Chapter VIII: A Helping Hand

Fawna makes good progress on rebuilding her farm with Travis' help.

                Fawna woke up bright and early the next morning, filled with renewed confidence. She bounded out of her small, rickety bed and donned her clothes which she had scrubbed in the watering hole the day before. Walking outside, Mutt ambled up to her, his tail wagging excitedly. Normally, Fawna just scowled and shooed him away but this morning she laughed and picked up the scruffy dog in a big hug. "Morning, Mutt," she said before placing the puppy back down on the grass.

                Just as she was about to grab her watering can to water her tomato sprouts, tiny droplets began to fall from the sky and speckle the ground in damp moisture. Fawna frowned. Rain meant that she didn't need to water her crops, but it also meant that it would be a very dreary day and Fawna had been planning on more field work. She always got tired more quickly in the rain, even back in the city. She also hadn't taken Martini or Mutt inside.

                "Hey Fawna. Why are your animals out in this weather? Didn't you watch the forecast last night?" Travis' friendly voice rang out. Her confidence beginning to dwindle, Fawna spun around angrily, her hands placed defensively on her shapely hips.

                "No. The sky looked clear when I went to bed," she argued lamely, knowing that she sounded ridiculous and not caring. Travis just chuckled and shook his head.

                "Well, we should get them in now anyway," he told her, taking Martini's mane and gently coaxing the young foal into his stable. Fawna pouted and gathered Mutt into her arms to take him to his dog house. Mutt just stood there, looking at her, refusing to go inside.

                "Come on... go on now. Go inside your house. Do you want to get all wet and muddy?" she asked him, slender eyebrows raised sternly. At the mention of mud, Mutt barked and pranced on his hind legs happily as his tail wagged from side to side. "Nevermind..." Fawna sighed exasperatedly. Travis walked over and put a hand on Fawna's shoulder.

                "I don't think he likes his dog house. You should probably keep him in your house during bad weather from now on," he told her. Fawna's heart-shaped, naturally crimson lips curled in a frown and she shook her head vigorously.

                "Nu-uh. No way! He's gross and smelly and he is NOT setting one filthy paw in my house!" she protested vehemently. Travis just gave her an exasperated look and nodded towards the little puppy, whose nose had begun to run from being outside so long in the rain. Despite Fawna's hatred for anything dirty, including dogs, there was no way she could leave a sick puppy out in the rain. As shallow and selfish as she may seem, Fawna still had a heart. "Oh alright, but ONLY when the weather's bad!" she warned the dog before picking him up and taking him inside the house.

                Elated at being warm and dry again, Mutt jumped onto Fawna's bed and curled up for a nap. Fawna would have no part of that. "No! Bad dog! I don't want to sleep in a dirty bed! That's where you sleep!" she told him sternly, pointing to one of the flat cushions beside the coffee table. Growling temperamentally, Mutt reluctantly hopped down from Fawna's bed and curled up on the much less comfortable floor cushion.

                "I brought my silver level hammer and axe so we can get rid of the big junk in your field," Travis told her, handing her the axe. "Once you get the ore and money, you can upgrade your tools too," he said. Fawna followed him outside and as Travis confidently took his hammer to the larger stones to break them up, Fawna hesitantly whacked a large tree stump, but it didn't break. She called out to him.

                "I think your axe is broken," she said uncertainly, examining the axe herself, even though she wouldn't know even if there was something wrong with it. Travis just laughed and shook his head.

                "I think your arms are broken," he teased in a friendly manner. "You have to charge it. Just hold it back for longer and then take a swing. You should be able to break it after a couple hard thumps," he informed her.

                "Why can't farming be as easy as singing?" she muttered to herself as she did what Travis told her. After a couple charged whacks, the stump crumbled into five pieces of wood. Travis saw that she had broken her first stump and walked over to her.

                "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?" he asked. Fawna shook her head even though her arms were already aching. She had never lifted anything as heavy as an axe in her life, let alone swung it at a solid tree stump several times. "Now you can keep the leftover lumber for building extensions and fences," he said. "I think that's your lumber shed over there," he pointed out.

                By the end of the day, all of the large stones and stumps in Fawna's field had been removed and Fawna had quite a bit of lumber stored in her shed. After Fawna once again picked out the few straggly weeds from the wet earth, her field was perfectly clear and her tomato sprouts seemed to flourish in the natural source of moisture. Ha ha, Greg! You were wrong! Fawna thought to herself, quite satisfied.