Jenny: Seedtime and Harvest

"Look!" said the Guttersnipe, raising her arm to point upward across the water. "Look. See how the leaves are turning, how they drop away and die? Soon it will be winter, and the thin roedeer will be treading them underfoot. But see? It is next year's buds that push them off - next year's leaves. It will be cold and quiet, the river loud in the quiet; but the first lapwing will call somewhere, and it will be spring again."

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Kay canted his head, pursing his lips in a disobliging sort of smile. "There's always work about a farm. And you'll catch on at the horse-work. It's not hard, if you have a notion to farming at all." He noticed the knife in the other's belt as he shifted, and lowered a few of his own defenses. "And, come spring, there will be other work - work I think you know rather well." He jerked his head toward a bit of war-harness flung over the fence.