Chapter Text
Spring was finally in sight with the start of March. The snow was melting, the ground was drying, and it was finally time to start planing the fields for this year’s crops.
Simon sipped his coffee while looking out over the pasture. It was going to be a long day. Roughly 60 acres needed to be mapped out for planting and at least four of those acres had suffered a landslide from the melting snow. Not uncommon for Colorado winters but no less frustrating. He had been putting off going out there to fully assess how bad the damage was until the ground had a chance to dry out a bit.
It was getting warmer, but the early mornings were still chilly. Simon finished his first cup of coffee, filled a thermos with more warm caffeine, then pulled on his boots, coat and a hat. Calling for Ellie, he waited as the dog came running through the house and barreled out into the yard. She was incredibly eager to get to work and barked at Simon for taking too long.
Chuckling, Simon followed behind and hopped into his Gator with Ellie jumping onto the seat next to him.
“Time to start on the chores” He said to her as he pulled on his gloves and started the small 4 wheeler.
First things first, the barn.
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Simon’s farm wasn’t the biggest, but it was everything to him. After being falsely imprisoned during his escape from Eden and then subsequently released when the state of Arizona’s criminal court realized that he was innocent, Simon had been awarded a nice settlement to compensate him. He didn’t care about the money when he was finally free and safe, but it did make things easier when you are starting from nothing.
Simon was able to purchase the farm, a couple animals and the equipment he needed to start building the dream life he now got to live.
The first couple years were hard and it took him a little while to really pick a niche and decide just what type of farm he wanted. Farming outside of Eden was also a completely different experience and learning how to make a profit and build a business was even more complicated. Luckily Simon had Ava to help him now and he has learned at lot with his successes and failures. He had first hired Ava to help him with the accounts seven years ago, but they had quickly become friends then somehow Ava became his family, and now Ava she an equal partner with a house of her own on the property.
Over the years Simon had tried out different crops, from vegetables like corn and potatoes to grains and hay, before he realized that his true love was floriculture. Now his farm grew a wide range of flowers for local florists, everything from dahlias to sunflowers, ranunculus, tulips and more depending on the season. Flowers definitely brought him the best balance of joy and profit.
The past three years Ava has been working on developing a fruit tree orchard with peaches and apples, and then berries that people could come and pick themselves. It was a beautiful farm, in Simon’s not at all biased opinion.
In addition to the crops, they had a couple animals. More like pets than livestock in Simon’s mind. Ava had some fifteen chickens and a handful of ducks that she babied and sold eggs from They shared a milk cow, Annie, who Simon had rescued from a dairy farm. When he got her she was two years old and had been left bloody and sick on the side of the road. Now she was plump and friendly and gave the best milk. He also had two horses, and a donkey named James who was Annie’s best friend.
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Simon and Ellie walked into the barn, greeting Annie, James and the horses. He let everyone out to pasture before running into his farmhand, Holland.
“Hey Simon, how’s your morning going?” Holland asked while bending down to greet Ellie.
“Pretty good so far Getting ready to go check that field with the landslide, see how bad the damage is, and then maybe uncover the tulip fields since it’s warm enough for the bulbs now.
“Sounds like a plan, I drove by the field a couple days ago and it looks like a mess. The whole hill seems shifted and the topsoil is completely gone. There’s also a lot of rocks that came loose and a couple that look pretty big. If you need help moving them I can pull some friends together”
“Thanks, Hol. I’ll let you know”
They both got to work mucking out stalls and refilling feeders
Before long Simon was heading back out to the fields. Ellie was chasing some birds and he figured she could stay in the pasture for now. If the fields were still muddy he would rather her not be with him. Adding a dog bath to the day wasn’t really what he wanted.
Climbing back into his Gator, he set off to see what the damage was. Less than ten minutes later Simon was standing at the hill where the landslide happened. It definitely wasn’t great but it could be worse.
This hill was where they normally planted sunflowers, so he was at least thankful that it wasn’t a perennial field. No bulbs to worry about and crops to lose.
It was maybe a little less than four acres affected and it really did look like the whole hill had shifted. He was pretty upset to see that the layers of topsoil had been completely stripped away, exposing a lot more rock than he realized made up this hill. Clearly that was part of what had caused the slide, and he wondered if there was something he could have done differently to avoid it. He also wasn’t sure if he was looking at a true rock shelf or just a layer of boulders that could be moved to get down to more plantable soil.
With a heavy sigh, Simon drained the last of his thermos of coffee and hiked up one side of the hill to check out some of the rocks and get a better idea of what was going on underneath his field.
After walking around for a bit, Simon was just starting to feel a little more confident that he still had good soil under all these rocks when he came across a particularly flat section. It looked too wide and too smooth to be anything but a rock shelf.
Groaning, Simon stepped closer, pulling out his five-inch pocketknife, he carefully poked at the ground, trying to figure out how deep and how wide the rock went.
Five feet
Ten
Thirteen
He was still hitting rock
Simon stopped, hung his head and looked around
“Of course it not going to be that easy”
He shifted some of the loose soil away with his boot and crouched down, scraping at the exposed rock with the tip of his knife.
A couple more feet of this and Simon saw something that made him pause.
There was something in the rock that looked odd.
Bending back down, he used his hand and the knife blade to scrape away some of the dirt and loose material.
“Oh shit.”
What he was seeing was a faint outline of teeth.
Simon stared at it for several seconds before looking farther along the exposed rock. A few inches up was a larger bump in the stone that looked strangely… vaguely snout shaped?. The color was slightly darker than the surrounding rock, and it looked like it there was more imbedded in the rock.
His heart started beating faster.
Using the blade of his knife, Simon gently scraped around one of the tooth outlines. The material around it crumbled away, revealing more of the tooth and the beginning of what looked unmistakably like a jawbone.
He froze, stood up so quickly he nearly lost his balance and took a long, slow breath.
This was definitely going to delay his sunflower planting.