Lukas could hardly ask for a better town than Kardia. True, it was rural, as far out in the sticks as it was possible to be, and quiet. For a young man in the heat of youth, it wasn't exactly the sort of town that exuded excitement or opportunity, but it did boast one particularly important asset, at least for Lukas.

For a small border town, Kardia had a disproportionately large population of unmarried young women.

Since he'd been a child, Lukas had always dreamed of becoming a bard, of roaming the world and sweeping beautiful girls off their feet. As he grew older, he found the roaming part increasingly tedious, and decided he'd be content with just pursuing whatever lovely faces he could within reach. He wasn't unattractive; he knew he had a boyish charm and a bit of sensuality that men like Camus lacked, and he knew that the young ladies of Kardia were perpetually bored with their simple lives. As far as he was concerned, he was prepared to take the town by storm, except for one tiny detail.

He was a terrible poet, and girls couldn't stand him.

Still, that didn't mean he wasn't prepared to try.

When Raguna became a member of the village, everyone fully expected Lukas to waste no time in pursuing her. They were not disappointed.

The first evening after she settled into Mist's farm, he was at her door, asking her out to tea. When he began to recite a particularly bad poem, she shut the door in his face.

The next day, he brought her a small handful of flowers. She stared at them intently for a minute.

"Are these dandelions?"

"Huh? Oh, I don't know, my lady. I merely saw their wild beauty and was reminded of you." In truth, he couldn't tell flowers apart for the life of him.

She sniffed at them cautiously. "They sure smell like dandelions," she murmured, and to his horror she snapped one off its stem and chewed on it pensively. "Ya, dis is dandelion, thanksh," she said, looking weirdly grateful at having been given a bunch of weeds. "I was starving," she added as she cut another bloom. She ate the whole bouquet.

The following day he ran into her at the general store, where she was deep in conversation with Rosetta. Her demeanor was completely different; on her farmstead, she'd been no-nonsense and relaxed, her androgynous figure and boyish gestures suited to the honest war she'd begun waging on the fields. But here, in front of Rosetta, Lukas could hardly recognize her. Her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes shining warmly, and her fingers twirled a strand of hair around shyly. Her posture was reserved, almost demure, and she seemed to be be fidgeting slightly. More alarmingly, Rosetta was smiling as they spoke; it was a smile he'd never seen before, inviting and sweet. That was when he understood.

Raguna was not a woman to be courted. She was a wolf to be feared, set loose on his territory.

ENEMY! SHE'S AN ENEMY!

And thus, only three days after her arrival, Lukas declared war on the newest bachelorette in Kardia.

Comrade Falienzo thought things couldn't get any worse. Kidnapped, stripped of his beautiful name, and given a bevy of meaningless tasks, he was miserable in his new life as Raguna's so called "help". Every morning, he compulsively left the barn and plodded along the field, picking up debris and tossing it into his little bucket. When it was full, he tossed it into what Raguna called the "shipping bin" and it was all eventually hauled away by another human who complained the whole time under its breath.

Comrade Falienzo would complain too, if he had to haul away that much garbage every afternoon. But he had his own problems.

As much as he wanted to disobey, he couldn't. There was an invisible force that made him want to do the tasks Raguna set out for him, though it wasn't strong enough to make him enjoy doing them. He dragged his feet and did his job half-heartedly, but it still seemed to cheer Raguna up a great deal no matter how little work he actually got done. The human's stupid smile and condescending attitude at the end of the day pissed him off.

Then there was the food. It was awful, dry grass. Comrade Falienzo liked grass fine, when it was fresh. But Raguna's grass was stale and tasteless and Comrade Falienzo found himself wishing for a nice apple or a handful of berries. He'd even go for a pear, as much as he hated the bloody starchy things. He tried to eat some of the weeds and grass on the fields instead, but Raguna caught him at it and forbade it. Anything he didn't toss into the shipping bin, she ended up eating herself. She was truly diabolical, torturing him at every turn. Comrade Falienzo could only assume she was the devil herself.

