Chapter Two: Meet the Villagers
The next day, Jack woke up bright and early to start work on the farm. He started by feeding Fluffy and petting Nameless, and then went straight to the field. First he dealt with the weeds, using a nifty sickle he found in a tool chest in the house. By noon, he'd successfully cleared a 10x10 plot of land and was exhausted. It was then that he had a visitor.
"Hello!" came a peppy voice from the front gate. "Jack? It's me, Popuri!"
"Oh," Jack turned around to see the pink girl waving frantically at him. "Hey, Popuri. What's up?"
"I'm here to check out the chicken habitat! Remember?"
"Oh. Right." It had, in fact, completely slipped Jack's mind. But he wasn't worried. He had seen the chicken coop when feeding Fluffy, and he was pretty sure it was stable. At least stable enough to pass a test given from a girl with pink hair. Fluffy pink hair.
Popuri went straight toward the chicken coop. She opened the door and stepped inside, surveying the ceiling and floor as she did so. Fluffy clucked happily when she ran her fingers over her feathers. Jack watched from the doorway. She is a little strange, he thought, but she does have a way with the birds. Popuri then examined the incubator and the feed storage bin. In fact, she's actually quite pretty…Jack gazed on, If you can get past that pink hair.
"Okay," Popuri concluded with an approving nod, "I believe this facility is suitable for raising poultry."
"That's good," said Jack, "You had me real worried there for a minute."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, you looked really concerned about that feed bin."
"That's because you only have three days worth of food in there, silly!" Popuri tweaked Jack's nose on the word 'silly'. An action he couldn't say he didn't like.
"I do? How do I get more?" he asked.
"Well, you can buy it from us," she said as she left the coop. Wandering over to the creek, she continued. "But I wouldn't recommend that, as it gets expensive. In the summer you can grow corn. If you put that in the mill you have here, it'll turn into chicken feed."
"Summer is a month away."
"You can also leave the chicken outside. Fluffy will eat bugs and stuff. But be sure to put her in if it rains, or she might get sick."
Jack responded to this by picking Fluffy up and placing him outside. Fluffy gave a happy cluck and then started pecking through the grass.
"Perfect!" said Popuri.
"Yeah, I'll build her a little outdoor pen over here, too," said Jack.
"I'll help!" Popuri offered, but it was really more of a statement, as she had barely finished the sentence when she scrambled over to the field and began gathering sticks and stones.
"Uh, that's okay, Popuri…" Jack started.
"No, no. I want to."
A few hours later, Popuri and Jack had formed a 3x3 plot of land surrounded by sticks and rocks where Fluffy could happily reside during good weather. Popuri stepped back and ran her eyes over their work.
"What do you think?" she asked Jack.
"Pretty good," he replied.
"Pretty good? It's awesome!" Popuri squealed and threw her arms around Jack for the second time. "Look, my dress got all dirty. I think I should head home now."
"Alright. Want me to walk you home?" Jack offered. "I need to go to the store anyway."
"Sure, you can walk me to the intersection, then."
Jack got a third hug from Popuri right before she headed down the road to the poultry farm. He stopped to watch her skip off.
"She's pretty cute," he wondered aloud. Then, after realizing what he was saying, he slapped himself in the head. "Ah! What am I thinking? The girl has pink hair!" He rubbed his temples all the way to the store.
When Jack walked into the General Store, he had to catch his breath. He had to catch his breath because upon entering, he saw an extremely hot girl. She was, quite literally, breathtaking.
"Hi," she said with a sweet smile, "Can we help you?"
"I sure hope so," Jack replied dazedly.
"I'm Karen," the girl had brown hair with two slightly lighter highlights in front. She casually flicked these highlights aside and blinked her sparkling green eyes. "And you are?"
"Jack," Jack replied, realizing that aside form the mayor, Karen was the first villager to ask his name and not already refer to him as 'the new kid on the farm'.
"Jack? Alright, Jack. Well, this is the General Store. We sell seeds, cooking ingredients and some other things. Hey, Dad," Karen turned from Jack to the back of the store, where a man with greased black hair stood behind a cash register. "Why don't we give the new kid on the farm a complimentary bag of grass seeds?"
