• Solo • A Sowing of Tame Oats

[Jachiel]

10 Vhalar 716

Jachiel considered the pouch of seed he'd been supplied with. It was oats, of course. It would be, he thought with a grimace. The powers that be wanted farmers to grow nothing but food that could be used in the army. Oats did a double duty in that situation - they filled both a horse's nosebag, and a soldier's bowl of porridge. Oats in the morning, beans at night, while in camp, had been the usual army fare Jachiel had eaten, and he suspected it was the same here. When the army was on the march, the meals switched. Oats could cook fairly quickly, but beans needed to simmer for hours. So the cooks started both at the same time, once you stopped for the night. Oats became the evening meal and the beans, having simmered all night, were ready to eat by morning.

Normally, a farmer held the seed with one hand and broad cast it with the other, but he was going to have to come up with an adaptation to that. Somehow. He turned the pouch around on the table, examining it from all sides. There was a pull-cord that kept it shut, which meant that hanging it off his belt was just going to pull it tighter shut, and he really didn't want to have to stop and open it at every step. There was his other pouch though, the one that hooked to the toolbelt, the one that was part of the kit he used for growing the brambles. That one had a flap, not a drawstring. He dug it out of the chest and buckled it on, along with the belt. Yes, he decided, as a slow smile climbed from his mouth to his eyes, that one was big enough to hold the other, and he could reach it easily enough to broad cast from. He folded the flap back and tucked it down between his belt and his body to keep it out of his way, then loosened the string on the seed pouch and set that pouch inside his belt pouch. He checked the motion one more time, and then clapped on his hat, went out of the house and over to the bare field. The single sun still beat down on his shoulders, but it wasn't quite as bad as the double suns of Saun.

He unlatched the gate that kept out the ox, went through, and closed it behind him, then turned right and walked along beside the fence until he came to the first corner. Then he turned to face down the length of the field. He had to sow the whole thing, so he might as well do it in a practical, logical manner, from one edge of the field to the other. Since he was left handed, starting on the right would mean that badly thrown seed would land further inside the field rather than outside it. He took a deep breath, let it out, and dipped his hand into the seed. He drew out a scant handful and swung his arm out and away from his body in an arc, letting the seeds fly through his fingers as he did so. The seeds landed on the turned soil in a wide semi-circle, not quite even, but that, he thought, would improve with practice.

[Jachiel]

He nodded to himself, stepped over the sown seed and reached for another handful. He tossed that in another arc, but he rushed the arm sweep and the seed landed in a clump rather than in an even spread. He grimaced, but it wasn't as if it was an irretrievable mistake. He had to come back over the field anyway to cover the seeds with soil so that the wild birds didn't eat it all before it sprouted. The cat had fun chasing the birds, but she couldn't be everywhere at once and it only made sense to take basic precautions. He could spread the clumps out then. He took another pace and another handful, tossing this one with more care, so as not to make more work for himself than he had to.

The arc of the seed was like the seasons of the arc, he mused, as he worked his way pace by pace and handful by handful across the field. It was supposed to run smoothly, but the trials clumped and clustered, a small knot here for Cylus, a long spread for Ashan - or Vhalar - a shorter, more balanced section there for Zi'da... And you buried them all just the same in the soil and moved on. Memories did the same, forming long stretches of sameness that blurred together, and then clumping bursts of many things at once into a few trials. But if trials were seed, who was the sower? He shook his head at his own arrogance in comparing himself to the Seven, or even the Immortals. It was foolishness, and all too likely to bring something unpleasant down on him in retaliation.

Concentrate on the task in hand, he told himself as he reached the end of the field and turned to come back. Literally, the task, the seed, in your hand. He glanced ahead of him as he cast, and saw that a sparrow had come down to peck at his first toss - and the cat was stalking it. A smile twitched at his mouth, but something startled the sparrow and it took off just as the cat pounced. The cat landed unsuccessfully on empty ground, then promptly sat down and washed a paw, as if that was what she had intended to do all along.

Jachiel chuckled dryly. "Thanks for guarding the seed, your cattiness," he told her, as he stepped forward yet again, and closed the gap between them by one pace and one broad cast. "You'll have to do better than that if you want to catch your own dinner though!"

The cat gave him a disgusted look, curled her tail around her, and switched paws.

[Jachiel]

Jachiel chuckled, and kept up his steady working pace. As long as he concentrated, he was getting a nice even coverage of seed on the ground, and that woke a quiet satisfaction in him. Wth this, he was no longer a laboure harvestng someone else's crop, but a farmer on his terms, seeing a crop from sowing, through the care it needed as it grew, to a harvest, and the ploughing under of the stubble to feed the next crop on the field. It fitted the rhythm in his soul, the way that the sea tides fitted into a sailor's soul, long, and slow, and deep, and bright with new growth over the scars of old ploughing ruts.

For a moment he was starkly aware of the way his bad arm moved out of rhythm with the rest of his body, then it faded into the background again as he drew level with the cat. A couple of the seeds flew wide enough to strike the cat's side, and she shot away up a post and sat there glaring at Jachiel with an offended look. Jachiel tried not to laugh in response. Instead, he made the last cast of seed, unfolded the flap from behind his belt, and let it fall shut over the pouch. He stretched, shook out the muscles of his hand that ached where they had done so much of the fine work, and went to fetch the rake.

He found the rake in the shed, lifted it down and found that it was head-heavy. He wrestled with getting a decent carrying grip on it for a moment and finally compromised by propping it over his shoulder like a spear and marching it back to the field. Once inside the field, he swung it round so that the head rested on the ground, and steadied the wooden haft along his forearm. Taking up a position in the centre of the field, he faced across the row he'd walked first, lifted the rake head over the seed and then drew it back towards him. The teeth of the rake dug into the dry plough ridges, pulled them down over the sown seeds, and covered them from sight.

Jachiel grinned briefly in satisfaction, then turned himself and his rake a half circle so that now he faced the end of the row that he had walked second. He repeated the process of pulling the soil over the seed and nodded to himself. This method of raking both rows at the same time was going to work, as long as he didn't hit any unexpected snags further down the line. He moved a pace onward, and turned back to the first row, careful not to disturb any of the seed as he manouvered therake from one row to the other. This one was going to be more tricky, he noted internally as he heaved the rake into place. He needed to first spread out the seed, and then cover it over. There was, of course, he mused with an almost entirely inward flicker of humour, no point in doing it in reverse order...

[Pegasus]

Jachiel

Points!:

Story: 5/5
Collaboration: NA (solo thread)
Structure: 5/ 5

Knowledge:

Agriculture: Tools and equipment for sowing seeds
Agriculture: Demand for oats is high
Agriculture: Techniques for hand-sowing seeds
Agriculture: Rectifying all mistakes allows for a better harvest
Agriculture: Planting oats.
Agriculture: Raking techniques
Business Management: Meeting demand maximises profit.
Endurance: Sowing an entire field with one hand is tiring.

Loot:

NA

Fame:

NA

Magic:

These points may NOT be used for arcana

Overview:

General comments.
Story A pleasant read ~ I really enjoy these "brief moments" sort of threads where we get an insight into the pcs and this is no different. There is a very real sense of walking alongside Jachiel and watching what he does, as he laughs at the cat and enjoys the feeling of this being his farm not him working for someone else.
Structure All good, no worries at all.


Please do PM me if you've got any questions, comments or feel I've missed anything.