They rode out to the farmland in the early morning light, the three of them, Darion, Garren and Seren.
The ride was short and quiet. Seren had her leather pack across her back and the wrapped bundle of tools across her lap, holding it with care.
She hadn't said much since coming downstairs, just followed when Garren indicated the horses and mounted up without comment.
Darion rode and looked at the land as they approached.
He had been out here once before, with Garren, in what felt like considerably longer ago than it actually was.
He had crouched and picked up the soil and felt it crumble to nothing between his fingers, pale and dry and stripped of whatever quality made soil worth farming. The furrow lines still visible in it like a memory the ground was keeping of what it used to be.
It looked the same now as it had then. Flat and pale and deeply unimpressive in the early morning light, like the landscape communicated its own exhaustion.
