“I’m so glad you showed up Vim! I was worried it’d be months or years before we got this fixed,” Nora said happily.

  “Hm. I’ll make a few extra parts, so you can swap them out when they break again,” I said as I unhooked the main wheelset, taking it off the grinding wheel.

  Nora moved out of the way as I carried the large wooden wheel over to the table. It was rather large, larger even than having need be, and heavy. Not that I’d drop it on her, of course, but instinct made one move out of the way usually when someone lifted something as heavy and cumbersome as this.

  “Please and thank you. It’s so annoying to thresh and grind the wheat by hand!” Nora said excitedly as she bundled up a towel she had been using to wipe off the table I was now using. She had worried it had been dirty, and would thus get the parts of the machine dirty, which would then thusly get her food inevitably dirty.

  A silly worry, but it was fine. I had willingly helped her clean up this mill house a bit before getting to work. It made her happy, and comfortable, so that was all that mattered. Their little homestead wasn’t dirty, honestly. Even if I saw them as simple people, they weren’t dirty. They weren’t uncivilized. In fact this small home, with its mill and wheat farms amongst other things, was rather quaint and nice. It was cozy and homely.

  “It is a pain, isn’t it?” I agreed as I turned the wheelset a little, to look at the group of teeth that had broken off. About a dozen of the larger teeth for the main gearset had broken off, somehow, which had made it impossible to turn the thresher or grinder. The missing teeth on the wheel usually weren’t that big of an issue, but this was the main wheel and enough of the teeth had broken off to make the wheel slip and slide as it spun, only further stopping its function.

  Basically it kept getting stuck, and unable to turn. Odds are a single piece of tooth had broken originally and they, not realizing the issue, kept pushing forward as they spun the machines continuously only further breaking it more and more as it got stuck again and again.

  I didn’t tell her they were the reason it broke, since there was no point. Even if I explained how they had done it, and why it had happened, they’d do it again. They always did.

  Nora and her family were good, nice people, but simple. The types that didn’t really care to learn how to fix something themselves if they didn’t have to.

  Even the extra parts I’d make for them would likely go unused. Which was odd, but not something I could really explain or ask why.

  After all it wasn’t like they were downright stupid. Nora spoke well, eloquently sometimes, and her children weren’t necessarily dumb or idiots either.

  A few of them even knew how to read, and write. So it wasn’t a lack of education it was just… well…

  “Other than this Vim we’re honestly all fine! The wells good, the river nearby hasn’t flooded or nothing, no humans or people visiting… no fires, or plagues, not even a harsh winter or two! In fact it’s been so calm and peaceful it almost worries me! Well, other than this blasted thing here! I haven’t been able to make my breads lately, not as many as I like, and I’m tired of hearing all the kids complain about it!” Nora said with a huff as she hit the large machine with her towel.

  “You act as if your husband would leave you if not for your breads,” I said lightly in jest.

  “Ah but the bloody fool would! He’s not lain with me once these last few months, complains he’s not got the energy to do so! All because I’ve not made any bread treats he says, the fool!” Nora complained.

  I paused a moment and frowned, but said nothing. Sadly I didn’t think her words were mere jest, she was likely being serious.

  I wanted to ask why they didn’t just grind the wheat themselves, or go to the nearby human village to purchase some. Or even borrow one of the nearby human mills, which could usually be used for a small portion of the flour grounded from them. But knew better than to do so.

  After all, the reason they had not done such a thing was simple. Just as simple as they were.

  They looked human. Acted human. Could blend in just fine with humans.

  Yet they likely never even considered going and buying parts for the mill, or grounded up flour, or getting their own wheat grounded elsewhere. The thoughts had likely never even entered their minds.

  They instead had simply waited, and waited, until I showed up.

  Yet didn’t send a letter to Telmik, or anyone else, alerting me that they needed help either.

  You’d think the issue was not that big a deal, until you realized they were the type of non-humans to nearly subsist entirely on the food they grew.

  Nora and her family were a type of deer. The type that only ate fruits, vegetables and the stuff they made with their wheat. They didn’t even eat fish, let alone meats of any kind.

  In other words this mill, this thresher and grindstone, to produce flour for their meals… was almost their lifeblood.

  In fact…

  “So…? Do you think you can fix it?” Nora asked as she drew closer, to look at the wheel on the table.

  “I can. I’ll go grab some wood, and a few of those stumps your sons gathered, and make them tonight,” I said to the woman next to me. She was a tad taller than Renn, but skinny. But not because she always had been.

