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The work in the fields was always long and repetitive, trudging through the dirt collecting fallen stalks of wheat is rather simple, but was nonetheless long and unimaginably repetitive. I briefly paused to take a lazy stare at the clear skies, taking a little time off to wipe away the sweat from my face. Based on the position of the sun, it looks like it was only about a few hours till midday. I went to rub my back, realizing that it started to develop an increasingly noticeable ache, in no small part due to being hunched over since early morning.

"Nathan!" Yelled an older voice that resonated from a little bit further down our strip of land.

I quickly shifted my head downwards, my eyes turning to focus on the figure working away at the crops with a two-handed scythe. "Yes father!" I yelled back.

"How are you holding up back there?!"

"I'm doing just fine father!" I said with a weary reply.

Although it was a little bit difficult to see him clearly, I was able to make out a slight nod from him, seeing him turn his back around and continue back to his work.

It has been only just a week since I celebrated my tenth year, turning into the age where I have just become old enough to help out with the much harder tasks needed to maintain what we have.

I glanced at the other farmers tending to their own plots of land that lay right besides ours, they and everyone else in our village were all mice. Their dirt-coated fur, threadbare clothes, and unassuming statures often led one to believe that they were the typical rodent peasants; timid and meek, an assumption usually made by the highborns. I however never saw them as such, the look on their faces as they worked showed the same fierce determination whenever faced with a daunting task or a threat. That look on their faces, when one were to pay attention closely, often betrayed their unassuming outer appearances.

What was perhaps different about myself, was that I am the only human in our village. Not only in this village, but perhaps in the whole province since the largest town closest to us had no humans. I never knew my birth parents, all that I did know is that they were very close friends to my adoptive father. By the time I was born, both of them were already gone, and my adoptive father decided to bring me up as their own.

I sighed and went back to my work, hunching my body over to quickly collect and bundle the wheat stalks into neat piles across the field, all the while with my mind brooding over the tedium of the work as well as the frantic nature of the harvest. I always saw that the fall harvest always started off as such; prolonged periods of time waiting and making sure our crops reaches maturity followed by a brief but intense and frantic period of harvest in order to make it in time to pay our dues.

While thinking to myself, I gathered up the energy to try and finish our work faster by moving quickly through the field gathering our crops, so that we can have some extra time to relax for ourselves.

My own thoughts ended abruptly as my left foot got caught in a small divot in the field, causing me to fall face-first into the dirt, my fall making a light thumping sound.

"Nathan!" My father yelled, the sound of his uneven footsteps growing louder as he ran through the field to get to where I am.

I looked up to see my father standing over me. My father was rather tall for a mouse, standing somewhere around 5'9". He had dark, earthen-brown fur that ran from his back all the way to the tip of his muzzle. The fur around his eyes, cheeks, chin, and the front of his neck going on downwards are white, broken a bit by a few splotches of brown on the right side of his face. He had a badly ragged left ear and wore the same worn-out clothes that I am wearing, a baggy white shirt covered by an old brown waistcoat followed by faded dark brown knee-breeches, long black socks, and heavily used buckled leather shoes.

He quickly knelt down to my level, the features of his brown and white-furred face flushed with concern and worry.

"My lord Nathan," he stammered for a bit, "are you okay, are you hurt, did you break anything?"

I moved to remove the dirt coating my face and parts of my short black hair. "Father," I quickly answered, "I'm fine, there is nothing broken, no need to worry so much."

He gave out a sigh of relief and answered, "Nathan, you are going to have to be more careful on where you are walking," he paused for bit, taking time to look directly into my dark brown eyes with his deep green ones, "I don't want to see you getting yourself hurt."

"I'm sorry if I worried you so much," I answered, "but you told me that we have to get this done as soon as possible so we do not miss our payments, I just wanted to help out by getting this done faster so we don't have to worry."

A tired smile formed across his short muzzle, he then placed both of his hands on my shoulders and said, "I know, I know, but you still have to be more careful. If you got badly hurt," he paused to close his eyes, going into a deep thought, then opening his eyes again, "I just wouldn't know what to do if you got into something where Everen and I can't do anything to help you."

I gave a soft smile back at him and said, "Okay father, I will be little more careful to watch my steps."

"Good." He answered back, "Just hang on for a little while longer, we should be almost done in a few more hours."

"When do we get to go to town and get to pick up Everen from the church?" I asked.

"Soon," my father said. "Right after all of this work is settled, then we get to drop off our crops in town and pick up Everen." My father smiled.

He grabbed both of my hands, lifting me back up to my feet. He turned around and walked back to where he dropped his scythe.