"What?" the man looked a little scared. "Well…let's give it to him if he gives us 500g first, huh?"
"Dad!"
"Oh, Jeff," an older woman walked in from the back door, shaking her head. "It's just one bag of seeds."
"But, Sasha, Karen--" Jeff whined.
"DAD!"
"Oh, fine." Jeff looked very beat up.
"Here you go!" Karen happily handed Jack a bag of green seeds.
"Uh, thanks." Jack accepted the gift and stuffed it into his backpack. "Can I have a bag of turnip seeds too?"
"NO!" Jeff yelled from the back. "One free bag is enough!"
"I meant I'd pay for it."
"Oh. In that case, you go right ahead. Come again next time!"
After the General Store, Jack headed west to the library. He had his seeds and his land, but he didn't know how to grow and raise plants. He figured it wouldn't be too hard, but a little reading up never hurt anybody.
As he stepped inside the library, a girl with square glasses and long black hair smiled at him from behind a desk.
"Hello there," she said, "Are you looking for a book?"
"Yeah," Jack responded, thinking that for such a small town, there certainly wasn't a real shortage of cute girls. The one he was looking at currently was the first girl he had seen in his entire life who could make the glasses she was wearing actually look good.
"What kind of book?" she inquired. "We have lots of books. We have mystery, and romance, and adventure…"
"How about farming?" tried Jack.
"Yes, we have those too." The girl got up from the desk and started skimming the bookshelves. "This one is about what seasons certain crops grow in," she pulled a book out and set it on a nearby table. "This one is about chickens. And this one here has everything you need to know about livestock," she began to pile the books up. "This one here has a lot of How-To articles on growing crops to make money."
"Wow! Okay! That's enough for right now!" Jack sputtered. The amount of books had now formed a teetering tower a few feet high.
"Oh…okay." The girl quietly took a seat at her desk again. Jack pulled the first book off the pile, titled Turnips for Dummies, and flipped it open to a random page. But he found it hard to concentrate on the book with the silent girl sitting in the room.
"So, do you have a name?" Jack asked her.
"Yes."
"Oh. Cool. Me too."
Obviously, she was not very talkative.
"My name is Mary. My mother is Anna and my father is Basil. They like collecting herbs and researching about flowers and other greenery. I like to read and write. Currently, I'm writing a novel. It's sort of an autobiography. And I think it's sad that no one really comes in the library, so it makes me very happy that you did." Mary sputtered out all at once. Jack stood for a minute in silence, comprehending it all.
"Well." He said, "That's a lot of information to give all at once."
"I'm not good at people," Mary said quietly.
"You don't need to be," Jack said while skimming the book, "A girl as cute as you."
"You…you think I'm cute?" Mary looked up at him, her eyes magnified behind the square glasses.
"Yeah, I do. Can I take these books home? I have a lot of reading to do."
After checking out the books, Jack headed for home. By the time he left, it was already dark out. Due to this, he was halfway home when he tripped over a stick carelessly placed in the middle of the road. This wouldn't have been so bad, except for the fact that as he did so, he accidentally fell on to two innocent passersby.
"Hey!"
"Ouch!"
"Watch it!"
"I'm sorry!"
Jack stood up and straightened his shirt. Staring back at him were two young men about his age. One had a blue cap on and the other had longish brown hair that was tied back.
"I'm Jack," he said quickly.
"I'm Cliff," said the brown haired one. Pointing to his friend, he added, "And this is Gray."
"Welcome to the boonies," Gray grimaced. He kept his face half hidden by his cap.
"Nice to meet you," began Jack, "I'm really sorry about running in to you like that. This stick was just lying in the middle of the road."
"Don't worry about it," Cliff flicked his hand like it was nothing. "We were just going to the Inn. It turns into a bar at night. Want to join us for drinks?"
"No thanks," Jack refused, "I would, but I have a lot of reading up to do. I don't know a whole lot about farms."
"Sure, no problem," Cliff shrugged. Gray suddenly got a very scared look on his face.
"Shouldn't you be getting home by now?" he asked.
"Yeah…I should. See you guys later." Jack finished with a friendly wave.
"Bye now." Cliff said.