All is Fair in Love and War

The Beginning

Luz' (POV)

The sun hit my back, burning its deep rays into my skin. I look up, my hands blocking out as much sun as possible. "Carry the one to... it's probably... no... around 8 o'clock." I let out a sigh, sweat trickling down my face.

"You! Latino!" I make a sharp quick turn to look at my master. "Yes, sir?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, get back to work!" I nod my head vigorously and shouting out, "Sorry sir!" I then turn back around and pull my shovel out of the dirt, and then pick up the basket besides it.

Today was a long day, which meant I worked until the sun was so far down, I couldn't see nothin'. The other days I worked were, in my mind, called lucky days. Meanin' we worked from noon to sundown. Those were my good days.

I huffed as I tore up the ground, searching for the roots of the parsnips. I continued looking for more and more, until my basket was overflowing.

17... that's how many baskets I had filled today. On a good day, I could usually collect anywhere from 30-40, on a day like today, a fine day, I would collect 20-30, and on a bad day, I would collect so few, that I would receive extra work and a 'slap on the wrist.' You could be thinking, what happens if you just refuse to work, but from the stories I had heard from my pops and other workers, you didn't want to know.

All they would tell me, was that on different occasions, the workers would stop working, get to many 'slaps on the wrist', or even just not be "fit" for the job anymore, and then the master would take them away and they would never come back.

In my mind, I saw them as good as dead. They weren't bein traded or given a new job, but killed. For that reason, I always worked. Even when my legs would try and give out, I get back up, because that's what my pops had taught me.

As I walk back from the fields, with another full basket and a shovel in hand I take a look around. No one in sight. That's not always a bad sign, but it usually was. I sighed and picked up a jog, trying to get to the drop-off as quickly as possible. It could've also been, were being let off early, but I didn't wanna risk it.

Once at the drop-off, I dumped the basket of veggies in the big container, we knew as the crate. The crate was a big ole bucket, that was mysteriously emptied every night. If it wasn't filled up by nightfall however, we were then given an extra long day and more than a couple slaps on the wrist. All of us. Luckily for me, today the crate was already full, and the rest of the baskets we were gonna give today, would just be extra.

A lot of workers would think, oh I'll just save a couple of parsnips for dinner, but somehow the master always knew. It was like he had them eyes on the back of his head.

After emptying my basket, I picked up my shovel in my empty hand and took off runnin towards the shacks. The shacks were the places where the workers slept. We weren't paid anything but we were 'graced' with two meals a day, usually somethin along the lines of a soup bucket, or grains. I ran for a good 4-5 minutes before I saw them. There were the usual 100 or so workers outside the shack, like it was a meal time or somethin, but it wasn't meal time yet, so somethin' had to be up.

Luckily for us, the shacks was very close to town, just about a 5 minute walk. We could see them from there and often would tell stories of the townsmen and how they probably had fruit and meat for dinner, with there wife and kids, sittin' by a warm fireplace, and if some of 'em were lucky, theys would get to sleep in on the holidays and skip work.

I ran up to the nearest worker and said, "What happened now?"

He looked at me and pointed towards the middle of the crowd. "I can't see 'em, but I think theys talkin bout war again!"