the crops. Looking at the troughs, both the cows and birds were fine eating grass and potatoes, so I’ll put in enough for another day or two then refill the water. I’m starving, so I reckon you are as well. Look through the house and see what you can find then head to the food basement - the mound of grassy dirt west of the house - and separate three barrels for me. Doesn’t matter what, I eat most anything. I don’t want to catch anything from the sheep, though, so can’t eat the bodies. I’ll drag them south of the farm and dig a hole because we also can’t risk whatever disease spreading and don’t want other animals stopping by. While I’m working on that we need information.”

“I saw the library you mentioned, last night. It was well organized.” Thexi appeared distracted, leaning over the posts to glare intently at one of the cows being suckled by a calf. “Didn’t read much, but the few I cracked open had detailed indexes. This Plone could have given lessons to the Brainery librarians in Yrlmuh.” Holding her hand on top of her head, Thexi moved it steadily out towards the cow, trying to gauge the height of the cattle. “Are you sure these are cows? They seem really big for cows, like twice as large. I don’t think external bone plates along the back and knees is normal. And are those fangs?” She quickly snatched her hand back and shuffled away from the fence.

Qastael peered close at the cows, but didn’t know enough about breeds and such to know what to look for. All the bovine had a mix of red and white fur, cropped horns. They looked meaty, as in they sported more muscled bulk than the usual cattle she ate during past raids. Maybe bigger than typical? Qastael shrugged. “Not important now. From what I gathered in the notes I read, Plone has those answers somewhere. You’re going to do a lot of reading, hope you find that soon. More important, what do they eat and how much they eat. Add in the nine hundred pounds (408 kg) of food I eat a day and whatever your diet is, we need to understand if we have enough to last until harvest. Plone seemed to think so when I talked to him before he died, and he even did some of those calculations in his latest notebook far as I read.”

“Should I milk the cows? Gather eggs?” Thexi looked equal parts overwhelmed and earnest, both tugging her in different directions. “On my pawpaw’s farm, I remember doing that every day.”

“We can’t assume at this point. Could be the eggs of these birds explode or the milk is actually acid. This close to Wylo, any bizarre metareality craziness is possible.” Qastael moved to the other side of the barn, gathering up a few of the remaining large tarps neatly covering dried hay, ambling towards the dead animals. “I’ll take care of the sheep, feed the animals, then I’ll water and inspect all the crops and fields. My goal is to try measuring how much we yield from each crop when harvest happens. You work the numbers. Meet up later at the house and see if we keep going on or try to think of something else to do.”