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think she’s changed much in the past hundred years.”
    Halam and Bryn both smiled at that remark. Eston had grown over several generations from a few small farms clustered around the same adjoining fields into a small farming community. Households from leagues around came to sell their grain at the provincial trade office there and to sell and trade preserved fruits and vegetables at the local market. Farmers loaded up on supplies for the winter, and swapped gossip at the local tavern. During the winter months when there wasn’t as much work to do on the farms, the families would send their children to the local schoolhouse, which was simply a spare storage room of the trading store, left empty in the winter until new shipments of farming tools and implements arrived with the spring. When the tools arrived, the students would depart, heading back to the fields with any number of books they could, or were forced, to take with them.
    Eston, like much of Tillatia and other provinces in Adjuria, had been hit hard at the conclusion of the Civil War nearly ten years earlier. What everyone had looked forward to, peace after the long war with Jonguria, had turned out not be so good. Unexpectedly, prices for nearly all goods dropped, which seemed good to most people at first, but when they realized that this also meant that they’d make less money for the goods they produced and sold, whether it was guild-produced items such as candles or shoes, or agricultural items like grain and meat, they realized it was more of a curse than a blessing.
    Eston was particularly hard-hit in those first years following the war, as many of the farms in the area could no longer support themselves, and the families were forced to uproot and move to the larger cities such as Plowdon to make whatever kind of living they could. The lucky ones were able to hang-on by joining together with other families to produce cooperatives which were able to sell their grain and produce at cheaper prices while still making a slight profit. Bryn and Trun had only been able to hold on by selling much of their excess land to these joint-family farms, creating a plentiful savings which lasted them for many years. Mainly, however, they’d cut their consumption down to the bare minimum needed to survive. There were no frills on the Fiske farm: what was needed was made from what was available to them, and if it wasn’t they simply went without. Any excess they produced was sold in town, and somehow they made do.
    It was past mid-day when Halam and Bryn rode into Eston on Juniper. There wasn’t much activity; most people out in the fields around the town were preparing for the spring planting while others inside worked on what handicrafts they could to make a little extra, or simply see their families through another year. The town rose up on either side of the Eston Road and several small two-story buildings dotted the thoroughfare. The storefronts were located on the first-floor and dealt in farming items mostly, but with a few more specialized stores selling clothing, candles, cooking items, and hardware. On the second-floor could be found the residences of the families who ran the stores.
    Further down the road was the tavern, which also served as a meeting hall, provincial government office, and rumor-mill. Next to it was the trade office, where the farmers came to sell their grain each autumn harvest and get price projections on next year’s crop. The general store came next, which also contained the schoolhouse as well as a few rooms on the second floor that were rented out to travelers who needed a place to sleep, the closest thing to an inn in Eston. All that was left were a few older houses, and then the road continued on into the fields, leading northwest toward the Tillata River and the road to Plowdon. There seemed to be more abandoned buildings than were occupied, the number increasing each time Bryn came to town.
    Halam steered Juniper over to a water