Elessea sat down at her family dinner table with a grumpy plop. Work that day had been rough, the southwest corner of their plot had been flooded, again, and, of course, everybody left it to her to take care of. Before, everybody would pitch in and work on it together, but now, they just assumed she would take care of it in a single breath. Well, it took a lot more than a single breath to fix the land, no matter how much extra mana she had.

She supposed if she actually had proper training she could have fixed it up in a single breath. If she was actually a proper earth mage. But she was not. Every girl in their community was taught the basic farming spells, with a few extra ones like drainage for their farm in the swamp. But those few cantrips were hardly better than digging up the land manually and filling it in with no magic altogether.

Not really, of course, she couldn’t even imagine what farming would be like without the constant spell work to keep it running. Especially here where the swamp was always trying to invade. Always looking for a way in and destroying their hard work! Those insidious bastards. The swamp would be forever her enemy! Farming was life!

Or, it would have been if things hadn’t changed a few months ago.

Ellessea groaned and put her head down on the table. She tried not to think about that.

Her younger brother by a couple years entered in from the kitchen, bringing with him a garlic smelling soup. Ellessea loved garlic and tasting the aroma in the air, her mouth started watering. She decided she could get herself up off the table for this and looked up eagerly at her brother.

“Is that what i think it is?” Ellessea asked excitedly, removing her arms from the table so that her brother could set the soup down in front of her.

“It is,” her brother replied with a smile of his own. “It looked like you needed something special after the hard work you did today.”

Exhaustion forgotten, Ellessea dug into the meal, slurping up the tasty soup as fast as she could swallow. Her brother sat down on the other side of the table and started on his own soup, eating much more politely.

Today’s soup was her favorite, garlic lentil with a few pieces of meat thrown in there. A little extravagant, but her brother liked to spoil her. She looked over at him, several inches shorter than her, but with the same thin frame and full head of brown hair. She wished she had gotten a stouter body from her mother, with more muscle to work on the farm, but all three kids apparently got their frame from their dad. It looked good on her brother, but she had a hard time getting the boy’s attention when she looked like she couldn’t lift a bale of hay, never mind that she simply used magic to assist.

Her brother was named Raul, after their grandfather, and he made the best food in their community. And he made some pretty good quality clothing too. Plus, he was cute and amiable, in an unassuming kind of way; he was everything a woman could want in a man. Ellessea worried that her days of hoarding all this good fortune would end soon, Raul would turn of age in a couple years and then the women of the village will start fighting over him. She needed to enjoy it while it lasted.

She would wallop any unworthy contenders without mercy though. Nobody but the best for her brother!

After gulping down a few more spoonfuls, Ellessea asked the question on her mind, “Where’s mom and dad?”

Raul paused but said carefully, “They went into the city this morning.”

Ellessea grimaced and put down her spoon. They both knew what going into the city meant for their parents and what it meant for Ellessea. Even though she did her best not to think of it, the seasons were still moving. This fall would mark the end of her time here.

She stared down at her soup, lost in thought.

Raul spoke up, “Ellane will be coming back tonight too.”

Ellessea scowled again and then got back to eating her soup. She wasn’t particularly pleased with her younger sister these days. Only Raul understood her.

“Why can’t I just be a farmer?” She complained out loud, looking down at her soup. “That’s all I want.”

“You know why.” Raul said sadly.

‘Yeah, I know why’ Ellessea said to herself. Then out loud, “Because house Yilner are self serving bastards!”

Raul, cringed and looked up and around in alarm. “Ellessea,” he said after a second, “stop that! I know you are upset, but many people would kill to be in your shoes.”

“Then let them have my shoes,” she scoffed back, “they can keep them. I didn’t ask to be a mana spring. It has brought me nothing but trouble.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Raul wiseley stayed silent. The family had had the same arguments with Elledsea over and over again the last couple months, but she still felt like it was terribly unfair. She’d had less angry outbursts lately, but those were just the seeds of resignation kicking in. It didn’t help that everybody she knew thought it was a great and wonderful thing, it felt like everybody was against her.

The rest of dinner lasted in silence and Ellesdea stewed over her troubles. Raul cleared away the dishes and Ellessea sat back in her chair, lost in contemplation.

