Young Farmer

Dirt. Ever present. Ever changing yet remaining the same. Dirt was the ally of all who cooperated with it. Those who possessed the strength to move it could shape the Earth they walked upon. Those who understood it could cultivate it. Nurturing it to sire crops, the only means of many communities having anything at all to eat. Dirt was a longtime friend to the Rats. The oldest stories telling how in the greatest times of woe or scarcity that the Rats went underground for safety, enduring calamity after calamity. Dragons coming down from the Mountains? Hide and wait for them to leave. Armies threatening the Kingdom? Down below where they wouldn't think to look. Yes, Rats knew all too well the usefulness and importance of the dirt all walked upon.

So a Rat who mostly worked with dirt was no big surprise to many. Your father worked with the dirt as did your grandfather and his father and so on. Although your grandfather's generation changed your specific occupation to a point. Instead of digging tunnels and working as subterranean traders, your grandfather moved your family up from the earth and into the Sun. The Sun was by no means a longtime friend of the Rats, to this day your eyes hurt whenever the clouds parted and the light could reach you. But yes, you were a farmer much like the rest of your family.

Admittedly your family worked mostly in root vegetables, but habits die hard. You exited the shack you and your siblings bunked in, brown fur seen in the sleeves and short pants of your peasant garbs. Red eyes squinted from the morning sun as you put a loosely fitting hood over your head, bringing a pack up onto your back full of tools and seeds which jostled from the motion. You were not the biggest Rat, nor the strongest, but you understood what hard work yielded. Ignoring the conversations of your brothers and sisters inside, you set off to start your day proper.