It’s soon to be 8:00am and the sun is already shining brightly through the window. Notus has to wake up earlier today, because today is harvest day. He changes his clothes and grabs a basket, ready to go help his father picking up the apples to begin making the cider.

Notus knows how important this farm is to his family, it has been transmitted from generations and generations of his family as well as the cider recipe. This farm was so old it must’ve been built during the Napoleon era, it would be a shame to give it all away.

Notus makes his way to the trees and begins plucking out the apples, thinking about how delicious they looked and maybe if his dad would notice if he ate more than one. He began wondering if taking after him was really his choice. After all he adores poetry, collecting moths and literature so would he ever find his place in the fields ?

Notus was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard a noise behind the thick hurdle separating his house from the neighbors. This was strange, there hasn’t been an inhabitant in that house for decades.

Then he saw it, a hand slipping under the bushes to grab the apples from his basket. Notus waited a few minutes, watching his basket until it happened again.

Notus stepped forward slowly towards the hurdle and looked with his right eye through it. There seemed to be nothing....until another eye stared at him and he jolted, almost slipping his foot in his basket and hurting him.

What the hell ?!

He went back onto his feet and looked back into the bushes. There was a boy around his age, about his size, a bit skinnier. His hands looked soft so that boy had probably never done hard work like him. He was different from him.

Notus was too stunned to speak, so he took an apple and hand it over through the hole in the hurdle. Then his dad called him so he dropped it on the other side and left to go continue his work.

The day after he came to the same spot and to his surprise, he saw a lemon. Notus doesn’t like lemons because he finds them too sour, but this return was symbolic that he had traded with a potential new friend. While he was cutting the trees, he saw him again hanging shyly behind the hurdle.

You don’t have to hide your know. If you come over I’ll make apple juice.