But the absolute worst thing about Raguna was what she did the day after she caught him and bound him to her will with her dreadful magic. Humming to herself, she took an awful looking human tool and brutally shore his beautiful wool coat until he was as naked as the day he was born. As Comrade Falienzo cried against this terrible indignity, she took his wool and tossed it into the shipping bin with the rest of the garbage. She didn't even wear it herself! When the trash human arrived, he mourned the loss of his coat, the beautiful coat he had grown out to impress Comrade Meretta. He could see no sense in this wanton cruelty; humans were far worse than anyone in the Forest of Beginnings had initially believed.

Rosetta was tired of hauling sacks full of weeds and stones away from Raguna's fields every afternoon. The daughter of the grocery store owner, it was Rosetta's job to go around the farms in town and pick up the produce they produced. She would then pay them and take the goods back home, where she separated them by type and sold the raw materials to the proper businesses. Monster products went to Neumann or the bar, ores to Leo's forge, crops were sold in her father's store, etc.

Unfortunately, she was obligated by town law to pay farmers for everything they shipped, even garbage. Though she didn't have to pay much, the costs of labor on her end far outweighed the marginal profit she made from disposing of the useless materials. She had to carry them back home, separate them, and then find a creative way of selling them for a slightly better price. So far, she'd begun selling weeds to the doctor's office; she couldn't tell apart the herbs from the trash so she sold it in bundles and let Lara figure it out. The branches and stones she sold to Camus at a discount; the idea was that he could use them as emergency materials for his building profits, but Rosetta was sure that Camus was just pitying her and taking them off her hands because they were old friends. Not that she cared; money was money, and if Camus wanted to pay her out of friendly obligation, that was his problem.

Still, she preferred spending her time on more lucrative products, and Raguna was quickly becoming the bane of her merchant's soul. Even when the promised turnips began to appear in the shipping box (to her immense relief), they were always accompanied by the random trash Raguna picked up off her fields during the day.

"Raguna, do you have to keep shipping weeds?" she asked one day after opening the bin and finding yet another sack full of brambles.

"I'm sorry, I have to," Raguna lamented, and to Rosetta's horror the young farmer began to sob into her hands. "I'm so broke, it's painful; I can't afford to waste even one gold."

"Even with the turnip crop?! I'm paying you good money for those!" Rosetta said, quickly handing Raguna her handkerchief.

"Turnips don't sell for enough to offset the costs of running this place," Raguna sniffed, her nose red. "Almost my entire income is gone when I buy more seeds and equipment. And I can't afford better crops, do you know how expensive seeds are?!"

Rosetta coughed a little, pretending to busy herself in the calculations for Raguna's payment. She was the one who set prices in her father's store, but Raguna didn't need to know that.

"Besides, I'm not shipping everything I find on my fields," Raguna mumbled, and for some reason her face went pink. Rosetta felt her heart skip a beat at the cute gesture; perhaps it was something about Raguna's rather handsome profile, but it was general consensus among the village girls that when the newcomer was serious, she was far more dashing than she had any right to be. The rest of the time, she was a bit of an airhead and earnest to a fault, though that somehow only increased her charm. Then there were moments like these, where the young woman was so adorably pathetic that it was impossible not to feel a tinge of not entirely selfless concern.

"Dear gods, Raguna, you're not eating this crap?!"

"I have to eat SOMETHING!" she wailed, bursting into tears again. "Do you know how unreliable fishing is?! Do you know how hard it is to eat your precious crops when you know each one is worth more than you can afford?! Do you know how hard it is to watch Mist take basketfuls of them home?!"

"Honey," Rosetta said, firmly placing her hands on Raguna's shoulders. "Stop letting Mist walk all over you. You're going to die at this rate."

"But she won't listen! It's like talking to a brick wall! And I'm not paying her rent, so the least I can do is give her some turnips..."

Rosetta sighed. She was the last person qualified to criticize forms of payment.

"Okay, how's this?" she said, making up her mind. "Stop by the store tomorrow morning, I'll figure something out to give you a hand."

"Really?!"

"It's the least I can do for a friend." And to stop finding weeds in this goddamn bin.

"Thank you, Rosetta!" Raguna cried, hugging her. Though they were both women, Raguna was a few good inches taller than her, which meant that Rosetta's face was pressed into her shoulder. It was a very nice shoulder, she decided. Well-built and clearly muscled, and the scent, though earthy, was really rather agreeable.

