As the meal wound down, Jeb’s aunt gestured for him to follow her back to kiln. The moment that they entered, another pile of corn came pouring through the entrance. His aunt rolled her eyes.
“Can you handle this load while I go stoke the fires?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Jeb replied, already calling the Glyph to mind. Before his aunt had made it down the stairs, the first batch of corn was already pouring down the chute. To his surprise, there wasn’t another batch already coming in.
As he felt the heat in the room grow more constant, Jeb kept waiting for another load of corn to be dropped in. His aunt came up before it did.
“Why isn’t there more corn yet?” he asked.
“Just because the kiln is right next to the town meal doesn’t mean that the fields are,” his aunt said. “It takes time for the Harvesters to move the produce from the fields into town, to say nothing of the time it takes to harvest the crops.”
She paused for a moment, so Jeb assumed the conversation was over. As he started to call Least Move Air to mind to help reset some of the currents in the room, she spoke again. “Also, I would have to assume that they’re no longer focusing on corn to the exclusion of everything else.”
Jeb let the Glyph fade from his mind in an instant. “What do you mean?”
“You remember yesterday’s dinner, right?”
Jeb nodded.
“The subtext in that conversation that I suppose you must have missed was that they were curious how fast we could actually work, if we needed to. My best guess is that they spent the entire day yesterday only harvesting corn. Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if a few people also hung around the mill to make it move that little bit faster.”
Before Jeb could ask what that meant, his aunt continued. “Most of the crops that we harvest don’t need to be dried out. Generally, I would expect to see two to three loads of corn an hour. Yesterday, we were going through around ten to twelve.”
“How could you tell?” Jeb asked. He immediately started thinking of the possible answers. Chief among them was that there were only twenty four hours in a day, so if she kept track of the number of loads they did between meals, that would at least be close to how many they did in twenty four hours.
“One of my Class Skills is a timer,” she responded. “It makes malting grain far easier, because I can walk away, knowing how long I have to do other tasks before I need to be back. How have you been keeping track of time?”
“When I’m outside, I look at the passage of the sun?” Jeb responded questioningly. “Otherwise, I don’t. I’ve just been taking breaks as you told me to.”
His aunt put her head in her hands. She muttered something that sounded like “this boy will be the death of his teachers,” before shaking her head and standing up again. “Well,” she said, tone indicating that she had moved past whatever she had been thinking about, “how do you want to spend the time between loads?”
Jeb considered that. “If I had my lute, I would like to work on the new Song that the Bard told me to learn,” he said. “Otherwise, I suppose that working to even out my Mental Statistics would be a good idea. I think I even still have some space left to grow my Physical Statistics.” He looked at his Statistics again, remembering what his grandfather had told him about his Class progression.
“Actually,” he corrected himself, “there are a few linked things I need to work on. My Charisma is far too low right now, and I need to raise that at least fifteen points. Once I do that, my lowest Physical Statistic can be as high as forty, which is more than fine. As long as I don’t raise any of my Physical Statistics too high, I don’t need to increase my Magic Affinity, which is still my highest Statistic.” His musings were interrupted by another load of corn coming in.
Without thinking about it, Jeb pulled the moisture from the load and used a brief flex of Least Move Air to push the corn into the exit chute. The moments that it took were enough for his mind to catch up to his thoughts. “I guess that really just means that the best thing for me to do right now is to learn some songs for lute and voice, since each of those is worth points of Charisma.”
“I can man the kiln for as long as it takes you to go get your lute,” his aunt said. “Especially since you just saved me fifteen minutes.”
Jeb rushed back to the farm to take his lute. On the way, he saw a number of carts coming into town. As his aunt had suggested, very few of them had corn inside. Instead, most were filled with tubers and other vegetables that could be stored somewhere cool over the winter. He even saw one filled with apples, which was a surprise. It seemed early in the harvest to already be taking in a load of them.
Jeb considered asking about that for a moment. As he opened his mouth to do so, though, he thought about the optics of the situation. Asking about the order that things were harvested in at least implicitly implied that he thought there was a better one. Since he had no clue what the optimal order for any of the harvest was, it seemed best to not ask what was happening. His aunt would be just as able to answer the questions, after all.
