[Solo] From stable to field

[Dove Brown]

30 Summer 515

When Dove reported for work, she was sent to the Garrison gate and asked to wait there. She found it, leaned against the wall and tipped her head back to watch her namesake birds fluttering in and out of the Garrison. She smelled the heavy scent of horse manure from the stables just inside the gate, and she had her suspicions about what today would involve. Sure enough, a handful of chimes later, a cart and horse showed up, led by an older woman. She had steel grey hair braided up out of her way, and a face as wrinkled as the stone from inside a peach, but Dove saw the muscles bunch under the woman's plain shirt, and recognised her type as a fellow farmer. The gate guards also clearly recognised her and hailed her cheerfully. The farmer greeted Dove with a nod, and led the horse round to back the cart in through the gate. There wasn't much space between the sides of the cart and the sides of the gate, so Dove pushed off the wall and walked over to the farmer.

"I'm..."

"You're my help for the day? Good. Hold the horse for a moment while I talk to the lass in charge." The woman's eyes twinkled as she pushed the reins into Dove's hands and sprang up onto the cart's seat, and then over the back of the seat into the cart bed, rather than try and squeeze past the side of the cart.

Dove watched her for a moment. "I have a name you know," she mumbled under her breath. "Do I look like some kind of nameless animated thing?" The horse shoved its head against her shirt. She flinched back, still holding the reins. The horse was taller than she was, even at the shoulder, and its head was higher still. It was a rich warm brown with fluffy white feet and a black mane and tail. It shoved its head against her again and snorted, as if looking for something. This time Dove stood firm, bracing her feet against ground to resist the push. "What do you want, horse?"

The woman called back, "She likes to be patted on the neck and scratched between her ears." Then she hopped down from the cart and Dove could hear her voice moving away.

Dove patted the horse twice, then tentatively reached up her free hand and slid her fingers under the bit of mane that flopped forward between the ears. There was a bump there and she scratched it hesitantly at first, then with more confidence. The horse half-closed its eyes and rested its heavy head on her shoulder. The shoulder she'd bruised only a handful of days ago. Dove pushed it off and stifled her swearing. Beyond the horse, she could hear the uneven thumps as the stable crew shovelled composted manure into the cart. It didn't smell quite as bad as the fresh variety, and Dove resigned herself to being around it all day. The farms needed it. She was a farmer. Sometimes tasks weren't fun, but they were necessary, especially if you wanted to eat next year.

[Dove Brown]

They arrived at the corn fields with the full cart and a young boy in tow to lead the horse slowly along the headlands that bordered of the fields. The strips of unused land gave a way to turn plough teams and drive carts and animals across the fields without damaging the crops. The woman pulled a pair of buckets from under the seat and passed one to Dove. Each bucket held a scoop and a wooden tent peg. Dove took them with resignation and walked around to the back of the cart. She used the scoop to fill the bucket, then turned to the rows of knee high corn. between each of the rows was a gap, and down the centre of each gap ran a furrow in the ground. Quite a number of the corn leaves were yellow at the edge, showing that they needed the fertiliser badly.

"Start at the ends and work inward?" she suggested, and pointed towards the end of the field nearest the tail of the cart. The sun was still low enough that whoever was facing east would have the sun in their eyes. "I'll take the western end."

"Sounds good," the farmer replied. She pulled a hat low over her eyes. She and Dove both headed for the outermost rows.

Dove hauled the bucket down to her end of the field, and stepped into the last but one gap. She took a handful of fertiliser, leaned over the corn and sprinkled it into the last furrow. Taking a step sideways, and trying not to flatten the furrow in her gap, she repeated the process. Step and sprinkle, step and sprinkle, working her way down the length of the field. She almost made it the full length of the field before her bucket ran out. She shoved the peg in the ground to mark where she had got to, then ran back to the cart to refill it. The cart seemed as full as ever as she scooped the composted manure into the bucket and walked, bucket banging against her legs, back to the peg. She set the bucket down for a moment, wrapped both hands around the jutting end of the peg and hauled. The peg resisted for a moent and then came. Smears of soil covered it and she poked it into the bucket for now as she finished the row and moved one row towards the middle of the field. This time she was sprinkling into the row she had walked the first time. Working this way meant that all the rows got their share of fertiliser without the farmer ever having to walk through it. It was bad enough on her hands, and she made a silent note to scrub thoroughly when she got home, and use some of that precious soap. Plants might find it tasty. She did not.

