As they often did, the three grain collectors — Meis, Ducus and Parrus — went to the working fields together. They were farming barley and hops in preparation for the festivities. They started the day with hops farming, which was a five leagues trek from the village. They filled up bags of hops for two solid hours, before trailing back to the barley fields, about halfway back to the village. This was where the real work began. The grain master, Merrus, usually waited for them at barley fields. Five leagues and back was too much of a journey for the old man.

It was a cool morning, and Meis was in a particularly good mood. Like Ducus, she welcomed the arrival of a new man in their midst. As was to be expected, the topic of Mallory dominated the conversation. They walked side by side, carrying their bags, pruning shears, sickles and grape hoes. Here and there, when she felt like it, Meis jumped ahead to wipe off the dew of a large leaf in one clean swipe. She loved doing it. She loved feeling that moist, shiny thin membrane on her fingers. She didn’t see dew as simply water. For her, dew was the Cozy Forest’s night sweat. Some mornings, Cozy Forest sweated more than usual. This was such a morning. That’s not surprising, with all these outsiders infesting the woods with their torches.

Behind, Ducus played with the sickle, slashing off tall grass on their path. He did it very carefully, as to not hurt Parrus or himself. 

Parrus wasn’t doing anything else but walking straight and carrying the empty bags and grape hoes. “Do you think the new guy will stay?”

“Eh? Oh, yeah sure, he will stay.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. Three days, like it was agreed,” said Ducus. “He’ll leave after Parran Day.”

Meis overheard the conversation. She stopped in her tracks, waiting for them to catch up. “What if he stayed? For good?”

“Yes. That’s what I meant. Do you think he will stay for good?”

Ducus shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t mind. He doesn’t look like a bad chap.”

“You’ve never talked to him,” said Parrus.

“My sister did,” said Meis. “And… she seemed to like him. So I guess I will like him. Frankly, we could use another man in the village.”

Parrus scratched his chin with the handle of the grape hoe. “Do you think we can feed him?”

“If he collects grain like us, then he will feed himself. And… more people. We’ll have more food for the festivities.”

Ducus was pensive. “He probably knows a lot of things we don’t know. Him, being a prince and everything. Living in a castle, whatever that is. He might know of new ways to plow the fields without getting blisters on our hands.”

“I doubt it,” said Parrus. “He said he was a prince. Princes don’t work fields outside Cozy Forest. I doubt he ever set foot on a barley field before.” Both Meis and Ducus became quiet. Parrus could see they were thinking hard at what he had just told them. The silence was creeping up on Parrus, so he elbowed Ducus and grinned at him. “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend: Phe-ren? She’s an outsider. She must know about princes.”

Instead of rejoicing at the mention of the village doctor, Ducus became somber. Pheren had arrived in the village four seasons ago. She was a runaway too. A runaway carrying heavy baggages. She never opened herself to anyone in the village, but her latent melancholy was palpable. Whatever happened in her previous life, outside Cozy Forest, it still weighted on her mind. It stopped her from being happy, despite Ducus’ best effort. He had taken an instant liking to her, from the very first moment they met. That day, Ducus was chopping off branches of a tall blue tree, because their logs burned longer, when the branch he leaned down broke under his weight. He fell from twelve feet, flat on his belly, still holding onto the branch. He hurt his wrist which got crushed between the branch and the ground. His chin and nose banged against the branch. His cheeks were all scrapped too, but the worst of it was his wrist. The pain stung, and Ducus could move his hand normally. Tears were running down his face. He was on his own, there was no one to help him. And then she showed up: Pheren. She was all dressed in white, but her skirt and cardigan were dirty, as if she had taken a few tumbles of her own. She looked like she had been crying for a very long time. She was all out of sorts. Her blond fiery hair was all over the place. She had locks of hair stuck to her forehead. Most people would have found her freaky but Ducus fell in love with her. That very first day, the very first time he set eyes on her. She was the woman he had been waiting for.

In such a small community, the choices for partners were very limited. Although the need for reproduction was evident if the village wanted to survive, no one rushed into relationships. More than the long-term future of the village, the habitants of Cozy Forest were more concerned about their daily well-being. A bad relationship from two individuals could really hamper the mood of the entire village. So, most people excised restraint. If love wasn’t to be found in the village, they waited, waited for an apparition, for a woman all dressed in white.

Pheren was older than Ducus, by a lot, although she never told anyone her age. Ducus was not even twenty years old. Pheren was easily in her early thirties. Or maybe she wasn’t, Ducus sometimes thought. Maybe life outside Cozy Forest was so tough that it aged people faster. It was why she came to Cozy Forest. She fled a world she no longer understood and believed in. A world she very rarely spoke about, even to Ducus, despite all the private hours he managed to snag with her.

When Pheren saw Ducus fall from the tree, back on that first day, she immediately came to his rescue. She checked his bruises, safely helped him off the log. And then she manipulated his broken wrist. She knew exactly what to do because she was a doctor. The village didn’t have a doctor back then. Pheren didn’t have a home. The decision for Pheren to join the village became logical.

She was given the smallest cottage, way outside the ‘main street’ where the town hall and the bulk of the cottages were. Ever since then, Ducus had been trying to win her favors. She was receptive, sometimes. Not all the time. And this was what killed Ducus inside. She liked him, romantically, but not only him. She’d never hidden it. There was another man in the village she appreciated: Titus.

She didn’t want to be tied down to just one man. She expressed no desire for children or a family, so she stayed by herself in her small cottage, keeping her options open. The thought of Pheren and Titus together drove Ducus to insanity. He did his best not to think of it, but it was, in all his life, the biggest challenge he ever had to face: jealousy. It was eating him up to his core, tainting his natural enthusiasm about life.

And now that a new man was in town, Ducus had to think that maybe Pheren would like him too. And he didn’t know if he could take it. I hope that Mallory doesn’t try to seduce Pheren. Please make it that she doesn’t like him.