Time and again, Bun’s parents would confiscate the young man’s findings, burying some in the yard, and tossing others at the edge of the forest like so many stale, meaningless bones. Then his parents would send him to the orchard, to pick fruit, or to the pits, to dig trenches for sewage.

It was true that everyone in Challville had to pull their weight. It was for the collective good. Bun knew this, and yet he was unhappy.

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Surely there was more to life than the collective good. Couldn’t he have more than this, picking fruit and digging trenches for sewage? Bun was no engineering genius, but he possessed a gift that others in Challville did not seem to have: a sense of innate freedom and independence.

It seemed odd to Bun that the others in the village seemed incapable of picturing themselves doing anything besides their “life’s work.”