After grabbing his lute, he had a moment of concern. The room that he was working in was far hotter than anywhere else that he had taken the lute. Working on impulse more than any real understanding, Jeb prodded the connection between the lute and himself. The feeling he got from the lute was that it would be able to handle any heat that he was able to handle. Still, just to be safe, he started playing Lute Enforcement as he walked back to the kiln, first running his Mana through Attune Fire Mana.
Back at the kiln, he saw that his aunt was just finishing kilning a batch of corn. The rest of the day passed with Jeb and his aunt kilning the corn with flames and heat, rather than Mana. With the Mana Jeb conserved, he tried to learn the Ephemeral Song that the Bard had tried to teach him. When he ran out of Mana, he started working through the Lute Method Book that he had taken to storing in the case.
By dinner time, he had almost learned another song. It had taken him far longer than it should, but Jeb didn’t feel comfortable singing about the glories of joining the Republican Army after everything that his grandfather had told him. The next song that wasn’t explicitly directing the listeners to join was a little harder than his skill level. If his experiences learning Glassblowing had taught him anything, though, it was the value of sticking to his beliefs.
Because he no longer had any real downtime, Jeb forgot to ask his aunt what the singular load of apples had been for. He quickly got an answer at dinner time. Everyone got a fresh apple bake. Jeb was surprised to see how much everyone’s mood picked up when they started eating it. Asking his aunt about that, she chuckled a little.
“Harvesting is hard work, and it can feel like there’s no real difference day to day. That’s a major reason why your grandfather pushed the town to have communal dinners every day during the harvest. It helps build a sense of town camaraderie and it means that everyone gets the nutrients they need to work effectively. Over the years, he’s refined that pattern more and more. By day three, most people are starting to work through their own energy reserves, just because it’s somewhat difficult to eat all of the calories you need in a day in a single sitting. Making sure everyone gets a baked apple helps to ensure that they have the energy for another day of work.”
“Thank you for explaining,” Jeb responded.
His grandfather happened to be walking along when his aunt gave her explanation, and he nodded his head. “If I could add something?”
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Seeing his aunt nod, his grandfather spoke, “those are all true reasons. There is another reason, though it’s slightly less altruistic. Think about how rarely we have baked apples that have this much sugar and spice. By making sure that harvest time is when everyone eats the best, it makes people excited for the harvest, rather than dreading the weeks without sleep or major downtime.”
Jeb’s grandfather walked off, and Jeb considered what he had said. It made some amount of sense. He had always looked forward to the harvest as much to help his family as for the communal meals. Thinking back, the food did always seem better than anything else he would eat.
After dinner, Jeb and his aunt returned to the kiln. He reflected for a moment about how different it was working in the kiln than in the fields. When he had been working with the Harvesters, the night time work was more difficult, because you had to work by moonlight, which washed everything out. Inside the kiln, though, everything was the same shade of light throughout the day. Jeb had asked about the fact that the kiln seemed so sealed.
“We’re next to the mill,” his aunt said, “and while they try to keep all of the dust from milling carefully sorted and disposed of, there’s always some amount that stays in the air there. While we try to keep the flames well controlled here, there’s always a chance of a stray spark, so we keep the mill and kiln as separated as we can, to prevent any chance of a fire.”
Before they could keep talking, a load of corn poured into the room. Jeb started smoothing it out into a sheet while his aunt went downstairs to adjust the heat.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 8193/100
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Total Statistic Load: 370 Physical Load: 139 Strength: 33 Dexterity: 26 Endurance: 35 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 231 Intelligence: 47 Willpower: 54 Magic Affinity: 57 Mana Depth: 39 Charisma: 34
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Mana: 1580
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Glyph Attunement: 28 Least Shape Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Water - Efficient Tier 3 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Water Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Earth Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana - Efficient Tier 2 Spell Attune Air Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Fire Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Sand Mana Tier 0 Spell Least Create Sand Tier 1 Spell Attune Sand Mana - Efficient Tier 2 Spell
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Bard Songs Known: 1 Lute Enforcement
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics Lute Playing Singing Musician Pollination Brewing Distilling Bardic Magic Smithing Wood Identification Woodworking Soil Improvement Enchanting Glassblowing
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)