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There is a crumbling barn at the end of the settlement where we used to keep a taura and a couple of thistles. But the dark elves came and took them, citing that we needed permission to have livestock.
We applied for this permission. Of course, we did. We’ve been waiting for an answer for three years.
Anyway, we have refitted the barn as best we could with what little we have to house all the new additions to our settlement.
“I hate this,” Sandy, one of my other neighbors, grumbles. We’re handing out breakfasts to everyone new to Lowtown. Sandy has just had a baby, and she is still nursing, but she is off to work today because she doesn’t have a choice.
“What do you hate?” I ask her almost absentmindedly.
Despite all the negative changes in my life, I have been feeling strangely disconnected from it all.
I have never been one to show too much emotion – I keep my rage and sadness well in check – but even so. I have been feeling a lot less despondent than before.
I haven’t been feeling particularly happy.
I have just been feeling…
Nothing.
My hand goes to my neck, but I force myself to put my hand down and focus on the task in front of me.
I am still wearing the necklace, and every time I need some kind of reassurance, I reach for it almost automatically.
“I hate that we work for those bastards, and we don’t get paid enough to live on. And they say that they give us a free place to stay here.” Sandy gestures at our neighborhood, if it can be called that, which is looking worse and worse each day. “But we spend all our money fixing leaky ceilings and cleaning up shit.”
“I know what you mean.” I sigh. I give a bowl of food, which is little more than gruel covered with warm dripir fat, to a child who cannot be older than twelve. “Things are getting worse and worse every day.”
Today is my day off, a day that only comes around once a month. Once I finish the shared village chores, I go back to my home and pull on a pair of beat-up boots, and a thick coat and head for the forest.
I forage every morning, but I only have a little time during those hours. Today, I’ll have a good twelve hours to make a clean sweep of the forest.
The sun is rising earlier every day, and the light is finally penetrating the thick tree cover.
That is a good thing. Because the sunlight, coupled with the morning dew and the sporadic rainy days, means that the seeds, nuts, and bulbs left behind by forgetful animals are springing into life.
If I’m lucky, I’ll have a good, fruitful day, where I find enough vegetables and maybe even some fruit to keep our pots going for a few days.
And I might even find some seeds and bulbs to plant in my own garden and share with Sandy, who is stubbornly dedicated to cultivating the best vegetable garden in all of Lowtown.
The walk through the forest does me good. The air is no longer too cold to inhale, and the sky is warmer because it is close to noon.
I start at the sparsest part of the forest, and my heart leaps in my chest when I find several patches of clean sweetgrass and burgona bulbs that are so big that I can see the heavy, round shapes coming out of the ground.
I stop halfway through my trek through the forest when I come across a trail of blood. My stomach turns when I see animal entrails close by.
I am almost afraid to push through a small thicket of trees, but I move forward, too curious to let it go.
What I find is a dead, fully-grown female capra.
I examine the animal carefully, looking for signs of disease. But all I find are wounds, which were probably made by wild worgs.
I am not sure where the capra would have come from, but I’ll have to tell the men to come and fetch the beast because there is quite a lot of meat left.
Then I continue my sweep of the forest until I reach the place where I found the necklace.
The familiar sound of fluttering wings alerts me to Skye’s presence. Though it must be afternoon now, and the sun should be high in the sky, the closer I get to the little clearing where I found the necklace, the darker the forest gets.
My pockets and my large hessian bag suddenly feel heavy with everything I have collected. I breathe faster, more erratically, and for a second, the necklace feels hot and heavy against my skin.