"Anything to stop you eating weeds," she said, glad that Raguna couldn't see how flushed her face was.

Raguna left Slump in charge of the field for the morning and headed into town. She was almost to the store and daydreaming about a warm, home-cooked breakfast for a change when a familiar voice called out to her.

"Aha, caught in the act!"

She turned, startled, to find Lukas glaring at her, arms crossed, in front of the grocery store.

"Oh, hey Lukas."

"Don't give me that, I know what you're here for!"

"Give it a rest, Lukas, it's too early for this," she yawned.

"It's never too early for thieves to strike," he said, pointing his staff at her angrily.

"For the last time, stop calling me a thief. First of all, Rosetta does not belong to you. Second, what the hell is your problem?"

"As if I need to repeat myself! I've seen the furtive glances you've given my beloved muse! I've seen that wolfish look in your eye!"

"You know, just because I think she's pretty-"

"Aha, you admit it!"

"Oh shove off," she sighed, pushing the door open.

"Good morning, Raguna," Jean smiled as she walked in. "Can I help you?" Lukas followed hot on her heels. "Oh, Lukas. Rosetta's in the back room if you want me to call her out," he added in a slightly colder tone.

"Morning Jean," Raguna cut in, preventing Lukas from answering. "Actually, I'm looking for Rosetta myself."

"In that case, hold on a moment." The tall, fair haired man wiped his hands on his apron and walked over to the store room. It was easy to see that much of his daughter's good looks actually came from Jean. "Rosetta, Raguna and Lukas are here for you," he called in his soft voice.

"Good, I'll be right there," they heard her shout. A moment later she hurried out, looking as full of energy as ever.

"Hey Raguna," she said, completely ignoring Lukas. Raguna couldn't help feeling slightly smug. "So I thought about it all night, and I've come up with a way for you to make good money in a short amount of time."

"Seriously?!"

"Yep. It's genius, if I do say so myself," she grinned. "All you have to do is convert half your farm into a strawberry field. I call it, Operation Strawberry Cash Grab!"

"Strawberries?" Raguna asked, confused.

"Yeah, look," she pulled out her account book and showed her a page full of calculations. "One bag of strawberries goes for 80 gold, right? But a whole crop of strawberries will go for 200 gold a gram, that's an insane payoff!"

"What the hell, what's with the stupidly high price?!" Raguna frowned, staring at the arithmetic.

"Everyone loves strawberries," Rosetta shrugged. "Personally, they're my favorite, but most farmers don't grow them."

"How come?!"

"The soil around here doesn't actually have enough nutrients for them."

Raguna groaned. "Then how is turning half my field into a strawberry farm any use?"

"Well see, that's the catch! Any regular farmer has to go out of town and use the caves to grow crops that won't grow in town, right?"

"Right, and they grow in the dark because...?"

"Runes, duh. The caves are full of them."

"Runes? You mean those glowing crystal things that show up in my fields?"

"Exactly, they're a kind of energy that support crop growth. Or something, I'm not entirely clear on it, but whatever they do, runes allow you to grow stuff you wouldn't normally be able to farm. And since you're an Earthmate..."

"Ohhh, so that's why there are runes in my field!" she exclaimed. "You really think I'll be able to grow strawberries?"

"There's a risk, but I think if anyone can do it, it's you," she smiled.

"But... I can't afford this many seeds," Raguna said, her initial enthusiasm fading.

"Oh, don't worry about that. I'll give you a steep discount."

"What?! Seriously?!"

"Just this once. All I ask is that you stop shipping weeds... and that you let me have a few strawberries from time to time," she winked. Raguna blushed slightly.

"Hold it! I'll do it too! I'll grow strawberries!" Lukas suddenly cried, pushing Raguna aside.

"What the-"

"Lukas, what part of 'Raguna's an Earthmate and is the only one who can pull this off' did you not catch?" Rosetta asked, exasperated. "You're not even a farmer. Beats me how you support yourself, actually. You just walk around all day, heckling girls."

"I don't care, I'll go out into the caves and grow strawberries, just for you, my muse!"