  Her joke earlier about her husband not wanting to lay with her out of a lack of energy had been no joke at all. She, her husband and her children, were all far skinnier than I remembered them. Each one of them looked as if they’d just endured a great sickness. Or recovered from heavy wounds. They looked malnourished. Tired.

  Starving.

  “Oh thank goodness!” Nora sighed out in great relief, after being told again that I could fix it promptly.

  I nodded and smiled to her. “All will be well. In fact I can probably get the grinder fixed here soon enough you could make dinner if you’d like,” I offered.

  “Oh yes! Yes, yes!” Nora nearly jumped in excitement, and reached over to wrap herself around my arm. She squeezed me tightly, delighted, and then bounced away. “I’ll go prepare now!” she shouted.

  Nora left the mill house, and I heard her run off to the main building. The dirt road was slightly rocky, and by the sounds of her footfalls she was running with all her might.

  “Hm,” I shook my head at her.

  Such a strange people.

  Starving themselves, almost, just because their precious milling machine was busted.

  It made me wonder how they and those like them survived in the wild back in the day, before those like myself watched over them. How had they lived? Alone? Without help?

  Strange indeed.

  But they were still my people.

  So I needed to promptly fix this.

  “Luckily it’s easy to fix,” I mumbled as I stepped back over to the large mill. I went to the grindstone and went to dismantling the main gear set. The one that usually connected the center one, that powered both of them via wind and manpower. Or well, deer-power, usually.

  With the main gear being busted, and it being so darn big and important in the mechanism, I’d not be able to fix it immediately. Not soon enough to grind some wheat for their dinner. But I didn’t need to fix the main gear set immediately. I simply needed to detach the grinding stone, and then manually spin it myself for a moment. The stone was large enough it’d only take a short while to grind enough flour for Nora to make her and her family, and Fly I suppose, a full course meal. Or at least, however much bread she considered a full-course meal would be.

  Why were they so skinny anyway? They were still eating vegetables and fruits, right? Sure it wasn’t a completely balanced diet, but it wasn’t like eating just greens could kill you or make you that frail so quickly.

  Right…?

  “Maybe they are sick?” I wondered quietly to myself.

  As I tinkered with the grinding stone, I checked a nearby bin. A large wooden crate full of already threshed wheat. Some of it looked a little old, but not old enough to worry me. There were no obvious signs of infestations or rats, surprisingly, but I knew it was likely because this mill house was surrounded by flat dirt and rocks. The building was a small distance from any field, or forest, and it was heavily frequented by Nora and her family. Or at least, it usually was when the mill was working properly. Though knowing them they still came here often throughout the day.

  “Vim…?”

  I turned as I began to pour some wheat into the top of the grindstone, as to begin grinding it into flour.

  “Fly?” I raised my voice a little, and sure enough after some quick and tiny footsteps little Fly peaked her head into the mill. She saw me, smiled and then hurried in.

  I studied her for a moment before returning my attention to the grinder. She looked fine. She even had a small smile on her face.

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  She had been playing with Nora’s children. She had two younger daughters and a son not too much older than Fly. Though she had other children, they were a little too old to be playing around with Fly in such a way. Odds are those older siblings were off with their father, working the fields nearby.

  “Vim… Vim!” Fly got my attention, and at first I thought she wanted to show me something… but instead she was gesturing for me to bend down to her.

  I did so, frowning as she leaned forward to whisper a question.

  “What’s sex?” she asked.

  A strange noise filled the room, disappearing quickly, as I blinked and wondered what I had just been asked.

  Then as the understanding came, and went, then came again… I sighed as I stood back up.

  Looking down at my hand, I found it clenched rather tightly. I opened it, and watched as flattened pieces of wheat grains fell out of it. Some were so flat they looked weird now, like something hard. Hard and flat pieces of wood, maybe.

  “Why are you asking me that, Fly?” I asked carefully.

  “Gordon asked if I wanted to do it with him.”

  My eyes closed and I shifted, to listen around the building. Luckily for Nora’s son, one of the older ones, he wasn’t anywhere around us.

  Sighing gently I went to grab more wheat. The grinder wasn’t full yet. “Sex is the act of procreation. Though for some it’s a pleasurable past time, and not just about having children. You remember what Wool was forced to do all the time? It’s that,” I said gently as I scooped up more wheat.

  “Oh.”

  Glancing at the bird, who looked unbothered as she watched me pour wheat into the grinder, I wondered what to say next.

