Running as fast he could, Oswald couldn't help but feel happy. The freedom he felt almost gave him wings, he stared at the moving bush until he reached it to see a hare rushing its way out.
He was neither satisfied nor disappointed, because he could hear way more noise from the inside of the forest. Nightbirds, big mammals, and maybe wolves lived in it, he could see any of the three every day. But in this very dream, he could see them from afar, he could even smell them. Any mark or footprint appeared all around, each one glowing with colors he had never seen.
Tiny particles moved around, drawing his attention closer and closer to the ground.
There, with the right side of his head in contact with the dirt, his ear picked up dozens of different noises. Crawling, running, creeping, slithering. A new fantasia unfolded, the rhapsody of the night. A sound worth a thousand songs. The new kind of shiver passed through his entire body, it was a shiver of bliss and exaltation.
Alas it did not last long, a strong grip suddenly caught his heart and pain seized him. Next thing he saw was morning, true morning.
The sunlight that passed through his window directly hit his head, the unpleasant light woke him up.
"Mother?" Was his first word when he woke up.
In the same bed, the woman and her huge belly in a starfish position.
"Why the hell are you still sleeping?" He asked, he was used to wake up alone and have the breakfast ready once he was downstairs.
"I had cold feet, I'm not always enjoying my sleep, leave me here for a few more minutes... You had your share of lazy mornings already!" His mother rebuked. Though he did not expect to see his mother from this close, he had remnants of his strange dream and thought. 'I knew it!'
Nothing he saw back then was real to him. The abnormalities could've been checked right away, if he had taken the chance to check the unusual amount of dirt under his feet.
An hour later, both sat in the living room.
"Let's re-count the yearly ratio. The last one isn't accurate anymore." Said Meryl, she saw her son's face distorting for a second. He massaged his temples and his forehead.
"Is everything alright? Did you catch a cold?" She asked, worried.
'No, no no. Can't be.' Oswald tapped nervously his forehead, his memory was clear, but he considered part of it a dream. Even though it all happened before he passed out in the barn, he pieced his memory together and noticed the abnormality. He never came back in his bed.
"Mother, where's Stan? We have to repair the barn's door." He said with a wry smile, looking at her reaction.
She chuckled, and checked the temperature on his forehead. "Are you sure you're fine? You did that yesterday, Stan has departed already."
The left side of his mouth twisted. 'No! I did not go to sleep yesterday! I was in that dream... I was in the forest in the evening!' Oswald felt agitated, he clenched his jaw and locked his eyes in the air, he did his best impression to not bother his mother any further. He fought himself to not shake his head and panic.
Seeing the frown on her face, he lied. "Oh! Never mind! I must've overworked yesterday, I was so tired. Don't pay attention, I'm fine. Let me check the meat upstairs, I'll turn it over if it's too wet."
'I venture into the woods and wake up at home... Another bunch of nonsense that happens to me and I'm good to be executed as the first male witch the country ever had.' He thought as he wiped the sweat on his forehead.
When he heard a distant caw, he had new worries.
In front of him, a couple of crows flew away with the last lumps of meat drying on his roof.
"Fuck." He said. He couldn't help but think about how delicious it might have been if he had the idea to secure it. It wasn't a first for him to try drying meat. His stomach grumbled as per usual because breakfast was often thin. The black birds had always been present near the herd and took their chance to feed when they saw the free meal.
Oswald ate a piece of bread with hot milk, making sure his mother had more than him. He cleaned the table for their next activity.
As planned for the day, they had to count their rations because they had lost too much animals in few time. Meryl brought smooth pebbles in the living room, there on the square table, she spread them.
"Browns are for sheep, the light yellows are for the goats. Oh boy do I prefer when your father counts..." She heaved a sigh, then added.
"Simple, we'll add one stone for each lamb they can have in a year, about two each, five month per litter. But once a newborn reaches six or seven month of age, they're able to give birth too."
She added more pebbles left and right. She needed to teach Oswald a lot, and he was very involved in it. "We have five female sheep, and two goats, both can land one to two babies. Not all of them will be females and we expect the males to do their job..."
Her son couldn't help but think. 'If the males are as horny as you.'
Oswald needed to focus somewhere else than his illusory night trips. His fingers nervously cleaning each other, he got rid of dirt under, he couldn't relieve his mind properly. His eyebrows slightly rose when he had the idea to clean them with his teeth instead. Meryl did notice the lack of involvement next to her but shifting her focus would've caused her to re-count all over again.
"So I'll put two here... five there... And given that we'll probably lose one quarter of them young, and little less during their first year, we'll have, optimistically, between eighteen to twenty four lambs next year."
While his mother was focused, he looked under his nail and pinched the tip of his finger. 'As I thought, I bit myself, I am really that dumb sometimes.' He mind-sighed.
Meryl's approximation hadn't to be exact, but it meant both comfort and expectations for them. With it, they couldn't fight against breeding's slowness, but they could brace themselves to starve.
"We have four males in total, we shouldn't have more than this even after each birth. They'll fight for females and we'll lose even more. We'll kill every boy that is to come for meat. We can still shave them at the end of winter, but we won't have the money it gives by then."
Her reasoning was entirely logic, aside from the organic kind of food their animal had, they could share everything.
The woman surprised her son with a long-cooked bone broth and fresh spinaches she found the same morning at lunchtime.
Oswald did not feed his herd, he wanted them to move as much hay around as possible.
'I need to check a second time.' Oswald thought while inadvertently biting his finger for the second time.