by Jennifer Torres
Phoebe, still naked and on the floor, stared up at the ceiling for several minutes, just thinking.
“Everything… that should be a dream… isn’t one. I’m definitely still stuck in this crazy fucking fantasy land of giant chickens and deer shit, and I definitely spent part of my night with a beautiful red demon goddess… and my back is starting to hurt.”
She lifted her head slightly so she could slam it back against her flour sack pillow.
“Fuck it, let’s just do this.”
Phoebe raised her arms back over her head, then flung herself upright. The room was brightly lit now, a gentle breeze once again blowing through the grass outside. Her clothes still hung off the old dresser, a pool of water still on the wooden floor beneath them. Phoebe sighed heavily.
"I need to pee."
It had been at least a day since she'd even had to think about relieving herself, though she suspected there may have been an accident in the river while running for her life from a five foot tall murder chicken. She tried not to think about it for the moment, instead mechanically pulling on her still slightly damp clothing. At least her shoes and socks had mostly dried.
Phoebe thought back to the night before, looking down and considering herself.
"I don't feel like a farmer. Maybe it's just, like a title? Fuck I really need to pee!"
She threw her apron on over her head, essentially a trained behavior after years at various grocery jobs, and started searching the farmstead for any kind of bathroom or latrine or even an outhouse. She stood outside, having just done an entire lap around the building.
"Fuck." She slowly turned her head to the well on the corner of the property where she'd found the watering can yesterday. "I don't… wanna…"
Left with little other choice, Phoebe dragged herself across the heavily weeded farmland and to the stone brick well. After checking the walls again to make sure they wouldn't cave in under her weight, she pulled down her pants, holding her apron down for some illusion of privacy in this wide open space, and did what she came here to do.
She looked around anxiously, trying to finish as quickly as possible before halfway running from the scene of the crime and back to the front doorway of the farmstead.
"I hate this. Where's the card that magics away my bowel movements? Oh wait, cards!"
Phoebe reached into her apron pouch and pulled out a handful of cards.
[Lesser Stamina]
[Magical Sowing]
"So these two came back, looks like I don't get to bank a card if I don't use, so, no sense hoarding. Next is…"
[Spark]
On this card was an image of a flint and steel being struck together to make a flame.
"Oh Tawni you beautiful bitch I love you! There's more though… Oh! Shiny!" The next two cards had golden borders that seemed to glow slightly.
[Common Languages]
The first showed the mouth of a humanoid with slightly reptilian features speaking into the pointed ear of another humanoid with fur covering their face. Acting on pure compulsion, Phoebe activated the card. Unlike the other cards she'd used before now, this one exploded into a cascade of green and gold, motes of energy surrounded her body and seemed to fade into her.
"Woah… um… okay? Did something happen?"
She looked around, checking for any changes to herself or the world around her. As far as she could tell, everything was the same.
"Common languages… If I'm really in another world," She looked up at the glowing sun cloud hiding a giant green moon in the sky, "and I definitely am, I'm guessing I just activated my own personal Babel Fish? I wonder if that was the other card Tawni gave me out of pity. One more card, another gold one… Ah, okay!"
[Class: Farmer]
Phoebe activated the card depicting a field of healthy crops and a figure in a straw hat without any hesitation. Just like last time, colored sparks spiraled around Phoebe as her body appeared to absorb them. She could feel ideas and knowledge coming together in her head, as though she was solving puzzles and digging up forgotten memories. Suddenly, she was keenly aware of exactly what time, and even season it was based on the position of the Hearthlight in the sky.
"Oh so that's what that's called… I'm still gonna call it the weird sun cloud thing. Also it's already the middle of the day? How the hell am I sleeping so late!? Oh…"
A few motes of magic still lingered in the air at eye level before falling into Phoebe's open hands and materializing as three entirely new cards.
[Summon Sickle]
[Cultivate Land]
[Fertile Ground]
She looked through the cards, one by one, each appearing normal in the sense that they resembled the ones she'd used previously. The strange glyphs were still a complete mystery to Phoebe, but she now seemed to have some innate understanding of what the cards would actually do. She smiled to herself, putting the cards back in her pouch for now and looking out towards the field.
