October Prompted Fiction: Thear Collection: Bree - Harvest Festival: 518 words

[k_a_webb]

Written for aldersprig's prompt about harvest festivals.

Bree looked around her village, smiling. The harvest festival had always been one of her favourite celebrations and, even though she hated the way it had become more religious, she made sure she always had the day off. On a large round table in the centre of the square there was a selection of different foods, all made with the bounty that had come from the earth. As always the farmers and their families were the first to collect their food in order to thank them for the hard work they had done throughout the year. If it wasn't for them each family would have to fend for themselves, even if they were like Bree and didn't have the same connection to the earth that the farming families did.

 

 

Once they had sat down those with practical skills went up to collect their food. That included the builders and carpenters, who made sure that there were enough furnished homes for the growing population of the village. Unfortunately the population wasn't growing because of families with children. Bree looked over at her two closest friends, recently married, and wondered if they'd be able to have children the way they wanted. Every year there were less babies being born, for reasons unknown. Some of the more religious wondered if it was because Herne was angry with them for trying to make him the only deity of Thear but the Priests, especially those who had been High Priests, tried to reassure them that it was what Herne wanted.

The third group to go up were the mothers with children. Bree didn't watch because she hated how few the number was. Instead she focused on the jobs she had to do when her day off was over. With every new arrival her work load increased, which was something she was grateful for. Some days she wished she had the courage to go to other villages, maybe even Uisdro and Tein-Igni villages, to get more work. There was little doubt in her mind that few people, if any, also worked translating old texts. Her father wanted her to be more Dorma and do what everyone else did, but she loved her work. With every book she translated she gained a little more knowledge.

When the mothers with children sat it was time for everyone else to go up, which included Bree. The work she did wasn't seen as particularly useful in Dorma society, but that didn't stop people from trading with her in return for translating an old diary or a text book for the school. On some days she got fabrics that she was slowly turning into clothes because she wasn't very good at sewing, on others she was given food that she shared with the family, but more often she was given the paper and ink she needed in order to keep translating.

As she gathered her food, just in case someone really was listening, she whispered her own thanks, “Thank you for giving me what I need in order to do the job I love and the food I eat.”

© K A Jones 2011

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Comments

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Intriguing. Definitely makes me want to read more of this world! Thank you.

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting version of harvest, and adds tension due to the low birth rate.

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