Click, click, click, click.

The monotonous tapping of the calculator was annoying, but Jessica said nothing and continued her knitting. She could see her husband was already irritated and didn't want to start a fight.

Her gorilla husband muttered to himself as he picked through the stacks of papers on his desk. He tapped a few more times on the calculator, scribbled some final notes on the nearest piece of paper, then leaned back in his wooden chair. She didn't have to be facing him to know that he had closed his eyes in contemplation. She had been married to her husband for almost twenty years and had learned to read him quite well.

Finally, when Frank had grown presumably tired of numbers flitting around his head, he banged his heavy paw on the table. "Damn it, it's just not enough!", he growled.

Jessica, who had not flinched when the paw had come down, stitched a few threads, then set down her knitting equipment. "What's not enough, dear?", she said, knowing perfectly well what was the problem. The farm had been slowly bleeding money over the past few years. With only the family and no farmhands to work the fields and take care of the livestock, they couldn't produce enough tradeable goods to keep up with the market.

Frank didn't answer, just rummaged through the papers on his desk, trying to glean some sort of miraculous answer to their problems in them. Jessica got up out of her swing and strode over to her husband, rubbing his back.

He looked up at her over his glasses. "We need to hire some extra hands.", said Frank.

They had been down this road before. "Frank, we live in the sticks. No one's going to want to commute all the way out here, you know that." It was an hour from the nearest town, which was small enough itself, and a good forty five minutes from the next homestead.

"Well, then we might as well just pack up, leave, and find a new vocation, because we'll be destitute in the next few years.", said Frank, irritably, pushing the nearest sheet of figures to the floor in disgust.

Jessica bit the inside of her muzzle. She hated what she was about to suggest, but what choice did they really have? "We could get a human.", said Jessica, tentatively.

Frank looked up at her, shock written on his face. After a pregnant pause, he took off his glasses and stared quizzically at his spouse. "You're serious? I thought you hated humans?"

"I do, Frank.", admitted Jessica. "They're dirty, smelly, and brutish. But what choice do we have? Connor and Junior help as much as they can, but they have duties to their sports teams. Quentin's still out of country, Billy's too young, and Sarah..." Jessica cut herself off, before she made another acid comment against her eldest daughter, currently at a friends' house some fifty minutes away.

Frank was still thinking about her suggestion. Jessica half-hoped that he would dismiss the idea entirely, but eventually he conceded. "When we head to market this weekend, I'll stop at the orphanage. They usually have some younger humans for sale."

Jessica nodded solemnly. They both looked at each other, wondering just what had brought them to consider employing human help.

Tears streaked uninhibited from her eyes. She curled herself up under the ragged blankets provided for the human girls in the orphanage, trying to get some semblance of warmth.

Her stomach gave a growl of hunger. The orphanage was understaffed and underfunded... or so they were told at suppertime to explain away the meager portions. They were also told by the stern matron that they should be grateful for what they had. Asking for seconds from the matron would be tantamount to committing suicide.

She continued to weep silently in her cot. She dared not openly sob; not only would she be reprimanded by the apes, but she would also invite the ire of her fellow human females. The first night she had been sent to an orphanage, the very same night her parents had been killed in that construction accident, she had been weeping in the girls' room.

One girl had approached her. Mary had at first thought the girl would comfort her, only for the latter to hit her in the face with a hard pillow. "Get over yourself.", the girl had hissed at her.

And so Mary only wept in the darkness of night, away from prying, pitying, or annoyed eyes. She reached under her mattress and pulled out the picture of her and her parents. The picture was crumpled and frayed from years of being hidden in the various orphanages she had been shuffled around to, waiting in vain for an ape family to pick her as a live-in servant.

She was now in the deep south of the ape empire, judging by the heat of the days, the seventh home for orphaned human children she had lived in. Seven homes across five years. She was nearing sixteen now, knowing that she'd probably end up in an adult work camp on the frontiers of ape controlled lands. She shuddered at the thought of the various horror stories she heard of those camps.

Eventually, she cried herself to sleep that night, not really expecting to leave the house in the near future. This was her future, now.