Solo Little Lamb

[Dove Brown]

50 Spring 516

When Dove turned up to be assigned her work for the day, instead of one single task, she found herself taking on a string of shorter tasks and errands. First of all, she was handed a list of names to take up to the barns. She took the slate it was chalked on carefully in her hands and ran through the chill of the early spring dawn to warm herself up. By the time she got to the barns, she was warm but out of breath and glad to take a moment to stand still, catch her breath, and get a hold of herself while the man read the message over to himself.

He nodded slowly, then asked Dove, "Do you have any more messages to run? Filling this list out will go quicker with two."

Dove shook her head. Nobody had given her more than the initial errand so she was free to work wherever she was needed. "I'm free to help, if you need me," she said, warily drawing closer to see what the task was. "What is it that needs to be done? I'm not exactly fussy about what I do, so long as it's honest work..."

"These are the sowers for today, he explained, as he showed her the list of names. "Each of them needs a bag of seed measured out and taken to them, so they can get that seed into the fields they've been assigned. It's wheat today - Syliras eats a lot of bread so that's a lot of fields to sow." He pointed out a stack of bags on straps long enough to sling across the body, and then a row of grain barrels with a large scoop sat on the top of them. Dove recognised them as the ones she'd helped to fill when she worked at threshing and winnowing the last harvest. She just nodded as the man continued to talk and explain. "You put five level scoops into each bag, and then tie it shut so that none of the seed-corn escapes, you understand? When you've filled and tied each one, put it over on that pile there." He pointed to a pile of rounded bags that was barely a pile at all, only three or four bags leaning on each other.

[Dove Brown]

Dove nodded again and moved off towards the barrels. The man watched as she levered up a lid, fetched the first bag, measured out the five scoops and knotted the bag tightly shut for transport. He nodded back to her in acknowledgement that she had done it right and moved off to his own set of bags and barrels, beginning to fill those as well. Dove took her first bag over to the pile, picked up a second on the way back, and began to fill it. The grain level in the barrel shrank as she worked, and as it got lower, she had to bend further to reach it, and getting the scoop filled level got harder. That was one of the hazards of being so small, she was certain. Experience at many things had told her that for just about everything, bigger was better. Small had only disadvantages, and on top of that, you had to work with tools and containers that were the wrong size. The edge of the barrel dug into her ribs as she bent over it and stretched down to fill the scoop for the last couple of bags and she was glad to tie the last of them shut and be done with it.

At the man's direction, she lifted an armful of bags and carried them out to a waiting cart. They piled them into the back, and after the man checked with Dove to confirm that she could drive a horse - Dove could, a little, as long as it was a calm horse - he waved her up onto the driver's seat and gave her directions for delivery. Dove listened carefully, nodded her understanding, picked up the reins and shook them gently. The horse ambled forward. It seemed to know where it was going, so Dove let it get on with it, only tugging the reins when she really needed to. There was no need to interfere unnecessarily. In the fields it meant a wavering plough track behind her. On the roads, it meant veering back and forth, and there was no point to that when you could trust the horse you were driving.

She reached the drop off point and was swarmed by sowers collecting their bags, then turned the cart to a carter who was due to transport manure to fertilise the earliest planted crops. Dove wished them luck, and jumped down, glad to get out of that assignment. Instead, after looking round for a moment, she was called over to the haystacks along the edge of that particular yard. "Another errand, since you're running them," she was told. "We need nets of hay taken out to the sheep, they need the extra before lambing. Stuff the nets for transport - it's easier to carry it that way - and then spread it out for the sheep once you get there. You know where they are, don't you?"

[Dove Brown]

Dove did know where the sheep were penned for lambing and said so, laying out the directions in brisk words, and recieving a thumbs up to show that she had it right. She took the net she was handed and began to stuff it with sweet scented hay. It had been stored over the winter in thatched haystacks, and was still good for the animals. It was getting low now, because soon they would take a new hay crop off the fields that were due for late sown crops, or in the rotation for lying fallow and being grazed this year. The rotation of crops and pastures meant that the ground stayed more fertile, and had more chance to recover from each type of crop before it came round again. Putting the animals out to graze on the fallow fields also fertilised those fields without the farmers having to fertilise them by hand - which Dove was very grateful for. She'd done that task often enough, she'd even had it go badly wrong once, and while plants might like the taste of manure, she did not.

Once the net was full, she swung it over her shoulder and jogged steadily off down the lanes to where the sheep were penned ahead of lambing. These all had red markings on their wool, made by cheap red dye, which meant that they were all due to lamb at about the same time. When Dove reached the pens, she slowed to a walk, and moved through the pens, giving each of the sheep some of the hay out of her net, as she had been instructed. Some of the sheep bent to eat immediately, others nibbled half-heartedly, still others just moved restlessly and ignored the hay. Once she'd emptied her net she turned and started back to get another refill of hay, but a farmer working with the sheep called after her, "Hey, you, girl, how big are your hands? I could do with help here."

Dove stopped, and turned to look at him as a wave of resentment surged through her. So she was small, her hands were small, but she could work as hard as anyone else. There wasn't any need to call attention to the fact that she was tiny. Despite the resentment, she tried to keep her face and voice calm, as she called back, "What's my size got to do with anything? I don't know how to work with sheep..."

"It matters, because mine are too big for this work!" the farmer replied, holding up a hand like a shovel. "I can walk you through it, if you are up to it - it can be messy....the lamb's got a foot tucked back and can't come out. I need someone right now, and you're right here, so I'm asking you. Got it?"