[Dove Brown]

She tried to scatter it evenly, but without much success. It was dark, almost black, and crumbled between her fingers rather than clinging stickily. It landed in clots and clumps and thin trails that sometimes missed the furrow. She scraped up a last handful, stuck the peg in the ground, and ran to refill her bucket. Her foot caught on a rut and she flailed her arms wildly for balance. The bucket yanked at her as her arm flailed, but she managed to do no more than lurch sideways, her foot sliding into the corn until she recovered.

The horse chose that moment to snort softly. It sounded a lot like laughter, though Dove was prety sure it was coincidence. Horses weren't that smart. She stomped to the end of the cart and shovelled into her bucket, her cheeks flaming with embarrasment. Glancing across the field, she saw the woman almost a row ahead of her, and her cheeks went even hotter. She would pull her weight, and earn her place and her pay and not get left behind. She finished the row she was on as fast as possible and turned down the next one. Then had to go back because in her hurry she'd forgotten to retrieve the peg. She got half way down before she ran out of fertiliser again and went back to refill.

The sun baked her back and shoulders, and spilled her shadow across her feet. Behind her, she could hear the other farmer starting up a work song and Dove cheerfully joined in the chorus.

The knights are brave and the knights are bold.
The knights are young and the knights are old.
They ride and ride and ride and ride
So the truth has nowhere it can hide!

Her voice drifted huskily in and out of key as she let the rhythm guide her work. The boy joined in too, his higher treble drifting above the field. It was the sort of song that called for improvised verses - what the knights rode and what truths they found very much depended on who was listening and who was improvising. The older woman began, singing a couplet once through alone, and then the rest singing it back to her in response.

A knight rode out upon a horse.
His mane of hair was curled and coarse!

The chorus came round again, and then Dove sang, leaning around the cart as she shovelled a refill,

A knight rode out upon a mule.
It bucked and threw her, like a fool!

The horse swivelled its ears back at her voice and shifted its weight in the cart's shafts. The boy at once reached up to pat it soothingly. Dove took her bucket and started a new row. She was beginning to get the measure of the work and to spread the fertiliser steadily enough to make each bucket do an entire furrow.

[Dove Brown]

Behind her, the boy sang out,

They dig up truth like a dog digs bones
And carry it deep inside the stones...

Dove might be getting the measure of the work, but she still wasn't anything like as fast as the older farmer. That, she supposed, came from practice and experience. She still kept going as fast as she could, but without rushing so fast that she made mistakes like leaving things behind. The rows she was on now sloped slightly towards a ditch at the edge of the field, and the extra effort of dealing with that slope set her calves aching. To distract herself, she looked closer at the corn as she maintained her rhythm of step and sprinkle, step and sprinkle. The colour of the leaves changed as she moved down the row, echoing the work song. They all had some yellow in but the ones at the top of the slope had more yellow than the ones at the bottom of the slope. For a while - almost three whole rows - she tried to figure out why that might be the case. She tried out different possibilities in her head, but none of them really seemed to fit. As she sprinkled and thought, and filled the bucket and sprinkled more, she saw some of the larger crumbs roll a pace or two downhill as they landed in and around their furrow. If they all did that, then all the fertilser would end up at the bottom, she realised. And then the bottom of the slope would get much more feeding than the top... and it's the need for feeding that turns the leaves yellow! That has to be it. She grinned at her discovery and then realised too late that it was her turn to create a verse. She stumbled over it and eventually, after a moment that felt like a year, pulled a verse she'd come up with as a stock filler years ago from the back of her brain.

