Mentuc put the plough down and Onoelle started attaching the ropes to it. It was a good day for ploughing. It had rained well during the evening before and the ground was still soft and easy to break up. Most farmers of the village used mechanical ploughs, but once again Onoelle had considered that an utter waste of money. Instead of using modern means, the couple did it the old fashioned way using manual labour. As she tied the ropes to the harness, she glanced over at her husband, who was taking in the scenery, no doubt enjoying scents she could not even pick up. She wasn't jealous of his superior senses. It was only under her careful tutelage that he had actually started taking joys in things normal humans enjoyed. He felt her eyes on him and turned, his face breaking out in a broad, warm smile and she could not help but return it. She knew that most relations started burning out after a few years, but she somehow doubted that hers would. If there was one trait that he had kept from his old days, it was loyalty. That and an almost ridiculous preference for relying on mechanics rather than electronics, because mechanical things could be fixed in the field. It fit surprisingly well with her own likes and it made their farmstead romantically rustic to the point that the only electrical device in their home was the plumbing. They really did things the old fashioned way.

Then her husband put the harness around his neck and she had to amend herself slightly. They did most things the old fashioned way. She hadn't won the discussion on using their cattle to pull the plough.

'I'm a lot easier to steer,' he had said after having exhausted all her arguments.

She hopped on the stand of the plough, pushing it deep into the earth as her husband started pulling her along, visibly taking delight in the exercise. She held a hand in front of her, shielding her face from the sun as she looked over the large field. They would be at it for hours and afterwards they'd have to check it for weeds, but within two days the entirety of their land would be ready to be sown. She nodded, content with what she saw and started humming.

'You bastard!' she shouted, clutching her hand tenderly.

'Are you referring to my parentage or insulting me? I'm assuming the latter given your unstable state, but I am not used to dealing with...' He trailed off for a brief moment. His mind usually raced through solutions, but he was trained for warfare. Adjusting to a non-military life was throwing his analytical mind off. He knew enough that if he said civilians it could lead to complications. 'Not used to dealing with people,' he concluded.

The strange answer stopped Leonne's fury dead in its tracks. 'You're serious, aren't you?' she asked, her eyes narrowing. 'Do you have a medical history by any chance?'

Dreamer felt his fingers clench around the shovel he was still holding, the three lenses in his eyes folding over each other, hidden by the sunglasses, as his vision zoomed in on the girl in front of him.

'Medical history?' he asked, keeping his voice perfectly neutral.

'Yes,' she continued, hesitantly, unaware that she was being carefully watched. 'Any illnesses or something. Mentally I mean.'

'Oh.' He relaxed. He let out a soft laugh, feeling like an idiot. He really had to cut back from seeing enemies in everyone. He was amongst civilians now.

'No.'

'I don't mean any harm with it...' she added, feeling a bit miserable. It was a sensitive topic to bring up and she didn't want to chase off the newcomer. He was the only interesting thing to happen to the village in forever.

'Words do not harm,' came a surprisingly swift and stern answer. She felt his gaze upon her. 'They do not cut skin. Do not break bones. They are empty air.'

'I guess?' she volunteered. His reaction told her that this was best a topic avoided for now, no matter how much it had piqued her curiosity.

'So why are you heading to the village?'

He tapped the shovel head. 'I need some adjustments made to the tool. I was going to ask the smith to replace the handles with bars of metal.'

'What? Why?'

'They broke.'

She stared at him mutely, wondering just how he had abused the tools to make them break within a day.

'I'll stay with you then, if you don't mind at least,' she offered. 'Don't want Sam ripping you off again. You do know that he was giving you false prices yesterday, right?'

'That was clear. The man is a bad liar. His wife interfered on my behalf later on, but it was not necessary.'

'I heard how much he was charging you! He was making you pay a fortune!'

'The amount was rather inconsequential. It was not worth arguing over. I am new here.' He shrugged. 'It is normal to be put through such things, is it not?'

'I— No! It's not!' she shouted, horrified at the thought. Where had this guy lived that he thought ripping newcomers off was normal! That aside, how rich was this guy? Sure, the tools he had bought weren't that special but her dad had to be right about the man being a rich tosh if he could casually spend that much!

'Where the hell do you come from that people would do that to one another?'

He turned to her and she could feel his scrutinising gaze on her through his sunglasses. She met it for a brief while, expecting him to speak, but he just stared at her. Mutely. Silently. At first she arched her eyebrows, curious about what he was doing. Then it became unnerving and she started glancing away, only occasionally looking in his direction, only to find his eyes still on her. Then it went past that and became downright frightening. She was about to speak when he finally turned back towards the road. When he spoke his voice was surprisingly soft and thoughtful.

'A vastly different place, apparently.'

They continued to walk on in silence as she contemplated the string of nonsensical responses she had gotten out of him. He seemed content on letting her walk alongside him in silence. She glanced at him from time to time and every time she was wondering about why he looked so weird. The sunglasses aside, it was his gait that drew most of her attention. It reminded her of those robots she had tried to program back during her university classes. The programs had been rudimentary, a slow self learning intelligence with very restrictive limits. The robot had moved both clumsily and carefully as the intelligence had to calculate how much force the servos had to exert to gain the desired effect. All in all her robot had moved very similar to him, almost as if he was learning how to walk.