"I think today is going to be a good day. We might even get to eat! But first…"
Phoebe looked around her immediate area, panicked for a split second, then ran back to her room. She emerged back outside just a few seconds later holding a beaten up watering can still mostly full of water. The seedlings that had sprouted yesterday were now looking even healthier than before. Most of them had a full bundle of leaves growing out of the stems, growing unusually quickly, Phoebe thought. She could tell the soil was dry even before she felt it with her hands.
“Oh… that’s nice…” As she reached her fingers into the soil, a kind of familiar satisfaction coursed through her. She could feel that it was a little dry, but still rich and fertile, that it was exactly what the crops here needed to be healthy and grow properly. She could even tell that in spite of all that, the soil itself was actually unfertilized. She withdrew her fingers.
“Could be better, but you’re still doing great! Let’s hydrate you already.”
She stood, running the watering can lightly over the few seedlings until they were thoroughly hydrated. Satisfied, she turned her attention to the bare dirt next to the healthy soil. Phoebe reached into her apron pouch and pulled out two cards, [Cultivate Land] and [Fertile Ground].
“So if these work the way I think they do, this should be pretty cool…”
She stared intently at the untilled dirt at her feet and held up the [Cultivate Land] card which depicted a garden hoe digging into the earth. She squeezed it gently, and a wave of green energy spread from the dematerialized card across the ground, leaving mounds of rich, dark soil in place of the hard dirt.
“Yes! Now let’s fertilize it.”
The [Fertile Ground] card depicted a patch of soil glowing with radiant energy. When she activated it, green motes of magic sparkled across the new soil, leaving behind a kind of shimmering glow that would sparkle out from the ground. Lastly, she pulled out her copy of [Magical Sowing].
“I still have no idea what I’m actually planting with this, and having the Farmer class doesn’t seem to be doing me any favors there. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be some kind of summer crop? I'm… pretty sure it's essentially summer here?”
With that, she activated the card and just as before tiny seedlings popped out of the soil from where the motes of magic landed. Also as before, the soil immediately dried up, though this time Phoebe was ready with her watering can.
“I guess that’s it for farming today. Ha, can’t believe this was considered hard work back home!”
Phoebe put her hands on her hips in mock confidence just in time for hunger pangs to cause her to nearly double over. Trying not to shake too much, she grabbed her watering can and went back inside to the kitchen.
There was still wood in the wood stove’s firebox, and Phoebe was relieved to find it was bone dry. She surveyed the kitchen, trying not to notice just how dirty parts of it were.
“This is actually disgusting… I’ll deal with it later.” She found a clay bowl, a cast iron pan, and the closest thing she could find to a spatula. After deciding she’d be taking a walk down to the stream after all today, she turned her attention toward the food shelves. Phoebe immediately zeroed in on the basket of rotten produce. "Ewwww! I'm just gonna…" She threw the whole basket out the kitchen window.
Behind where the basket sat were two small, lidded clay jars. Having been unaware of them before, Phoebe carefully pulled them forward to examine them. The first appeared empty, though the bottom had a sort of slick residue lining it. Phoebe set it aside in disappointment. The second, however, had what looked to be about a few tablespoons of coarse pink granules. "Salt?". She let the granules roll between her fingers before dropping a few on her tongue.
"It is salt! They have salt here!"
She placed the lid back on the jar then started digging through the rest of the shelves. Of interest, Phoebe had found four sealed sacks of flour, multiple empty jars for seasonings and herbs, three woven baskets, a dirty rag she could clean and use as a kitchen towel, and a large bucket that appeared to be watertight on the inside.
"Okay, things are starting to come together…" Phoebe hesitated, then froze. "So I need to… um…" Her eyes started watering slightly, and her breathing hitched. "Right, no, this is easy, we had a plan. Inventory. Inventory…"
This would happen to her sometimes, when she knew she had all the pieces in front of her, and knew all the steps save for the first.
"Hungry. Flatbread. Dirty. Water. Abrasive. Water?" She checked the salt container again. "A-about four hours left in the day I think. Water. The only water I have is in the watering can. The watering can!" Phoebe spun around the room looking for where she placed the watering can earlier, finding it nearby and pulling it closer to her, then sitting back down on the dirty kitchen floor. "Breathe girl."
Phoebe tried to remember her exercises with her therapist, her yoga instructor, and her one partner who got her really into The Owl House. "Ugh, I miss Dawsyn so freaking much." The tears that had been welling in her eyes started to stream down her cheeks as she placed a hand over her chest and breathed.
