[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/652055731205439499/652271244305235998/unknown.png[/img][/center]
[color=forestgreen][sub][center][color=ffc8f9][b]Location:[/b][/color] the Wheeler Residence --> the Forest Shrine deep in the Woods[/center][/sub][/color]
[hr]
Every day, Ferris rose at the crack of dawn - sometimes before if the sun was being particularly shy that day. His father used to say that it was best to get one’s work done as early as possible. “You’ll have all the energy you need if you rise with the sun,” he’d say. Ferris had been working twice as hard as usual as of late. This was the only time of year when the sap of maple trees could be harvested en masse to turn into delicious syrup, and it was the first maple harvest that Ferris had to do without his father’s help.

The maple harvest kept the Wheeler family occupied for most of the late winter and start of spring. Ferris’ mother Isa spent hours distilling buckets and buckets of sap down to its sticky usable form as Ferris brought it in from the woods. In a good year, they would have enough syrup to sell not only to the town, but the rest of the city, more than making up for the drop in firewood demand that accompanied winter’s thaw. It was the success of the maple harvest which decided whether the Wheelers would be able to afford things like new tools, and if they would have a fund saved for emergencies. Freddy had broken his leg four years ago, and it was the maple fund which had permitted Ferris to continue working eight or ten hours rather than twelve or fourteen. The year after, his mother’s spice and flower garden was torn apart by agitated wild animals, and the lack of a maple fund meant that they had to sell one of their cart horses to reseed and repair it.

Ferris was laser-focused on the maple harvest this year, but would be tapping the trees alone. His legs still ached from yesterday’s work, particularly now that the family’s horse was too old to pull Ferris’ lumber cart. [color=forestgreen]“It’s just a bit of fatigue, Ferris,”[/color] he said to himself, [color=forestgreen]“It’ll be over soon, and you’ll have enough to buy a new horse.”[/color] Of course, that is what he had told himself for the last four mornings in a row. He desperately needed a break, but knew he couldn’t take one. Ferris got out of bed and began an intense routine of stretches to prepare himself for the day, glancing around at his room as he did so. It was far smaller and simpler than where his parents slept, but newer, better-insulated and less prone to a leaking roof. He slept on a small single bed next to a wooden nightstand he had made for himself, with an old desk and computer in the corner. Ferris really only used the computer to keep track of the town folks' orders for wood, furniture and repairs.

Ferris exited his room and walked into the main kitchen and living area, where he saw his mom resting her head on the counter. She had fallen asleep doing her half of the maple rush’s work. Careful not to wake her, Ferris began to fry up the last four eggs in the fridge alongside some old baked beans from a few days prior, and placed two pieces of bread in their toaster. It wasn’t a big breakfast, but the sausages they’d once enjoyed as a side had become somewhat cost-prohibitive. He placed half of the food onto his own plate, and the rest onto another one for his still-sleeping mother. Frowning at the relatively meagre portion, he moved some of the food onto his mother’s plate before covering it with a bowl to keep it warm. [color=forestgreen][i]I bet if I ask nicely, Nat will take me hunting later. We can have fresh venison tonight. I can tough it out until lunch.[/i][/color] His lunch was still in the fridge, having been made days before: a bowl full of hearty chicken and vegetable soup. He poured it out into a pot to heat it up, then into a thermos to keep it warm.

When Ferris opened up his lunch pail, he found a small note left there by his sleeping mother.

[indent][color=92278f][i]I know it’s been rough lately, but things will get better soon. I can feel it.[/i][/color][/indent]

[indent][color=92278f][i]Love, Mom.[/i][/color][/indent]

The message was punctuated with hearts, and it appeared as though she had snuck a tupperware with a small maple-flavoured cake into the lunch box last night. It made Ferris smile. Here he was, almost twenty-one years of age, and his mother was still leaving notes in his lunch box as though he was in elementary school. Before leaving, Ferris gently lifted his mother off of the kitchen stool and carried her over to the living room couch, then laid an intricately-patterned quilt over top of her. Isa stirred slightly, but seemed more comfortable once she had settled.

