94 Harvest Day

After breakfast Jayde and Reiko left early to visit Tardide, Jayde needed to purchase some supplies as she was running short on basic items like salt, flour, sugar, and porridge. She also wanted to give Elder Ryunzo her rough sketch of the city she had designed.

Arriving at the village Jayde happily greeted everyone that she met along the way to Elder Ryunzo's home.

When Mrs. Ryunzo led Jayde into the Elder Ryunzo's study, he was happy to see her. After chatting for a while, Elder Ryunzo caught Jayde up with the current happenings in the village. Master Rainer had already started training the young mages, and the villagers were currently finishing up the local school.

Elder Ryunzo had already ordered supplies for the school, and the village carpenters were busy building desks and chairs for the students. Elder Ryunzo was hoping to have the children of the village start school after the harvesting of the Afeaso.

With the influx of war veterans, the village now had enough manpower to ensure that the stone quarry was delivering wagons filled with stone to the village every day. They had also added more villagers to the iron mine.

Being able to use the new villagers for the stone quarry and the mine had freed up the old villagers who were allocated to the charcoal manufacturing area. With the extra manpower, charcoal production had tripled.

The charcoal had been a tremendous success in Oldstrand and Tardide couldn't keep up with the demand. They had already sent two wagon trains to deliver charcoal to Oldstrand, and the village coffers were full, which was just as well as with the number of new people in the village, Tardide was running out of supplies and had needed to purchase basic food supplies to keep everyone fed until the village harvest was ready.

Elder Ryunzo had been impressed with the small tar road that Jayde had made, and had already allocated new villagers to tar the road to Oldstrand. He estimated that the road would be completed by the following week.

Jayde could only marvel at how industrious the villagers of Tardide were, they hadn't stopped for a moment and were rushing ahead, building themselves a bright new future.

When Elder Ryunzo starting to discuss the building of homes for the new villagers, Jayde took out the scrolls she had drawn that contained her city plan. She handed them over to Elder Ryunzo to have a look at. Elder Ryunzo spread out the scroll on top of his desk to study.

Jayde's city plan was similar to the cities she had helped plan for the Centauri for Eden, the city was circular in shape, with sections based on ancient Earth clock watch face. In the center of the city, Jayde had suggested that they build a tower — which could be used as the main government building.

Which such a large landmark located in the center, when the city was large it would help any person in the city to be able to orientate themselves quickly, just by looking at where they were in relationship to the tower.

Around the tower would be a park with man-made ponds, small shops, the school, public offices, and an entertainment area.

Each section of the city would have a small well dug, which would give villagers access to clean water, and help should a fire ever break out, and as the city grew larger, sections would eventually have their own health centers, shops, and schools. She had also marked areas where small parks could be located.

With this section design, the village would have ample room for growth and they would only have to build a new section as and when they needed it, and the current village at the moment would be the first section developed.

Jayde also suggested that the villagers should start to arrange for city workers to collect rubbish, clean and maintain the streets, as well as a local security force which could double as fire watches and help maintain law and order.

A wall could be built to encircle the new city with only two entrances, which would help when it came to defending the city, and the farms could encircle the outer edges of the city.

Elder Ryunzo was fascinated by Jayde's city plan, it was unusual but he loved it. Taking out his brush and ink, he began making notes. Seeing that Elder Ryunzo was fully engrossed in his task, Jayde bid him farewell and left.

Visiting the local stores Jayde stocked up supplies that she was short of and after chatting with some of the local villagers, she and Reiko left Tardide and returned to their cave.

***

For the next three weeks Jayde fell into a comfortable routine, she and Reiko hunted and foraged in the mornings, in the afternoons she practiced her fire magic and spent her evenings playing with the wyrmlings. After the wyrmlings feel asleep she spent some time designing some ancient weapons that she intended to hand over to Elder Ryunzo before she left.

Every fourth or fifth day she would visit the village to socialize with the villagers and observe their progress — and most importantly to Reiko and Yinxin collect delicious desserts for them, Jayde baking was not progressing well, and still left much to desire.

More war veterans had moved to Tardide and the village was growing in leaps and bounds. The tar road to Oldstrand had been completed, which had sped up trade between the two cities. With the village coffers overflowing with gold — Elder Ryunzo had hired mercenaries to help guard the village as well as the trade wagons traveling to and fro between Oldstrand and Tardide.