I brushed the remaining dirt off of my clothes and my short black hair, moving back to my place in the field to pick up where I left off.

***

After we finished our work, we had to borrow one of the village's old wagons that was currently not in use. We of course got this lanky draft horse which we had to rent from one of our lord's stables a few days earlier, already costing us a good portion of whatever coin we had left.

"Come on Nathan." Said my father as he hopped onto the wagon's front seat.

I quickly obliged, my father helping me up into the wagon and settled me next to him by his left side.

My father took the reins into his hands, making a few motions and noises so that our gangly horse would move forward, setting us off

The place that we needed to go was the town of Nordahl just a few miles down south on one of the roads headed out of our village. The road itself wasn't particularly a good, it was just a well-trodden path of dirt that would easily turn into an almost impassable muck once it rained.

As we moved slowly down the road, I tilted my head to the left and took deeper look at the village. It was a rather unimpressive collection of wooden buildings cobbled together from the wood in the forests we were allowed to collect. The cluster of old wooden farmhouses bounded towards the large river to the east of us, its' currents flowing south from the mountains further up to the north province. Within that cluster of wooden buildings lay a small square, just a simple open space of dirt where the people of our village would gather on occasions to listen to official news brought in from Nordahl. At the southern part of the square, is a tavern where most of us in the village would gather around either after work or mass to socialize. To the east of that square lay a building with an air of permanence, the local chapel. It was a structure completely made out of stone, with a small bell tower positioned at the right side of the main entrance, its pyramidal spire making it the tallest building in the village. It had a simple row of arched windows on both sides, with the largest window being positioned at the end, allowing the light from the sun to shine in on the chapel within as it rose from the east.

When we gradually moved out of the village, I saw the other farmers nearby their homes, busying themselves with loading up this year's harvest and make the trip to Nordahl. Many of them saw us coming through, giving us quick greetings as we passed.

One sand-colored mouse readying to make the same trip as us, saw us coming down the road.

"Hey Eton, Nate," he said with a nod as we approached him.

"Hello," we both said as we gradually came to a halt right beside him.

"The harvest is quite wonderful this time around isn't it, seems that fate has been kind to us this year," he said.

My father smiled, "yeah Mitchell, it does seem that the fates have been generous this year."

Mitchell gave an affirmative nod and tilted his head rightwards to look at me, "Have you been helping your father a lot today?" He said with a smile.

"Yes, yes!" I said enthusiastically, "I have been helping father in gathering the harvest."

"That's great," he happily said. "Just remember to keep up the good work and take care of your father, we adults just do not have the same energy as we used to."

"I will," I said confidently as I looked back to my father.

He smiled and patted my shoulder, "he's a good lad, I know he won't let us down."

"That's good," he said as he moved his head back to the left to acknowledge my father. "And Eton, looks like you also did well for yourself," he said while looking at our overstuffed wagon filled with wheat.

"I believe everyone did well," he said while looking around at the other farmers loading their wagons. "Looks like all of us have more than enough to both satisfy the lord's and the church's coffers and sell the excess at the markets."

Mitchell snorted, "We will only have this much as long as the lord and the church don't increase our dues again, and you know how greedy they get whenever there is a rich harvest."

"Yes I know Mitchell," my father sighed, and then suddenly, a growing smirk started developed at the corner of his mouth, "and Mitchell, you know we are all sinners in the eyes of the lord and we must do the work of our canid guardians so that we too can become worthy enough to enter the gates of heaven along with them."

That statement made Mitchell visibly upset, before he opened his mouth to respond back, my father quickly followed up that statement with his own retort.

"You know how god endowed them with superior qualities," he said with his voice indicating a heavy undertone of sarcasm, "the ability to be too lazy to work and only be good at fighting, eating, and rutting sure does make for godly qualities for a chosen people!"

The building tension between them immediately dissipated as both of them broke out into heavy laughter.

"Well," Mitchell chuckled, "one can hope that if they were that incompetent, they would've fallen a long time ago."

My father nodded, "That's all well and good, but they also have all the swords, armor, and guns."

"That didn't prevent them from losing the coastal provinces to the south.

"Yes, but that was a long time ago, the people there were just lucky enough that the king during that time was a raving lunatic who decided that he wanted to live in the forests like feral wolf than rule his kingdom."

Mitchell gave out a defeated sigh, "I guess you are right, let's just all hope that our luck continues for the next year so that there is more to come around."

"I hear you," he said as he took the reins in his hands and steadied the horse from going forward.

"All right then, looks like I have a few more preparations to make before I go, I'll see you later then," he said as he hopped off his wagon and dusted off his clothes.

We then said our goodbyes and proceeded down the road.