'There is a person ahead. Forty-eight, nineteen-hundred out. At the light post next to the trees. Small. Not carrying anything.'

'What?' she asked, pulled out of her thoughts.

He pointed to the distance.

'Someone is on the road. Can you see the light post over there? The cluster of five trees, two fingers to the left, near the horizon.'

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'What? Where?' she asked, trying to see.

She heard him sigh. 'Do you see the cluster of five trees? Three hundred meters out. That direction' he asked, pointing towards something.

She scanned the distance, frowning as she counted every group of trees she saw, before finding what she thought was what he meant. 'Yes, I think so.'

'Good. Stretch out your arm. Hold up two fingers, like this,' he continued, putting words into actions and waiting until she mimicked him.

'Now look at it with your dominant eye.'

'Which one is that?'

Another sigh and she had to resist the urge to glare at him, keeping her attention focused on her fingers instead. 'Close both your eyes in turn while focusing on something nearby. If what is behind it moves, the eye you closed is your dominant one. Now, look back at the trees. Move the edge of your fingers to the edge of the cluster. Keep your fingers left of them. Look in the distance past your fingers and you'll be able to see the light post.'

She tried it and saw something at the horizon. Something white-ish. She thought. 'I think I see it,' she said. 'I can't make out what it is though.'

'Can you make out the person next to it?'

'There's a person next to it? Man, your eyesight's nuts! So what is he doing?'

'Walking along the road, south-east to north-west.'

She looked at him, surprise showing on her face. 'That's it?'

'Yes,' came the curt reply.

'So they're not doing anything?'

'Not that I can see.'

'Then why tell me!' she shouted, mystified.

He turned to look at her again and she rolled her eyes, recognising it as a repeat of how he looked at her earlier.

'I assume,' he said, his voice soft and careful, 'that this is also something not commonly done here?'

She felt a strange pity for him well up inside of her heart that she could not rationally explain. There was something hidden in his voice, a form of deep regret that she could not place.

'No,' she replied just as softly. 'It's not.'

He fell back into silence and she turned back towards the horizon. She knew the road was there, but he must have one hell of an eyesight if he could see that far, let alone discern a person. As it was she could barely see the massive light post from here. Despite that she was having fun though. The man was weird, but harmless and nothing he said made any proper sense, meaning that he was a delightful breeze of fresh air to her. Something exciting to discover and research!

She was pondering his given answers and trying to find something that tied them all together, but came up dry. She would ask some of the elder folks in the village about it, most of them had travelled a fair bit before settling down in their hometown again. One of them might know more.

As she mentally explored that option the road came within sight and with that the person following it. Her eyes went wide in recognition.

'Leonne!' screamed her younger sister, waving excitedly, the younger girl running towards her elder sibling.

'Cassy! What are you doing this far out of the village?' she shouted back.

'Dad sent me to fetch you! Apparently there's a real storm approaching and he wanted me to get you back in before it hit. He figured you'd be along the Wall, given that the newcomer lives there.'

'Yeah, I've met him, he's—' she turned around to introduce him, only to find that he was gone.

'What?' asked her sister, eyeing her sister curiously.

She was rudely brought back to the present as the plough hit a stone and threw her off. She tried to maintain her balance but had been too distracted by the past to pay proper attention and fell. Before the scream had properly left her mouth she felt two strong arms catch her and her voice petered out as she looked up sheepishly at her husband.

'You alright?' he asked.

'Yeah,' she replied, getting back to her feet. 'Just hit a rock while I wasn't paying attention.

He nodded. 'I'll deal with it.'

'Oh, don't bother, it's probably too big to dig up anyway and you're not going to listen to me, are you?'

He shot her back a grin. 'Of course not.'

She gasped. 'Speaking of! What did I tell you about moving quickly!'

'You're right,' he muttered, his fingers digging in the earth as he searched for the offending stone. 'Next time I'll let you hit the wet earth and get your dress all dirty. Not like you're the one who'd clean it up afterwards.

She turned beet-red, recalling the first time she had tried to do the laundry without relying on machines. She had burned her hands in the hot water, wrecked two shirts, put them out just before a rainstorm hit, forcing her to start over again. When she had finally managed to get past that point, she had started ironing them, only to end up daydreaming and burning a hole in one of her dresses. Mentuc had decided to take over laundry duty from then on.

'Okay so maybe I'll let it slide,' she whispered softly, knowing he'd hear it.

'Thought so. Aha! Found it! Not too big. Won't need to dig it out.'

That got her full attention. She saw the muscles on his arm ripple underneath his supple skin, pulling taut as he exerted an insane amount of strength. She had rarely seem him actually exert himself and when he did it was always a sight to behold. Originally it had frightened her but as long as he wasn't forced to move unnaturally slowly —by his standards— he could perfectly control himself. She heard strange noises come out of the ground as his fingers caught hold of the stone. He started pulling his arm free, slowly and the earth trembled as he forced what turned out to be a small boulder upwards. Her eyes went wide as she saw the huge rock.

'Stars! That must weight at least, what, a hundred kilos!'

'I think so, yeah,' he admitted, picking the rock up with two hands. 'I'll just walk over to the Wall to get rid of it. Be right back!' he said.

Before she could even utter a word of protest he was gone, sprinting at a pace that was more suited to a vehicle than a human being. She made guttural sounds in exasperation. She loved him, but getting him to behave was absolutely impossible.

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