Many of the surrounding cities were interested in upgrading their own roads, and Elder Ryunzo had arranged with President Andillevé to negotiate deals with these cities.

Counsellor Andillevé was overjoyed with the prestige and gold that Oldstrand was gaining, he had already been approached by the Mages' Guild to negotiate an alliance, and with Tardide taking in Oldstrand's beggar population, there was less strain on Oldstrand resources, the crime rate had dropped, overnight many of his problems had disappeared.

Master Whitestone had taken on seven children of the old residents of Tardide as apprentices to help him in the smithy, the village had received numerous orders for their mechanical plow and harvester, and at the current rate of production, it would take nearly a year for them to complete the orders that they had received.

Master Whitestone had managed to deliver over fifteen plows to the Merchants' Guild, and these plows were currently hard at work clearing up fields — while too late for the summer harvest, these fields would be used for crops that could be harvested in autumn, and President Andillevé had estimated that this year's winter would be one the easiest that the people of Oldstrand would experience as there would be no food shortages.

Elder Ryunzo and Mrs. Ryunzo had adopted four children, three boys, and a little girl. When Mrs. Ryunzo had accompanied Elder Ryunzo to Oldstrand she had been horrified to come across a scene of some rich noble teenager beating a child who looked to be only eight or nine years old on the streets.

According to Elder Ryunzo, she had immediately flown to the child's defense, bashing the noble over the head with her heavy handbag, scolding him the whole time. Then grabbing the young man by his ear she had dragged him over to the child to apologize.

Thankfully due to Counsellor Andillevé intervention, Mrs. Ryunzo didn't get into any trouble with the nobles of Oldstrand, and the young man was made to apologize to the Ryunzo's.

When Mrs. Ryunzo found out that the child who had been beaten was the eldest child of four whose parents had been killed by bandits earlier that year and had been trying to find work to feed his three younger siblings. The young child had angered the noble when he had asked to polish his shoes, which had led to his beating.

Seeing the bruised and battered child, Mrs. Ryunzo has insisted on accompanying him home.

Once she saw the pitiful state of the three younger children, especially the youngest — a dainty three-year-old girl with large blue eyes, her heart had melted, and without given the children chance to mutter a word, she had bundled them up, loaded them into the carriage, and declared firmly to Elder Ryunzo that these four were now their children.

Elder Ryunzo had never seen his gentle, soft-spoken wife so fiery, and struck dumb could only nod in agreement while Mrs. Ryunzo insisted that they and their children return home immediately.

Elder Ryunzo had laughed merrily when retelling the story.

***

Jayde had been invited by the villages to attend their harvest day. The Afeaso was ready to be harvested, and due to the nature of the herb, it still had to be hand-picked, as only the flower of the Afeaso was worth anything.

After all the flowers were picked, the villagers would then use the harvesters to cut all the stalks which could be dried and stored for winter. The stalks were nutritiousness feed for their farm animals.

All the villagers had gathered at the various fields with hemp sacks tied to their waist. Baskets of food and drinks were set up on one side of the fields, ready to feed the hungry villagers at lunchtime. At the entrance to the fields, dozens of wagons were lined up waiting to deliver their valuable cargo to Oldstrand.

Jayde and Reiko walked over to Elder Ryunzo who was standing and talking to Master Rainer and Master Whitestone.

"Jayde you finally here!" Elder Ryunzo exclaimed happily.

"We just about to start," he said handing over a hemp sack to Jayde.

Elder Ryunzo then walked over to a small platform that had been quickly erected for today's event. Climbing up he welcomed all the villagers to harvest day and thanked everyone for attending.

After giving his brief speech, he then blessed the harvest and the villagers and then laughing merrily he waved everyone off to start the harvest.

Jayde watched the villagers laughing and joking, as they quickly started picking the Afeaso blooms. One would think that they were having a party and not working with the joyful atmosphere. Children screamed with laughter, as they ran up to their parents and collected their full sacks before running to the wagons to hand their sacks over to one of the villagers who was standing by the wagons waiting to load.

Elder Ryunzo eldest son was carefully recording the number of sacks loaded on to each of the wagons. Once a wagon was full, the driver with six mercenary guards set off immediately for Olstrand.

--

Quote of the day

"When you change your thoughts, you change your world."

-- Norman Vincent Peale