2.2 Dirt Poor

Thexi was in over her ears.

“Big Sis Juby warned me Gowk was trouble,” Thexi muttered, large incisors nibbling on her lip as she hopped back to the house, the morning already growing warm. “Big Sis proclaimed him faithless trash, spent too much time dropping tung on women. He promised he’d changed and I loved him - thriceblinded fool that I am - and look where that dropped me?” Thexi kept hopping along with skirts up to her bustle, against all propriety with scandalous unmentionables exposed to the entire wasteland, because mama taught her proper manners and a lady Calepori should never hop (or bare her short fur). Hopping also encouraged racial stereotypes and mama hated being classified as something other than a lady. Only, mama wasn’t here. “Big Sis said it was dumb to save myself for marriage, but I stuck to it! Not half a year later I’m on the streets without anything. What good did my years at the music conservatory do then? Can’t eat opera and none of the saloons were hiring singing girls. Took three hungry days to swallow my pride and turn tricks. Swallowed plenty of things I don’t like since.”

“No going back, though,” Thexi insisted, though maybe also convincing herself. “Mama would be very happy and I’d love to see Big Sis again, but I won’t be the Pretty Perfect Daughter anymore. I won’t!” Her ears twitched backwards, picking up Qastael closing the barn and dragging the sheep away. Thexi wasn’t speaking loudly, but she mumbled even lower, unsure how keen those massive floppy dog ears were on the giantess dragon. “Not a dragon! She nearly bit Benster Phallips in half when he called her that. Still think I’m half a growl away from soiling my knickers anytime she bares those teeth. Mouth the size of a carriage. Keeps looking at me like I’m the next snack, licking her snout with that long forked tongue. Nine hundred pounds eating a day? That’s six of me!”

Thexi reached the front door to the main farmhouse, pausing to grab at her paunch and pinch flab in her buttocks, sighing. “Alright, five of me.” The plump girl grimaced, pushing the door open and stomping inside. “Four at most. See? I can do math proper and be honest! Stupid Calepori genetics.” She fumbled around in the dark, trying to find a candle or something, all the shutters closed and leaving the main room in dimness. “One thing I miss from Yrlmuh is thaumlamps. Like living in the backward end of hickville, flint and steeling open flame that can burn the house down if I sneeze wrong. Miss chanting a light on and off. Why are enchantments so expensive out here?”

The nervous girl shut her mouth and brushed her chopped ruin of her once long hair out of her eyes, babbling to herself a bad habit from being alone in Yrlmuh. Or being alone in Farthest From. Not wanting to dwell on nineteen years spent alone in one capacity or another, Thexi found a lamp and lit it, moving upstairs into the large study packed in every wall with handwritten notes.

“Didn’t realize it was such a mess.” Setting the lamp down, she tiptoed around spilled leather binders and loose parchment, opening the shutters and letting light inside. The room was utilitarian, an upraised desk in one corner with larger sheets for maps and architecture, a more cozy and worn desk with ink, blotting sand and a stack of quills sitting next to freshly crafted charcoal sticks. Everything else was shelves stuffed past capacity with parchment and leather. The smell of the room was intoxicating, heady with history and knowledge. “Ok, not so bad, just a few spilled binders. One window needs fixing because her dragon arm couldn’t fit in a tight hole.” Thexi immediately covered her mouth, for some reason tasting the alchemical burn in her throat of all the spermicidal potions she guzzled the past months. Madame Zeshyrrith always provided top quality thaumian recipes to keep her girls healthy and working, but those potions tasted bad enough to leave lasting rancid memory and that taste gurgled up her throat when she was nervous.

After the scaly lady in question didn’t suddenly materialize and crisp her into oven-roasted rabbit breakfast, Thexi relaxed and admonished herself silently to stay on target, picking up spilled notes and attempting to put the room back into pristine order.

“Crop Rotations are on this shelf. Fertilizer Management, notations reference Harvest Yields going back fifty years.” Each leather binder had small neat handwriting labeling what it tracked, the order it was cataloged and the years it covered. “Who was this Plone? I don’t think there is a detail of a single grain that isn’t tracked minute by minute, from seed to market, since he started this farm. Was he just this passionate, or was there something else?”

