Another tired workday, eating the same boring microwave burritos, working for an ISP she hates, in a body she hates, with the only remotely cheering part being the cute skirt she's wearing. She spends her day charming the employees of the ISP as she solves their tech problems, spending her warmth on people she'll never speak to again.
Eventually it's the end of the shift. She clocks out, gets up, and walks out into the backyard, stretching.
"Well, we're happy to watch it with you! Are you hungry enough that you want to eat something while watching it? We think it'd be really awesome to order 4 different dishes, and have a potpourri of options to try out as we watch the movie. Sound interesting?"
She nods. "That does sound nice. Still need to take my evening pill, too, and it's supposed to be with food, so that works out. Do y'all mind picking? I think trying new things would be good."
"Yes, we're happy to. Do you want us to start the movie now, and have the food arrive partway through? Or do you want us to wait until the food arrives before beginning the movie?"
"We're happy to get going, then!" She taps a button, and the movie begins instantly; there is no loading time or buffering. It starts with a camera floating above a huge grass plain, moving across a vast rice field, and zooming in on a family living in what looks like a medieval wooden shack. The youngest member, a girl, is looking on as her mother, father, and older brother are working in a rice field, while she plays with a crude carving of a horse.
Awww. Cute kid. Farm life can be hard, but at least the kid gets to play some. She snuggles in and keeps watching.
A few years pass by, and she joins her brother, working on the farm. It's clearly tiring, and she sweats profusely under the sun, but she clearly finds it satisfying in its own way. She ends her days, sitting around the fire, enjoying the simple food with her family. Once in a while, one of their neighbors walks over and plays music for them on a simple string instrument.
It's a simple life, but it has its perks. She's lived out in a cabin in the woods before, so she gets it a little, but not the level of hard work farm life involves.
Her life stays nearly unchanged for the following decade, when something strange starts to happen: a group of armed people start surrounding their farms, buying their food at good prices, trading them a powerful fertilizer in return. They also begin extracting tribute, but their life remains largely unchanged, still; they work around as much, getting to keep as much of the rice as they did before their arrival.
Worrying. It seems to be stable for now, but that's a concerning situation.
Similar to before, they see, but don't experience danger, as battles between two similar-looking factions have started on the outskirts of the farm they're all working in. The family sometimes pays tribute to one group, sometimes to another, although they struggle to recognize the difference between them. The war never affects them directly; they're allowed to just stay on their farms, but it's scary to hear the violence in the distance.
She's never seen that kind of violence close up. She's seen violent crime, sure, even had a gun to her head once, but this looks more like war.
Suddenly, on a peaceful day, the soldiers start raiding their homes, trapping the family outside of their house for hours as they search it for every grain of rice. The stare at the girl's father, as they portion out the food. They don't take any more in tribute, but make it as clear as possible that they could, that they have total control of his family's destiny.
Oh no. She knew this had to be coming, and at least the soldiers didn't take more, but that's still such a violation, to have their home invaded and choices taken like that.
A few more years go by, these too uneventful. But then, one day, the food stops going in. The family owns a few pigs and chickens, but only enough to fertilize the fields and give them a few eggs; they used to purchase fruit, vegetables and meat from elsewhere. But when they head to the market to buy ingredients these days, there is nothing to buy. They have a fair bit of money from selling their rice, but very little to spend it on. At least they're able to save up a lot of money?
Eventually, things get bad. Very bad. The army returns, this time walking off with the money they've built up for months, explaining that they have a desperate, temporary need for money. They receive bonds in return, of course. Then they announce that they've stopped a group of monopolists gouging rice prices. So the family will start selling to them instead, for much, much less than they were paid earlier.
The little girl, and her family, struggle to feed themselves. The tribute was a fixed tax measured in currency, not actual rice, and the low prices have forced to work from the first rays of light to when it gets too dark to keep going. Everyone gets thinner, slowly. After the second year, they find out that one of their neighbors eventually starved to death under the crushing tributes. Our protagonist, the teenage girl, is starting to feel sickly and exhausted, all the time.
Hold on, little one. It's rough, and the army tributes are crushing, but Sable's rooting for you.
Eventually, more and more people living within the rice fields end up dead from malnutrition and illnesses. A blight destroys essentially the family's entire crop, but their neighbors share what little they have. Their rice-porridge has been reduced to being more water than rice, but they manage to tide themselves over to next year, as more and more of their neighbors die from hunger. The girl begins eating boiled bark and leaves with most meals, making it soft enough to chew on and swallow, if not actually digestible.
Suddenly, a chime arrives at the door. "It's the food!" One of the women watching the film with Sable walks off, returning with a huge portion of steaming fresh food for each of them. "You can get the fried chickpeas, or the garlic chicken, or the prawns in curry sauce, or try some of the lentils! It's all gonna be amazing, trust me!"
"Thank you!" She starts with some of the fried chickpeas, since that's something she hasn't had before, only having had chickpeas mixed into other dishes rather than as the focus. Mmmmm.~
Eventually, one day, the soldiers just... don't show up or ask for any money. The girl and her family slowly build up a cache, buried within the rice fields. They're hoping to someday have enough left over for a bad season. Everything is tense, and the pause doesn't feel like much of a relief for them. They're terrified that the soldiers will be back, worse than ever.
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