  After all it wasn’t that surprising she had asked me such a thing. She was a child, but only to my eyes. In human terms she was old enough to be married and start having children, and even to our kind she wasn’t far off from it. Plus it wasn’t as if it was necessarily a bad thing. It was something everyone did, all the time, inevitably.

  Usually.

  Yet I knew I needed to say something. Or at least try to. Even if it somewhat went against my own rules.

  Renn would want me to say something. So let’s try to… well…

  “Renn would tell you it’s something you do with someone you really cherish. Not someone you just met,” I said carefully.

  Fly giggled at me. “She would, yeah! So would most people, I think. His mother hit him with a spoon when he asked,” she said.

  I frowned at that. “Nora did? He said it in front of his mother?” I asked. When was this then? Nora was just here.

  “Yea. Earlier this morning. She went red with anger too! Hit him so hard it drew blood! I ran off with the girls after, but I wanted to ask about it so I snuck away. I figured that was what he meant, but I wanted to make sure. Why’s it called that? They called it mating in the sewers,” Fly said, explaining the situation a little better.

  I calmed down a little and smiled at her. I see. So I didn’t need to worry. At least, not yet.

  “I… well… you know, I honestly don’t know. A long time ago they used to use other words for the act, as you mentioned. Coupling, mating, cleaving even was used for a while. But even back then some people used that phrase too, so I’m not sure where it came from,” I said as I finished pouring enough wheat into the grinder. It was full now.

  “Hm… now that I think about it, no one in the Society has really talked about it much. Or done it, as far as I can tell. The people in the sewer used to do it all the time, like you said, about Wool and stuff,” Fly said calmly as she watched me grab the large circular stone and begin to turn it.

  It was big enough that I knew it was likely too heavy for a normal person to manually turn. At least, not without lots of leverage and pulleys. But I was not a normal person.

  “Well your experience with the Society so far is Lumen, for a short time, and then the Bell Church. One was having a bunch of chaos and issues at the time, and the other a village full of nuns. So…” I shrugged as I spun the wheel, grinding the flour. I made sure not to push too harshly, less I ruined the flour by squishing it too hard. It wasn’t the squeezing you wanted, it was the grinding. The moving. The rolling.

  “Oh. Right. People too old or too religious,” Fly nodded her head as she drew closer to the machine. She stared down at the little slot, the gutter-like bowl all around it that the freshly grounded flour was pouring into, from out under the grinder.

  She seemed far more interested in the grinder than the conversation, so I was about to change topics… to one much better suited for the moment, but Fly beat me to it. “Have you done it before?” she asked.

  I knew better than to hope, or expect, her to have meant something else.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it fun?” she asked.

  “It can be.”

  “Hm…”

  Studying the bird, I found myself worrying again. Great. What if she ran off and invited that stupid boy on a whim…? I mean it wasn’t like it was something terrible, she was her own person and was free to do whatever she wanted, and young adults did indeed do such things often… but…

  Well…

  Somehow it felt wrong. Or at least, it felt like it should be wrong.

  Maybe it was because I felt responsible for her. More than usual. My actions, my choices, had made her join the Society. Had made her go through what she had endured in Lumen. And her now being homeless, again, was indirectly my fault too.

  I should have made sure she would have been fine. Before leaving Lumen. I shouldn’t have allowed Reatti and the rest to just toss her off onto the old nuns without hesitation. I should have known better. Been better.

  Though… another part of me worried my own discomfort came from more recent events.

  Renn. The Vote. The recent problems.

  Maybe I was just getting sentimental. Or looking for something to use as a distraction. Not that Fly’s predicament was not legitimate, of course, but…

  “Did you squeeze these?” Fly then asked.

  Pausing in the grinding, I turned to see what she was now holding. She had picked something up off the ground… and yes, it was one of the wheat pieces I had been holding earlier. It looked ridiculously large in her hands, and flat enough that it should bend and break, yet it wasn’t. It kind of looked like a chip of wood or sliver of stone.

  “Yes.”

  “You did it when I asked the question, about sex,” Fly said.

  “Well… yes.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed a little. “It caught me off guard. Honestly something that doesn’t happen very often,” I said.

  She grinned at that, as if proud to have done such a thing to me. “So it is weird? To just ask someone to do it with you?”

  “Well…” I hesitated, and realized I should answer honestly… but also at the same time, didn’t want to. “Kind of. Depends on the situation. There are those like Renn, or many others who would say yes. It’s very weird to do something like that. Then there are those… well, like the deer family here, that would not find it odd at all,” I said.

  Fly hummed as she turned the flattened piece of wheat, studying it closely. As if it was one of her feathers that had fallen off her.

