Chapter 484: Sorrow

-----

Desperate times called for desperate measures, the farmers grew unstill as they began to steal and plunder one another's resources to feed their families and children, no mater how much he guarded his crops through the night he was eventually stolen by the people and his family went through even more hunger.

Over hunting also caused the population of rabbits to dwindle down and they became scarce, the same was for the wild mushrooms which he picked daily, and even the wild birds had learned to not come closer to these forests near humans, requiring for the hunters to travel even farther from their houses to get a meal for their families.

Without enough food the meals per day were reduced to one and a half, where Gustav gave most of his food to his siblings while he filled his stomach with hard bread and soup alone, he had grown big and strong and didn't required as much nourishment as his little precious siblings, which he loved dearly. He desired to see their filled stomachs rather than his own, and contained his roaring belly through the days to come, while waiting for the crops to grow back and be able to eat better.

Nonetheless, when the aristocrats moved here many of them brought their own diseases and many farmers began to drop dead over the course of the next months. Piles of corpses were being burned outside of the village as a way to "disinfect" them from infecting other people, but due to the bad hygiene of these times, barely anything could be done to disinfect a person other than washing yourself in a river which was already nasty by itself.

The nearby rivers suddenly began to bring more fish, however, for uncertain motives the fishes began to take these rivers as their home while rushing down from mountains' lakes, mostly to reproduce and so on. The people started to learn how to fish and take over this natural resource, which also included Gustavo and his family, he quickly and proficiency learned how to fish and brought to his family a new meal, for many days they ate fish, a nutritious source of protein and fat.

However, the greedy aristocrats didn't let these people have free meals at the expense of their own territories, as they quickly began to ask for money to the people that fished, even leaving guards around the usual fishing spots, who asked for half the fishes people caught, and even sometimes aske for money to let the people even fish once. This was something quite awful to the farmers, and many of them ended giving up half of what they fished, bringing less and less food.

It felt to Gustavo as if these people enjoyed seeing others suffer while they stuffed their greedy and fat mouths with all the food they could devour, they were doing absolutely nothing to help them survive yet they asked for their own food as if these people owned the lands, they had lived their entire lives in and even their own lives.

These people had never seen any of them and had perfectly survived by themselves while barley interacting with the duchy, nonetheless, these greedy aristocrats asked for more and more, as the people sometimes saw how fat they were compared to the near skeletal bodies the farmer folk had. To get fat in such times meant they had more food than they needed, these people's greed and care of empathy for their own citizens was baffling.

Gustavo had nothing to do than obey in these times, his life was shrouded with tragedies, but he had to keep going and struggling to survive, his siblings were still being feed and his mother was hanging out just fine… or so he thought.

A fateful day came when Gustavo was already 18 years of age, his mother fell ill in just a single night, fever took over her body as she felt ill and nauseous. He had tried to desperately call for a doctor or anyone to aid his ill and dying mother, but nobody ever came to help, and if he tried to ask the aristocrats the guards would point blades at his face and scram him off.

He desperately tried to ask for a doctor, but they never came for a young boy that nobody cared about. He was desperately alone in this world and the only ones that recognized him as a person were his own family.

Containing his tears he saw his mother slowly die in bed, all of his four siblings desperately crying tears of sorrow and suffering as their beloved mother that had hanged out for over 30 years died at the age of 32, a young lady with a gentle heart.

The corpse of their mother was retrieved by the guards a few days after when it began to smell badly, Gustavo had to let them take her away, she risked spreading the disease to his siblings as he desperately asked them to wash int her rivers every day after the death of their mother.

Now left alone with his four little siblings Gustavo had nobody else than himself to maintain this family, he was no even 20 years of age and his two parents had died already. The life in the middle ages was harsh and unforgiving not even for the most innocent of children. Gustavo prayed to God everyday while prostrating himself in the ground, asking and imploring for better days to come, his life was crumbling, and his pained and shattered heart could barely hold on in these times of desperation and hunger. The desire to protect his siblings and keep on surviving, however, never faded from his valiant heart as he remembered his parents every day.

To appease their pained hearts Gustavo always spoke to his siblings about their parents being in heaven, they were now with God, they were good people and any sins they had must had been forgiven by the lord… such feeble little words were enough to calm their sorrow as they continued striving forward, Gustavo himself didn't knew if God even existed truly, but he hold into this faith with everything he had and wanted to believe he truly existed… because a world without god seemed to lose the meaning of even striving forward to survive…

Holding into his faith, he continued surviving as he could, but tragedies continued to befall the young man…

-----