A knight rode out with an armoured clank
And her horse left dents in the bridge's planks.

The other two shook their heads at such an old familiar rhyme, but echoed it back to her anyway. Dove felt the heat rising in her cheek and ducked her head to pay close attention to her work again. The furrow she was moving along right now had broken down one edge. The soil had slipped into the centre, leaving very little indentation where part of the furrow ought to be. Dove frowned, looked at the tools she carried, and settled on the scoop. She moved over the broken section, scattering fertiliser, then put her peg and her bucket down and went back. Trying to keep to the line of the furrow, she dug the edge of the scoop into the ground, scraped up some of the soil, and made a new, wavering edge to the furrow. She backed up a bit so she couldn't trample the new bit, then repeated the process until the broken section had a clear furrow once more.

[Dove Brown]

She backed carefully away from the new furrow, then turned and picked up her bucket and peg. She moved on, watching her feet to make sure she didn't damage any more of the furrow. Five furrows to go. She ran back down the new one to refill, trying to place her feet to either side of that row's furrow and not sure she succeeded. Her heart hammered at the pace and her breath burned a little in her throat. The load in the cart was shrinking, and she had to boost herself up on the wheel and lean well into the bed of the cart to scoop fertiliser into her bucket. She jumped down again and went back to the row she'd run down. The wind shifted and a gusty breeze sent her next handful flying back to land in her mouth and on her clothes, rather than dropping into the furrow she had aimed for. She swore, sneezed and spat to get the taste out of her mouth. The next gust made her snap her mouth shut despite the foul taste still on her tongue. There was no way she wanted another dose!

The wind meant she used more of the fertiliser than she would otherwise, and she had to put the peg in, and go back for another refill. She climbed up again, but she must have put her weight wrong on the wheel. It turned just enough to pull her off balance so that she fell against the cart and then landed on the dirt of the field headland. The bucket wobbled on the tailboard, then tilted over. She watched it come. Time stretched out for her. The bucket's fall seemed so slow, and yet she couldn't move fast enough to grab it. She was just rolling over and reaching up when it slid past her groping hand and landed on Dove's ribs. Ahead of it, its partial load drifted down out of the air towards Dove. She had a moment to close her mouth, and felt her teeth clash together behind her lips. Then the manure spread lightly over her, coating her from top to toe in dusty dark brown particles that clung wherever they touched. The blow from the bucket was almost a relief and she grabbed onto the handle tightly. "Not again," she mumbled to herself. "What is it about me and falling this season? Maybe I should keep my feet on the ground for now." At the other end of the cart she heard half muffled sniggers from the boy. The horse, meanwhile, shifted its feet, lifted its tail and lightened its own load by dropping a fresh batch of manure on the ground. Dove hoped fiercely that it landed on the boy's feet.

Slowly, grudgingly, she picked herself off the ground and did her best to brush herself off with grubby hands. Half the fertiliser just smudged, and she knew right then that everything she wore today would need to be washed before it would be fit to wear again. She just hoped it wouldn't stain.

[Sayana]

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request. If there's anything I may have missed, please PM me and I'll be happy to look into it.

 

Dove

Skills

• Observation: 5
• Socialization: 2
• Horsemanship: 1
• Endurance: 4
• Leadership: 1
• Farming: 4
• Agriculture: 4
• Bodybuilding: 4
• Planning: 1
• Acrobatics: 2
• Singing: 2
• Intelligence: 1
• Digging: 1
• Running: 1
• Climbing: 1

Lores

• Agriculture: Distributing manure to use as fertilizer
• Song: The Knights Ride Out
• Plant leaves turn yellow without sufficient fertilizer
• Agriculture: Evenly fertilizing plants on slopes
• Getting covered in manure

Comments: Poor Dove. She tries so hard. But I’m sure she's going to get better at this rate. Great job, it was a fun read. And I hope I gave the song title justice. If you have a better name, just PM me and I'll change the lore to suit the title. I rather enjoyed the song you came up with.

Your Grader,

Sayana

Boxcode design: Firenze