Neat and tidy now, Thexi took the booklet Daily Accounting for Reiti in the current year - the one Qastael mentioned Plone made notes in to account for her largess appetite - to the smaller desk and flipped through, arranging a blank sheet for notes and thumbing a charcoal stick in one paw. Felt like old times in the conservatory to the young musician, skimming through the entries in the last pages while humming a complex ditty. It read like part journal, giving Thexi a feel for the man who spent his life working this land. The final important pages were more personal than previous entries filled with cramped facts and figures.

Reiti 21, Year 7881

The skies finally calmed down enough to look over the damage. Probably going to lose a quarter of the harvest, those rains haven’t come down this hard in thirty years. Lucky I didn’t lose everything. Good long term for the aquifer, but I won’t live that long. Suns are hotter than typical for mid spring, everything is going to be dust by tomorrow. Biggest loss is the orchards. Mudslide uprooted most of the trees. Worst loss I’ve seen since me and Asavn made claim. The hands lost faith, most of them taking the gold and the rest taking the goats for their wages. I want to be angry, but who can blame them? Nowhere is finished.

Reiti 22, Year 7881

Really missing the hands, difficult for me to milk my own cows. Ten years ago it’d be nothing to care for so little livestock, the farm feels so empty right now. I’ve come to terms that I don’t have any reason to keep going. Asavn would tell me tomorrow would be better, but she isn’t here. Always wanted to create something larger than myself, give something to a son or daughter, leave them with a bit of myself and Asavn. Now I don’t even have someone to help dig my own grave. Well, nothing doing, gonna have to do it myself like always. After I finish up I’ll head to the barn and let the animals out. Bitter taste in my mouth, knowing everything I tried to accomplish failed.

Reiti 23, Year 7881

Guess I really am a coward. Couldn’t finish my own grave, joints too old to use a shovel. Went to the barn earlier and did as much milking as I could, gathered some eggs, just couldn’t open the stalls. Why can’t I accept what the Pantheons dealt me? I miss Avasn something sore, yet I cling to life, I cling to Nowhere. I can hardly walk, yet I pruned the tomatoes as if I would just haunt this land. Some shambling, lifeless creature forever. Why can’t I accept death?

Reiti 23, Year 7881 cont

Something is coming up from Wylo real slow. Might get to the house before dusk, might not. Standing upright, so it might be someone, can’t be sure. Big, whatever it is. Guess this is it.

Reiti 23, Year 7881 cont

Heha! Can’t believe the Pantheons actually listened for once! Her name is Qastael, and if’n she isn’t a real dragon I’ll eat my boot. Hurt bad, gave her all the herbs for infection but I haven’t felt this good about the future in years. Decades! Even has an egg, so this could be everything I ever wanted, a legacy. When the twins died, always felt hollow. Like I was counting down instead of wanting something more. I haven’t tasted happiness since Avasn passed, and it is so sweet. Just have to muddle through a bit longer and then I’ll give her everything.

Let me see if I can feed her until harvest, first. Gonna need to tighten the belt, that is for sure. Got the stores logged in one of these pages, I’ll do that first then work on calculating the harvests in the morning when I can ask her what she usually eats.

Living suddenly matters again.

Thexi was not ashamed to admit she stared and reread the numbers over and over again ten times, trying to make sense of anything. She knew some of those words, but ultimately her frustrations summed up with an exasperated question:

“What’s a bushel?”

Whistling unladylike through her incisors, this was only the basics of Plone’s inventory. She still had to find out what the livestock ate and how much, then later that day go over estimates for the eventual harvest. After that, gather as much information on cultivating dozens of different crops and determining when and how they were harvested. The inventory was the simplest part, and it felt impossible.

“I’m in way over my ears,” Thexi muttered, standing and squinting her way down each and every booklet in the library. “Best start somewhere, like figure what a bushel is.”