Ongoing Revolts in Widu...

[Minyassa]

Another dreary day began, and Terrance got up from his straw pallet at dawn as usual. Approaching the town hall, he could tell at a glance that this was going to be another day for temple work...there were no notices up looking for farm work besides his own, unanswered for the last day after he'd finally managed to scrounge a handful of wheat seeds out of the used litter from an old barn. From the direction of the outskirts of town he could already hear the daily din of angry voices and clashes with what passed for a militia. With a dour expression, he headed for the public gardens.

The hives were a mess. He tended to them anyway, though the office had not responded to his request for a keeping voucher for over a week--there was a notice that said Widu had no money to pay to tend the bees. It wasn't the bees' fault, though, and he couldn't stand to see the good ladies suffer, so he cleaned up and checked the combs before moving on to see what else was going on in the city.

The walls were looking a bit motheaten and every so often a stone went tumbling down as the infuriated peasantry threw rocks or battered at it before the guards could chase them off for the day. The revolt had also gone on for days; he guessed that the city owed money for more than just beekeeping. He wasn't surprised. The dark aura of the temple, the low pay compared to what he'd heard about from other towns, the scarce market...it all added up to a miserable lifestyle. He was so tired of it.

He'd saved up his money for a while now to prepare to get out of here and move somewhere better, but he had one thing tying him down: his field. He couldn't just abandon it, could he? There was potentially a few hundred Freznics in its sale. But no one was even looking at the market notices, and if he couldn't even find a worker, how could he find a buyer? He feared he was going to have to give up on it just to save himself. He wandered toward the creepy temple, passing another angry mob along the way, and paused to eye them.

"Hey, you better stop," he said with no enthusiasm whatsoever. They ignored him, of course, and he moved on. If he hadn't sold his field by midweek that was it, he was out of here. But for today he would bring himself to work at the church again, and maybe crack a window out of sheer frustration and disgust.