Dove nodded, swallowed, and then came back to the pens. She hurried along the edge until she reached the one with the farmer in, set the net down, and then climbed over the hurdles and bales of straw to stand beside him. Holding out her hands for his inspection, she asked, "Small enough?"

The farmer looked at them and nodded. "Roll your sleeves up as high as they will go, wash your hands in that bucket there, and come kneel beside me."

[Dove Brown]

Dove swallowed, rolled up her light brown sleeves to well above the elbow, scrubbed her hands in the bucket so that they were as clean as the circumstances allowed, and came warily back to the farmer's side. "High enough?" she asked, pointing to her rolled sleeves.

He studied them, nodded, then knelt behind the ewe and parted the wool to show her the problem. "We got a nose and one leg. Should be two legs, so the other one is tucked back and as a result, the lamb's stuck. Needs someone to ease the other leg out so the whole lamb can come out. Small's an advantage here, do you see?"

Dove did see, but she'd only ever worked in the fields, not at anything like this. But - she looked round and checked - there wasn't anyone else to help, and if she didn't, the lamb would probably die. Maybe the grown ewe as well. She swallowed, rubbed her suddenly sweaty hands on her trousers, and knelt beside the farmer. "Um. What do I need to do?"

"You need to push the lamb back to give you room for manouver," the farmer explained without so much as a blink or a thank you. "Needs muscle, but you look like you have that. It helps if you wait for the lull between pushes. Then you hook a finger round the bent leg and ease it round to lie straight beside the other one. Once everything's lined up, the sheep should be able to do the rest."

Dove swallowed again and lifted one hand up to the lamb's nose. She pushed, but she hadn't moved it very far when the sheep pushed back, and undid all the initial work. The animal was surprisingly strong for her size. Dove scowled, waited for the pressure against her hand to ease up, then pushed again. The lamb slid backwards under her shove, and her hand followed it into the tight, warm, slimy passage. She bit down on her lip, bent her head and tried to keep track of the various parts of the lamb by touch. There was no possible way that she could see what she was doing. Things moved against her groping fingers, the ewe strained again, digging painfully into the bones of Dove's arm even as she strained against the animal's push to hold the lamb where it was. A wet nose bumped against her hand as she gritted her teeth and kept going - she'd found the head again! She traced clumsily back along the body, to a sharply angled elbow and down to a teeny tiny hoof. She cupped that one into her hand and groped around for its matchmate on the other side. The ewe strained again, and Dove's face creased in pain and frustration as the lamb escaped past her hand and into the passage where she didn't have room to work.

[Dove Brown]

"I had them for a moment, but they slipped away," she admitted, her gaze dropping to the straw that she knelt on. "Now what?"

The farmer's mouth twisted unhappily and his big hands went out to steady the ewe. "You take a breath and start again. Push the lamb back, find the feet, steer them out, and try and do it right this time. Work faster. The ewe's tiring."

Dove nodded at his words, closed her eyes so that she could focus better, eased her hand back to brace against the lamb, and once again pushed it back to the point where she could work. This time, she worked faster, racing the timing of the ewe's pushes to get the task done. The bruised muscles in her arm trembled and protested at the work but she hung on and forced the effort through. One hoof cupped in her hand. Then, at last, a second hoof. She guided them both to a point just under the lamb's nose, so that all three pinted in the same direction, and when the ewe strained once more, she tried to ignore the grinding pain in her arm and work with the animal to guide the lamb into its proper position. She opened her eyes and said through gritted teeth, "I've got them this time. I think. I hope."

The hooves and legs were too tiny for her to feel sure about pulling, so she just made the effort to guide both the hooves and nose up the passage as she slowly eased her arm back out. That also helped with the pain because it meant that the main pressure dug into a different part of her arm each time she slid it out a bit more. The lamb's nose chased her up the passage, as if trying to shove her out of the way in its hurry to be born. She pulled her arm out faster, and her nose wrinkled involuntarily at the filth and smell that came out along with it. She could see why the farmer had told her to roll up her sleeves as high as they would go, when this was what would have covered her sleeves if she hadn't done as he suggested.

The hooves rushed out in her cupped hand, and the head followed them close behind so that the lamb was finally poking out as it should have been in the first place. There was a heave from the ewe and more of the lamb slithered out in a gush of fluid. The farmer grinned for a change and took over, pulling the lamb out in time to the ewe's heaves and straining, until it lay damply on the floor of the pen. Bits of straw clung to its damp body, and the farmer stooped over it and ran his huge hand over its face to clear the mouth and nose so that it could breathe. The lamb snuffled a little, sneezed twice, and its head wavered up to stare at its new surroundings. The ewe bent to inspect the new arrival, and began to lick it clean as Dove went to scrub herself clean in the bucket. The farmer heaved a sigh of relief. "Good work," he told her. "You've got us a living lamb that we wouldn't otherwise have, and a living ewe we might have otherwise lost, and they've accepted each other, so we won't even have to hand raise it." He have her a nod of respect and went along the pens of sheep to check over the rest of the ewes for potential problems.

[Ball]

Dove Brown
Organization +1
Driving (Cart) +1
Endurance +1
Agriculture +1
Farming +1
Running +2
Animal Husbandry +2
Medicine (Animal) +2

Lores
Endurance: Reaching into large barrels and stretching takes a bit of straining and reaching for a little body.
Farming: Rotating crops keeps the fields vitalized
Medicine (Animal) – Aiding in a Lamb Birthing.
Animal Husbandry – Coaxing out a stuck lamb during birthing

I loved the writing Dove! If I missed something please let me know via PM, otherwise please mark your request as graded