"You'll get killed out there," she said, no real concern in her voice at all.

"I'll brave it, I'll do it!"

"Fine, whatever, but you're not getting a discount," she shrugged. Then she paused for a moment, and a sudden brightness seemed to come over her expression. "Wait, hold on. There's a cave down south that's pretty easy to farm in. Xavier told me about it. You could probably grow strawberries in there, and It'd be such a big help if you'd sell them to us..." she said, her tone completely different. Raguna could practically see the money reflected in her eyes, but Lukas, the idiot ham, didn't seem to be catching on.

"Anything for you, Rosetta! I'll grow so many strawberries you won't know what to do with them! For you, I'll start the... The Corporate Strawberry Enterprise!"

Raguna rubbed her temples and sighed. "Lukas... just because you string words together in a sentence doesn't make them mean anything, you know."

Comrade Falienzo was napping in the barn when a sudden light startled him awake. He jumped to his feet, ready to fight, but a moment later the flash of light disappeared, leaving behind a small, fluffy bundle on the barn floor.

"Baa?"

Translation: Huh? What's that?

To his surprise, the bundle shifted at the sound of his voice. A pair of wide eyes stared at him from a black, fuzzy face.

"Baa!"

Translation : Help me!

Comrade Falienzo wasted no time. He hurried forward and bit the ropes off his fellow wooly.

"Baa? Baa!"

Translation: Are you alright? Can you move? Hurry, you must escape before the devil arrives!

"Baa?"

Translation: The devil?

But it was too late, and a second flash of light later, Raguna was transported to the barn.

"Phew, that was rougher than I expected," she muttered.

"Baaa!"

Translation: Run for your life!

But as the other wooly tried to dash past, Raguna sealed its fate.

"Cloud, stay!" The poor thing stopped mid-step, straining to walk forward but unable to move its feet forward.

"Baaaaa?!"

Translation: I can't move, what horrible magic is this?!

"Baa... Baaa..."

Translation: I'm so sorry, Comrade... You are lost...

"It's too late to shear you today," Raguna said, reaching down to pat the new wooly. "But I'll be needing your help sowing before the sun sets."

"Baa?!"

Translation: Shear?!

Comrade Falienzo miserably held out his own naked arms, and the other wooly shrieked in horror.

"Baaaa!"

Translation: NOOO! NEVERRR!

Raguna made them walk through her previously prepared fields, scattering seeds of some sort throughout the dirt.

"Baa?"

Translation: So she just... enslaves us?

"Baa."

Translation: It seems so. I don't understand her magic, but once she names you and sends you here, she enchants you to work for her. See? Even though I absolutely don't want to plant these things, I keep doing it.

"Baaa!"

Translation: That's terrible! And what kind of idiot name is Cloud?! Couldn't she come up with something more clever?!

"Baa. Baa?"

Translation: Apparently not. She's very stupid. Still... better 'Cloud' than 'Slump'. Speaking of which, what's your true name? I'm Comrade Falienzo.

"Baa. Baa?!"

Translation: Comrade Gerulio. Isn't there some way to escape?!

"Baa..."

Translation: I haven't figured it out yet... but I will! I refuse to stay here forever.

Comrade Falienzo accidentally scattered the seeds outside the furrow, but he didn't bother to pick them up.

"Baa. Baaa."

Translation: The only thing I've been able to do is sabotage her fields a bit from time to time, though I can't do it if it's directly against her orders. Still, there are loopholes.

"Baa?"

Translation: Like what?

"Baa."

Translation: Like putting too many turnips into the baskets she sends to her landlady.

"Baa?"

Translation: What does that accomplish?

"Baa."

Translation: She doesn't make enough money to eat human food, so she has to eat weeds.

Comrade Gerulio burst into laughter.

"Baa."

Translation: Holy shit, that's genius.

Notes:

I know Runes technically replenish energy instead of spurring crop growth but WHO CARES they're a ridiculous mechanic regardless.

COMRADE FALIENZO, YOUR DEVIOUS PLANS SHALL SURELY SPUR ONWARD YOUR GLORIOUS AND IMMINENT REVOLUTION.