Chapter Text
You are eighty or so years old, although you didn't look it. Most people in their eighties would be hunched over, wrinkled and barely have any strength left in their bodies. Your appearance however hasn't changed since you were twenty; still having the strength to haul wood and grow food for you and your animals. Animals who, unless butchered, also had an unusually long life. You would know; you raised most of them yourself as a young girl.
Apparently since then the town, that was once a speck in the distance, continued to grow closer. The people who approached you one day didn't know how long you lived there, not that they would care, you saw the greed in their eyes as they took in the sight of your lands. They told you that since the town was so close to your home you were no longer living "off grid", whatever that meant. They smiled mischeivously as they said you would have to pay with money, that you didn't have because you never needed it. Their demand was that in one month you would have to pay otherwise they would take away your house, land, and animals for "tax purposes". They threatened your whole livelyhood!
EXCUSE ME!?
You leveled the land, you built this house, brick by brick you made this place your home. One month they said, one month to pay, a little less than a month to leave. You would have to leave the only home you had known for years, because of people's greed.
One day they will learn, when all the feilds have burned up and all the animals died, you can't eat money.
You packed as much as you could into the small wagon you'd had since you first settled there. Hay and feed for the animals, blankets, clothes, books, canned goods, and spices were all packed in the wagon with little space to spare. your rabbits and chickens in travel cages and a camping bag on your back, packed with a tent, bedroll, gardening tools, and a massive amount of seeds.
One week before the end of the month you set off, your bull Ferdinand pulled the wagon accompanied by your only cow Francesca. Your pigs, Brutus and Daisy, as well as your goats, Callum and Lily, traveled silently behind you and the wagon. No need for shouting or herding as they all followed you and your soft torchlight . . . . and headed towards the mountain.