We hunted cows last night. Our venison pies sell well at the diner, but we can only sell them "in season" without seeming to have more venison than we should. So now we are working on beef pie recipes, for which we need beef.

Perhaps "hunting" is not the right word. Deer are timid and elusive, and gators fight back, but cows simply seem to stand still. That was what I thought when seeing them from the bus and the air, and googling cows did not say anything different. And since the cow farmers would not want to see us killing their cows, we needed to hunt them at night, when the cows would be sleeping. So perhaps "harvesting" would be the better word.

Yet this harvesting was more complicated than chopping a tree. We went to a cow farm southeast of Wyatt after our diner shift, and indeed found cows sleeping in the field. They were large and lying on their bellies, and it seemed we could simply walk up and strike them with an axe.

But their size and their stillness did not show how nimble they could be, or how aware of strangers. They woke as we approached, and got to their feet, making noises like La Noscean buffalo as they skittered away from us. We could have run after them and killed them, but if they made too much noise it might have alerted the farmers in the nearby house.

So we switched to Dancer, moved to just within range, and killed them with our chakrams. They were low-enough level that a single hit was enough to kill a cow. We killed them, we waited for them to respawn, and we killed them again. Lather rinse repeat.

We gathered a lot of beef, a fair amount of cow hide, and some milk. The milk seemed different from what the Hartmans have in bottles; Husband said the bottled milk is refined from the kind of milk we gathered, and that cheese and butter are too. I will work on making recipes.

Something Husband seemed to know but forgot to tell me, that also did not come up when googling, is that cows shit a lot, especially in fields in which they spend time. Perhaps we could have avoided the shite if we could see it, but in the dark we got a lot of it on our boots.

We Returned and walked to the Hartman house. We had not planned our sleep well, so we were very tired when we got to the house, but we still took the time to wash our boots with the hose.

It was early in the morning, but the Hartmans rise early, and the sound of the water drew Mr. Hartman to the back door. He looked at us oddly in our Dancer gear using the hose. Husband told him we had gone to a party and cut through a cow pasture. He thought that was funny and laughed all the way back inside.

Husband says cow hide is what most leather in this world is made from. It is far too low level for our armor, and deer leather is softer and better for clothing. But there is furniture made with leather, or material like leather, that I saw in the coffee shop in Tulsa. We have replaced many of Sam's tables now; when we have replaced them all we can perhaps make chairs and stools with leather seats.

More projects. More crafting. There is satisfaction in completing a project. There is pride in making a new recipe. Yet there is also an entire world here of which we have seen very little. Husband insists his airplanes will help with that. Once they are crafted. So he is learning how to make airplane parts while I make things with cow meat and cow milk and cow hide.

I am wondering when Myra will think it safe for me to resume fighting. We are due to meet with Ted again at Tony's school for more choreography; it is interesting, but not as satisfying as actual fighting. Though the challenge in the cage matches is not in winning but in not winning too easily. Perhaps it is the cheering audience that I miss.

Or perhaps what I truly miss is having options. In Eorzea we went where we wanted, did what we wanted, spent however long we wanted doing those things. We did not have jobs. We did not worry about ID. We did not worry about what people would think if we did not return to our homes for days or moons. We did not worry about what farmers thought of us in their fields. Perhaps Gaius would say, "It is only right that I should take your cows, for none among you has the power to stop me!"

I suppose I should think of the limits on our lives here as challenges.

We slept late today. I should challenge myself to go work at the diner.