In two three four… out two three four…
She closed her eyes, breathing through her nose.
"Necessities." Phoebe considered the non-negotiables. "I must clean the pan, that will take some water and a bit of salt, I can use the rag despite it being a bit dirty. I must eat food before I can do anything else today. I need flour, water, and a bit of salt for that, which I'll have after cleaning the pan."
Phoebe opened her eyes, stood up, and started moving. She began by clearing one of the counter sections of everything but the cast iron frying pan, sprinkling a layer of salt into it, pouring some water into the salt layer, then getting to scrubbing. Once there was no salt left visible in the pan, and her elbow was in agony, Phoebe poured just a bit more water into it and wiped it down with the rag. The result wasn't perfect, but it was leaps and bounds better than where it was several minutes ago.
"Ha! Hahaha! It actually looks like a pan again!" She grabbed her side as pain ran through her stomach. She'd nearly forgotten she was practically starving. Phoebe looked around for a bowl, wiped out the dust, then filled it with flour, water, and a bit of salt, which she then kneaded into a dry dough before setting aside and fishing a card out of her apron pocket.
"Alright girly, you're up. Let's make sure we have enough wood."
Phoebe checked the wood in the firebox in the wood stove one more time, making sure it wasn't overflowing, or packed too tightly, and that it looked like, well, like how she imagined wood that was supposed to burn should look. She took a deep breath and held up the [Spark] card in her hand, pointed it at the stack of dry firewood, and activated it.
Click! Click! FWOOSH!
Red and yellow embers crackled and flared out from where the card once sat between Phoebe's fingers, arcing towards the wood as if homing in on their target. Despite their dramatic entrance, it took a moment for the wood to actually ignite, leaving Phoebe to hold her breath anxiously as she waited for a proper fire to catch. When it finally did, she clapped to herself in celebration before moving the pan over the dancing flame.
"We did it! Now the dough. Oh I hope this comes out at least edible…"
Phoebe pulled off a chunk of the dough she'd made earlier and flattened it in her palms. She considered the other jar she'd found with the salt and shrugged her shoulders, grabbing it with her free hand and opening it next to her. While there wasn't anything of substance in it, there was still enough residue of whatever was once in the jar to coat the bottom. If Phoebe's suspicions were correct, this could be exactly what she needed. She sniffed the inside of the jar, detecting something faintly nutty, a little stale, but definitely not rotten.
"I mean, it's in a kitchen, next to salt. Statistically speaking, this is oil, right?"
She ran her middle and ring finger around the bottom of the jar, then across the flat side of the dough in her hand, spreading it as best as she could before placing it in the pan to the tune of a nice, soft sizzle. Phoebe contained her excitement as she prepared a second flatbread, then a third, before wiping down her spatula and flipping the first one. The dough had crisped and bubbled, turning a light, golden brown with burnt pockets in places.
"It worked! Oh my gods it worked!" Phoebe danced alone in her kitchen before the pain in her stomach brought her back to the task at hand. After a few minutes, Phoebe was staring at three relatively plain misshapen slabs of toasted dough, which to her couldn't be anything short of a feast. She threw a few more sticks in the fire and sprinkled a little bit of salt on top of one of the flatbreads before slowly taking her first bite.
"Mmm… it's so bland!" It was chewy, a little floury, the texture was unpleasant and she could taste a hint of staleness she feared was from the age of the flour. The salt saved it from being wholly unpleasant, but still, it was food! Food that she made from practically nothing! Phoebe started crying again as she bit into the second flatbread, looking towards the window and reflecting on her panic attack from earlier and the old friend who apparently still helped get her through them. She placed a hand over her chest and inhaling deeply.
"Thanks, always there when I need you… Alright Phoebe, we're fed, we had a little cry about it, let's actually get our day going!"
With that, she finished her meal as she watched the last bit of wood in the firebox burn out. Phoebe realized she'd need to add "gather firewood" on to today's list of chores if she wanted warmth and food for tomorrow. For today, she'd conceded to some light suffering. Content with that, she dusted off her apron and stepped outside to survey the farmland, with one irregularity almost immediately jumping out at her.
"Where'd that basket I tossed out here go?"