  “Most see the act as something personal, Fly. Something you do with a loved one. The loved one, of your life. Others see it as just a normal, instinctual act. Something everything, and everyone, does. Some do it just to breed, to have children. Others do it purely for pleasure. You’ll one day need to find out your own beliefs and ideals, and decide which type you are. Most end up being some kind of mix of the extremes, one way or another,” I said.

  “Wool used to cry. After. A lot of them did. Doesn’t it hurt?” she asked.

  “It can. It does. But it shouldn’t. That goes back to the whole, doing it with the right person, type of thing. If it hurts it’s because you don’t want it to happen. Which is another issue all on its own,” I said.

  Fly’s eyes held mine, and I made sure to give her a gentle smile. We were talking about rather important, and slightly heavy, things… but it wasn’t the first time I’ve had to have such a conversation with someone. It didn’t happen often much anymore, since orphans and children without family or parents were rare nowadays, but it did still happen sometimes.

  It was too bad Renn wasn’t here. She’d have been better suited for this. Though maybe I could ask her to sit with her later, and have a more in-depth conversation. Women were usually better for this type of stuff, in my experience.

  “Could we do it?” she then asked.

  Luckily I had not been holding onto the grinder anymore. I’d have broken it otherwise. And thus would have broken my promise with Nora about having enough flour for her dinner.

  “No. Not only are you too young for me, I’m married to Renn. She’s my special person,” I said, doing my best to sound as calm as possible.

  “Oh… No, I didn’t mean that Vim,” Fly then said, sounding as calm as I wished I felt.

  I frowned at her as she gave me a sad smile. Then she sighed and dropped the flattened piece of wheat back onto the ground.

  “I meant… I’m a bird. You’re not. They’re not. I mean, look at me. Compared to most of you I’m so different! Am I even able to have children with anyone else?” Fly asked as she held out her arms, showing off her feathers. She only wore a light shirt and jacket at the moment, not the heavy stuff we’d been traveling with.

  My panic and worry immediately disappeared, as I realized the entire source of this conversation. Her original query hadn’t just been about the term, or what Nora’s son had asked of her, but instead this.

  This is why she had snuck away from fellow girls her age, a rarity amongst our kind. To ask this question. This terrible thing that regretfully she wasn’t the only one who worried about, and wouldn’t be the last.

  Slowly nodding, I did my best to not feel horrible as I smiled at the young bird who suddenly looked terrified. “Yes, Fly. I believe you can. I’ve met plenty like you, even many who were far more animalistic. Those with wings instead of arms. Beaks instead of noses and mouths,” I said with a small gesture to her face. She softly smiled at me as I continued. “Yes, I’ve even met those who lay eggs! Some of them live even today, to our east. Far to the east. Even they were able to have children normally, even with others. Some even have children with humans, and their children are born just fine,” I said.

  Fly’s eyes widened a bit, and although her smile softened… she looked many times more excited and happy to hear it. Her whole body shifted, growing larger as her feathers raised upward as if she was agitated. “Really? Eggs?” she asked.

  I nodded. “They did. Or do…? I’ll be honest I don’t know if they still do or not, I’ve not asked. They once teased me by making me eat some without them telling me about them, and I’ve made it a point to never put myself in that position again,” I said.

  Fly immediately began to laugh, to the point she had to reach over to grab onto the grindstone’s support base as to keep herself upright. “You ate them!?” she asked with a shout between her laughs.

  “They had been tasty too,” I said, not willing to hide the truth.

  Fly buckled as she fell to her knees, laughing heartily. She seemed to find that absolutely ridiculous.

  Which was adorable and super relieving. Thank goodness she hadn’t been serious about that earlier statement, and thank goodness my answer had suited her well enough to keep her depression at bay.

  For a moment I just watched Fly laugh and giggle on the ground, she looked like she could very well envision my face as I was told I’d just eaten an egg. An egg laid by those darn ducks.

  Reaching back over to return to grinding some flour, since I knew it’d not be long until Nora returned with a large basket in expectations of being able to fill it full… I ignored Fly’s laughter until it died down enough. Once it did, I asked her to help me fix the mill. She of course readily agreed, excited at the idea of helping in such a way.

  I of course didn’t need any help grinding flour, or fixing the broken machines. None at all.

  But it was a good excuse. To keep her away from the simple minded weirdos around us.

  I had no doubt or worry now that Fly would do something foolish, but it wasn’t her I worried over anymore.

  Though I’d never say such a thing out loud.

  Not until after the vote, at least.

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