13th of Fall, 504 AV
Clumps of moist dirt felt cool inside the crannies of the young girl’s toes. She scratched at the coarse fabric of her smock dress that rubbed on her skinny thigh. Eleanor’s adolescent joints looked sharp and too large for her thin limbs and her fine hairs lifted up with the wind. The dress she was wearing was little more than wool wrapped about her torso with two straps to support its weight. Her fingers and toes and the extremities they called home froze while her bony ribcage boiled, but the outfit had an advantage.
Gathering up one of the extra loops of fabric before her Eleanor reached up with her free hand and gripped the red fruit that hung before her. The girl’s tiny wrist twisted and the vine snapped, letting cool, sweet smelling liquid burst into the air around her. The tomato rolled about in the woolen pouch she had provided until more of its companions pressed their fleshy bodies against it.
Dress weighted with juicy tomatoes, Eleanor began to make her way past the vines supported by thin rods thrust into the soft earth. The shadows from leaves that tickled her cheeks tumbled across the path her figure slipped out from underneath. She paused at the edge of the tidy rows of plants, looking for somewhere to settle herself and listening to the moan of her stomach.
Beneath a small tree she could not climb, burdened as she was, Eleanor settled herself. The tomato was too large for the eleven year old’s mouth and sticky lines of red juice and seeds hung beneath her freckles as she slurped.
OOCIt was terrible how long this took me and I am sooooooooo sorry. Please forgive?