Ellessea had always thought she was going to be a farmer, like her mother and grandmother before her. It was what she wanted. It was so difficult to imagine life without that foundation.

There was a knock on the door and Ellessea straightened in her chair. Who could it be? Her sister wouldn’t bother to knock, neither would their parents, and neither would anybody they knew for that matter. They lived in a tight little community of farmers, everybody around them was basically family.

Raul gave Ellessea a look as he was washing the dishes and with an exasperated sigh, Ellessea got up and opened the door.

The person standing there was so far removed from her expectations she just stood there dumbly for a few moments, staring at him wide eyed.

It was a man, tall man, probably as tall as she was. He had golden blond hair cut short in a military style, along with a freshly clean shaven face. He looked to be several years older than her.

Ellessea had never seen somebody with yellow hair before.

The man also wore what looked like delver’s armor, freshly cleaned. She was no expert, but had seen the delvers around town when she visited before and they wore similar stuff. The man was imposing too, with unmanly broad shoulders and strong looking arms. Ellessea felt something odd stir in her as she looked at them.

The man was beautiful, in an alien and exotic way. Scary and intimidating.

Lastly and most prominently, were the slave brands on his cheeks. She had never seen one with both cheeks branded and could only imagine the horrible things he had done to deserve that.

She gulped and found herself lacking words to say. She had never talked to a slave, she only saw the miserable lines of criminals marching off to the dungeons every now and then. They never seemed to come back

After a few moments of awkward staring, the man spoke, “Greetings, I am looking for a woman named Ellessea. I was told this was her home?”

Ellessea suddenly felt scared. Why was a slave looking for her? Was this how they got new members, just grabbing them out of their houses?

No that’s absurd. Besides, it's just a man, no matter what he looks like!

Ellessea swallowed again and put on a bravado. “Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s me. What do you want?”

The man just looked at her with raised eyebrows for a moment before pulling out an old worn paper and handing it over to her. Behind her, Ellessea could hear her brother step up, apparently done with the dishes. A little gasp came from him as he saw the man at the door.

Elledsea grabbed the outstretched paper dumbly, giving it a cursory glance. Then she handed it back. “I can’t read.”

Looking surprised and then embarrassed, the man coughed and said, “Ah, yes, sorry.” He paused and then continued, “You put in a request through the adventurers guild a while back, did you not? This is that request.”

At first Ellessea stared back dumbly in uncomprehension. Then it hit her.

“Oooh, oooh,” She replied, stammering now.

“What, what is it?” Raul said, looking between the two, “I didn’t know you put in a request, Ellessea.”

“It was, uh,” Ellessea floundered, unsure where to look or what to do. “It was a year ago, I, uh, didn’t think anybody picked it up. It would have cost extra to take it down, so i just left it up….” She trailed off, looking up at the man.

The man had a strangely blank face as he looked back at her.

“You aren’t interested anymore?” he asked, a very neutral tone in his voice.

“What is it?” Raul pestered, “What did you want? Why is he here?”

That last question brought Ellessea up short and she finally found something to stand on. “Aren’t you a slave? How are you even out here?”

With a sigh, the man pointed at his cheeks, and explained in a tone that meant he had done this hundreds of times before, “This one means I was a slave, this one means I am now free. I haven’t been a slave for five years.”

“Ooh,” was all Ellessea could reply. She did not know people could even become free from the slave corps.

Feeling lost again, Ellessea looked around for anything to stabilize the situation. Her eyes landed on the dining room table and an idea latched on to her.

“Well, would you like to come in and have a seat? We can, umm, discuss the request inside if you want.”

The man paused for a moment, and then nodded, stepping inside the small room. “thanks,” he said, politely scraping off his shoes, as if the floor could get any dirtier. “My name is Raksha, by the way.”

It was then Ellessea realized the man had an accent she could not place. It was subtle, but there.

Not that Ellessea knew many different types of accents.

“Ah, yes,” She replied, pulling out a chair for the man, “I am Ellessea, um, you already know that. And, um, this is my brother, Raal.”

Raksha nodded in greeting and Raul spoke up again, annoyed at being ignored. “Pleased to meet you! What did my sister request?”

Ellessea didn’t know how to reply to that, but saw an evil smile spread across the man's face. Before she could interrupt, the man replied simply, “He requested a husband.”