Ferris was already finished with his breakfast and out of the house by the time the mayor’s message got there, and so didn’t actually get the chance to hear it.

Maggie was in her usual spot on the porch when Ferris went outside. Ferris greeted her with a pat on the head, causing her tail to start wagging. The old dog didn’t move around much these days, but her presence was comforting. The bird she had recently befriended was busy eating at its feeder, although would likely resume its sitting inside Maggie’s fur once breakfast was over. The area immediately outside the Wheelers’ cabin was not thick with trees, as Freddy had cleared them long ago to make room for the lumberyard and connect the place to the town’s road. Just beyond that, however, the area was covered in small saplings. The Wheelers had a long-time policy to replant any trees which he cut down not directly adjacent to the main roads. Family tradition had been very clear: “People have their place, but so too does nature, and you ought to respect it.” When Ferris took from nature, he wanted to make sure that it had enough left to regenerate its own bounty.

Of course, BigCo’s clear-cutting teams did not necessarily live by the same policy. There were a lot more cut stumps on the landscape as of late, and to find good forage one now had to venture deep into the woods where monsters were rumoured to gather. Ferris usually only travelled that far out to pay tribute at the family’s forest shrine, or if one of the town’s hunters was with him. He tried not to think about the changing landscape for now: it was time for the maple rush!

Ferris went to work, pulling the cart himself as he went between the maple trees, collecting the last of the season’s sap from the taps that he’d left out. With fifteen dollars and a free afternoon, even an amateur could collect easily more than a gallon. With dozens more taps and buckets, well, let’s just say the maple rush usually took a few trips.

It was not uncommon for a single round of collection to yield hundreds of gallons of sap... which was good, since it took about forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. The limiting factor for syrup production wasn’t the amount of sap Ferris could bring in; it was the labour-intensive process of separating out the water. All of the machinery at the Wheeler House was quite old, either bought second-hand or purchased upwards of fifteen years ago back when the town was still thriving and Freddy was reinvesting his money from law practice into the old family property. Thankfully, enough of it still worked to process sap, although Isa sometimes had to boil it down using a big black cauldron when the distiller was acting up, hence her current exhausted state.

Even after the labour costs and the costs of heating the sap, quality syrup was worth its weight in gold. Thankfully, [i]Wheeler’s Organic[/i] wasn’t just quality; it was the best in the region, if you believed the slogan on the bottle. The Wheelers, especially Isa, were accomplished cooks and bakers. They provided Root River and the surrounding area with syrup, as well as maple cakes, maple toffees, and even maple liqueurs.

After the sap collection was done and over with, Ferris left the sap outside with the syrup-making equipment, then loaded his lumber cart with the saws and axes he’d need to collect firewood. He needed to take a short break first, however: the hauling of so much sap had exhausted him. Ferris’ favourite place to relax, aside from at home with his mother, or at the Red Bridge with his best friend Ollie, was the ancient and serene shrine to the Harvest Goddess deep inside the forest. He had a small wooden carving of the Harvest Goddess that he had made himself, its base having been inscribed with a rune for each of the four elemental harvest sprites. Ferris was pleased with his craftsmanship, but lamented not having anything more valuable to give.

The shrine itself was simple: a stone monolith surrounded by flowers, erected who knows how many generations ago to act as a gathering spot for the forest spirits. It was inscribed with a simple message: “May the Harvest Goddess bless these woods with her tremendous bounty. May we take care of the land as the land takes care of us.” Even though nature’s bounty seemed to shrink every month BigCo continued working, Ferris still had hope. Kneeling down in front of the statue, Ferris placed his wooden carving down along with one of the delicious maple cakes his mother had made for him. He then repeated the prayer on the monolith, and added a few lines of his own: [color=forestgreen]“... I know you’re still out there, Goddess. A lot of people have stopped believing, but I haven’t. I’ll do my best to keep this place safe from the bulldozers, and keep the shrine tidy. And if my dad is still alive out there, please keep him safe. And if he’s not... tell him that I love him, and that I miss him every day.”[/color] Ferris allowed a single tear to fall onto the engraved stones below, then wiped his eyes and steadied himself. He had no time to cry; there was work to be done.