Fresh farmland, ripe for plowing.

The bounds of Lilisburgh Village stretched on and on. So much land, so few people.

After walking them to the edge of the Captain’s newly-granted farmstead, and promising to check up on them tomorrow, Miss Yamasaki retreated. Given her sheer size, the enormous blonde moved like the wind.

Even Sasha had some vague impression of what a ‘farm’ should look like.

This wasn’t that. Farms meant growing plants in an orderly fashion, and this place only met one condition. Most of the vegetation didn’t look like the type you’d eat. Overgrown weeds, enormous reedy fields of tall grass, fallen trees and upright oaks soaking up all the sunlight plants beneath them might need. Boulders strewn about.

Lots of things got put on hold during the war, but nature wasn’t one of them. Without the Captain to take care of the place, no one else had been up to the task. Even if they had been, they had their own homesteads to care for.

Even though things were in a rough state, the Captain still smiled for some reason.

“I suppose we should be grateful there’s a house. I wonder if the water works.”

If all else failed, they were on the banks of the great lake. Not only did waterways naturally cut up potential fields, offering easy irrigation, but there was even a waterfall that could prove useful in a pinch for bathing. Sasha was more accustomed to foraging off the land, so these overgrown ruins weren’t too intimidating.

While the Captain was still unpacking their bags, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work making the place habitable for humanoid life.

Putting aside the slightly distressing amount of dust on the… everything, that meant food, heat, and a place to sleep. The house already afforded them the latter, it looked to be a sturdy wooden construction with primary and guest bedrooms. The former was easy enough to achieve. All that required was a fire.

“Honestly, I’m amazed the power lines run all the way out here. Okay, labor delegation! Would you mind getting us some firewood while I see to the kitchen?”

“Understood.”

“That’s not a yes, or a no…”

Although there were no logs by the fireplace, there was an old, sturdy axe. Although it looked well-worn, the blade had been well-kept, and untouched for years. It would do more than fine for a single night’s worth, and there was plenty of fallen, already-dry wood outside to reclaim.

By the time the Captain had finished putting away their things, he’d already found himself a nice, wide stump, and begun splitting logs atop it.

Though he found little challenge in the work, as a cool morning ushered the warmer midday sun directly overhead, Sasha felt the heat of his uniform. He pulled off his blue jacket first, followed by the shirt underneath, discarding them on the porch as he worked, white ears and tail swaying to the ‘tune’ of the strikes.

For some reason, the Captain came out onto the porch and then stared a while.

“... Uh, Sasha, lunch is ready.”

It was easy to lose track of time in the comforting rhythms of manual labor.

When she snapped him out of his work, the wood was piled into tall stacks. Awkwardly tall, at least for one man to carry. Luckily, the Captain, though she was averse to chopping for some reason, was happy to seize an enormous stack of wood, and haul it in.

She’d exchanged her own uniform for a sky-blue dress that went well with the color of her ribbons. While the dress covered her up as much as that uniform, the lack of layers made things much cooler, and her bare shoulders and back also made it more apparent that she was shredded to the bone.

Almost as muscular as he was, despite being a woman, though she hadn’t undergone all the experimental treatments. The Captain just had all that muscle from working out.

Looking at her in a dress that swayed with the lakeborn breeze, with those sky-blue ribbons matching her eyes in her short pink hair, and the curves of a mature, if not especially curvy, woman, it was tougher to see her as just a fellow soldier or superior officer. For a moment, Sasha wondered what the Major would have looked like in a dress like that.

In all their years together, he’d never gotten to see.

“Somebody more considerate than that scheming ‘mayor’ left us some meat in the icebox! I tossed it on the gas range, and fwoom!” The Captain huffed pridefully as she introduced a dining table, set for two; each plate had upon it a formerly-sizzling, now rapidly-cooling, ashen-black steak. “I maybe gave it too much gas… but it’s a learning experience!”

Sasha wasn’t like other nekomata in a lot of ways, but he shared the hard-coded love of a well-cooked cut of meat- particularly after so much time spent eating pre-packaged rations.

“The charring makes it better,” Sasha confirmed, after obliterating the steak, washing it down from an ice-cooled glass of water from the tap, and taking a freshly-washed, ripe red apple from a basket on the table.

As that was the first compliment that he’d ever paid the Captain, the other nekomata had a hard time with it. She was still chewing through her own well-done steak as her face turned red as those apples.

After lunch, they were both out in the fields together. The first task was just to clear enough space to plant something in the rich soil beneath. Vines, weeds, grass, trees, rocks… removing so much debris required strength and energy.

It wasn’t a one day job to ready even a single farm plot for action, but they got busy.

Neither of them particularly felt sociable after their long train ride. Despite the mayor’s suggestion of going around introducing themselves, they instead spent their first day on the farmstead starting to undo the encroachment of time and Autumn’s natural elements.

“The house has everything we need, more or less,” The Captain said. “Including, of course, a big bath! C’mon, c’mon!”

Even if they weren’t soldiers who’d served in mixed conditions, they wouldn’t have seen a single problem stripping off their clothes and hopping into an open-air, fenced-off spring-style bath in back of the house together. That was just the way of it, in large parts of Autumn.

People in the nekomata realms loved nothing more than a hot steak and hot bath.

Whatever troubles this land had, it provided those essentials.

For those who had drifted without a home, it was a gift from the Goddess.