AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It sounds like a lot of work.”
“It is,” I told her, shrugging. “But this is all there is. This work of providing for yourself in the most basic of ways. Don’t gotta go and head out to work, letting that eat up eight – or more – of your hours. Simple life. But satisfying too in its own way.”
“So… if this is all you grow,” she said a while later, carefully picking green beans off the plants, “how do you make full meals?”
“Get beans and grains when I head into town to fill up on supplies.”
“You couldn’t grow your own? I mean… I don’t know how or what you grow to make grains and pastas and whatnot, but you have the space.”
“They’re a little more temperamental. And it’s hard to keep the animals off them. Got cages for the garden. But grains grow big and long and high. It’s harder to keep ’em protected. But I get pretty much all the grains you can get. Rices, quinoa, amaranth, barley, – what?”
“You’re forgetting the most important one,” she informed me, shooting me a raised brow over her shoulder as she moved onto the blueberry bushes, popping one between her lips curiously before starting to load them into her basket. “Pasta,” she informed me with an eye roll. “You can’t live without pasta. Spaghetti, baked dishes, mac & cheese. Oh, well, I guess you don’t have cheese…”
“I can pick up cheese. What?” I asked when her lips pressed together, clearly wanting me to add something else to my list, but not wanting to ask for more, likely thinking I had already offered to do enough for her.
“Chocolate?” she asked, shooting me doe eyes. I hadn’t seen doe eyes in a fucking dog’s age. It was no less effective than it had been in the past either. “I mean… I know you’re all about that homesteading life. And I get it if…”
“Everyone’s entitled to some vices. Coffee, alcohol. Cheese and chocolate,” I added, feeling the edges of my lips curve up at the smile that pulled at hers. “Would you come?” I asked as we took our harvest back toward the cabin.
“Come where?”
“Town,” I explained. “Not anytime soon,” I added when she seemed to tense up. “Finn is going to take a list and bring it in when he comes with some clothes for you. But down the road. When supplies run low.”
“Maybe?” It was a question more than a statement. “I mean, if you need a hand, I…”
“Can do it myself if you would rather hang back,” I cut her off, knowing how long it took me to be able to head into town when I first came into the woods, how I chafed at the idea of being back in society again. “The dogs stay back. You couldn’t be safer. Even without me here.”
“I, ah, we’ll see, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “What’s the matter?” she asked, body stiffening.
“Something’s wrong,” I told her, shoving the basket at her, not even pausing to see if she managed to pile it on top of hers before I rushed off, throwing myself over the top of the animal pen, following a sound that sounded wrong, off.
Bleating, but muffled.
Pained, I figured.
It didn’t take me long to find the source, find her.
Anya.
One of my oldest goats.
Too old, I thought, to be breeding. But there had been no denying the bulge out the sides of her body that got bigger by the day.
She hadn’t been a good breeder from the jump, often producing stillborns or ones too small to thrive once they were born.
And now, it seemed, something was definitely wrong.
First, it was too soon.
Second, she was in too much pain, fading fast.
“Is she in labor?” Meadow asked a while later, likely after having deposited the fruits and vegetables in the house then figuring out how to get over the fence without scraping the shit out of her bare thighs.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, baby,” she murmured, voice soft as she moved past me, dropping down to her knees in the straw by Anya’s head, softly stroking her hand down her head. “Not feeling so hot, huh?” she went on, her eyes a little worried as she looked at me. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah,” I told her, rolling up my sleeves, getting down by Anya’s rear end.
Maybe I should have told her to leave, to let me handle this. My gut was telling me that this wasn’t going to have a favorable end, that I would be saying goodbye to a very sweet-natured goat. And knowing that maybe more sadness was not what she would need in her life with how fragile her mental state clearly still was.
But, somehow, I was happy she was there, that I wouldn’t have to do it alone.
Never having been the type to need to lean on anyone before, I knew it was weird to feel that way now. But there would be time to deal with that later. When there wasn’t blood and pain to deal with.
