(This is the story text from the corresponding Radio Cataclysm podcast episode. If you prefer audio, you can subscribe here. Read and listen early on Patreon.)

“It's just the sunrise reflecting off a hill,” said Bob.

“We'll find out soon enough,” said Burts.

“I'm telling you, it's a house,” said Meat Rom. “And there looks to be a barn and a cornfield behind it. That's a farm, and the only folk who farm out here are Foke.

“We'll find out soon enough,” said Burts again.

“It is a house,” said Sheryl, still at the lead.

“It may be a house, but there's no such thing as Foke,” said Bob. “It's probably just some hobos in a plywood shanty. I see what you think is a cornfield now, but it's pretty clearly just weeds that have sprouted in a patch of dust. We'd do best to steer clear of them. Hobos eat shoe leather and drink nothing but corn whiskey and rain water. They communicate exclusively with written symbols, and I only know the ones for 'policeman,' 'mean dog,' and 'there is no whiskey in this town.'”

“How would they make corn whiskey with no corn?” said Meat.

“We'll find out soon enough,” said Burts again.

“It probably is Foke,” Sheryl said. “You can see how much soil has blown in and settled in his valley. That happens over time, especially the closer you get to the border. Any time you find a nice dirty valley like this in the Hinterlands, you're likely to find a Foke Farm. They'll have built the house out of the wagon train that brought them here. They may trade with us.”

“They'll trade all right, if they're friendly,” said John. “If it's a mix of animals, they're more likely to welcome us in. Maybe even offer us some yaupon tea. If it's all one animal type, they'll be more standoffish, but they might still trade with us. I can do the talking, if you want. I've spent plenty of time with different Foke.”

“I've dealt with Foke before,” said Sheryl. “I'll speak with them.”

“Who or whatever it is,” said Bob, “we'd be safer simply avoiding them. Look at the ground. You said it yourself. Look at all this earth. We must be getting close to the border. Colonel Destroyer is probably minutes away.”

“Close is relative, Bob,” said Sheryl. “The dirt blows in from miles away, especially on a lava plain this old. We need to rest soon, anyway. These people might let us sleep in their barn. They might have things we can use, food and water to share. Even if not, it's best to let them know we're passing through their valley. People out here get edgy, with good reason.”

It was a farm, after all. The cornfield was about three acres. Many more acres lay fallow. The barn and the house were the only buildings on the property besides the silo, but they were both pretty large. Weeds and wildflowers grew rampant nearby, but closer to the house they were well tended. Nicely pruned yaupon shrubs formed a natural fence around the main house. A sign read 'Fresh Air Farm', with a smaller inscription below stating, 'Here you can breath free.' “That's promising,” said Sheryl. When the party was close enough to smell the fireplace and see the figures moving about behind the windows, Sheryl motioned for everybody to halt. “Take off your mask, Bob. They'll see that as a good sign. I'll go alone. If anything goes wrong, run away. Don't wait for me, just go. If they agree to let us stop here, I'll signal for the rest of you to come.”

A face appeared at the window. It was too far away and too dark for the rest of the party to see in detail, but it was clearly not human. Whatever it was, it looked out long enough to see Sheryl approaching and the group standing a ways behind her. It pulled a shade, shutting in the firelight. Sheryl rapped on the door three times, then stood back with her hands away from her body, palms open and visible.

A sliver of yellow light appeared as the door opened. A conversation took place that none of the prisoners nor Bob could hear. Sheryl pointed back at them a few times, then pointed in the direction they were traveling. The creature who had opened the door said something to Sheryl. Sheryl bowed graciously, then turned and waved for the rest of the party to approach.

The house was very spacious inside. Other than a loft that covered half the width and the entire length of the building, there was really only one room, but it was as big as a banquet hall. At the center of the rear wall was a large fireplace where a cooking pot bubbled with something sweet and rich-smelling. The area to the right held a long table and several chairs. The space by the far left wall was completely filled by a lumpy but tidy pile of hay covered in blankets and pillows. The sole extravagance was an upright piano that sat by one of the windows near the sleeping area.

The woman who'd answered the door was a mountain lion, easily six feet tall sitting on her haunches. She jumped up onto the table and sat there, motionless but for the swishing of her tail and her eyes, which carefully regarded each traveler in turn. As the prisoners and their Guards entered the house, they were greeted by a reddish-brown hen. She stood a little over five feet tall. She cocked her head to the side in order to look each guest in the face.

“I'm Clara,” said the chicken. “Welcome to Fresh Air Farm. We don't get many visitors out here. Your Sheryl tells us there's a war broken out, and you're making your way South. We don't care about no war, and we don't take sides. As long as you don't hurt nothing while you're here, give what you can and don't take more than you need, we'll get along all right. If we have any trouble, you'll have Barb to answer to.” She nodded her head toward the cougar. Barb purred and blinked her eyes at Clara. “You can stay here until you're rested,” Clara said, “but then we've gotta ask you to move on. We'd ask you to work a spell, but you're in a hurry and we don't want to keep you. We've got cornmeal porridge with honey, and there's enough for all, except maybe the big fella. You can sleep in the loft. It's dark up there, and there's plenty of hay. It's time for the chicks to do their chores anyway; Sun's coming up.”

Clara pecked her beak on the ladder that led up to the loft. “Coquina! Barbara, Amber, Michael, Perseus, and Charles! Morning comes!”

Six little chicken heads peeked over the edge of the loft. They weren't really chicks, as they had their feathers, but they were still quite young. Each was no more than three feet tall.

“We've got company, so mind your manners,” said Clara. She turned to the visitors. “Well, don't just stand there, cluttering up the place. Sit down, sit down.” She nodded toward the table. “Clear off, Barb. You're making our guests nervous.”

Barb looked smug about that, but she stood up, stretched luxuriantly, and hopped down from the table. She sauntered over to the lower sleeping area, pointedly brushing against each of the visitors on her way. She jumped onto the back of the piano and started playing a song, poking the keys discordantly. It was strange music to the traveler's ears, non-rhythmic and without a standard melody, but somehow soothing all the same. She soon lost interest in the song and started grooming herself.

There were enough chairs at the table for all of the humans to sit. Only Bob stayed standing, gawking rudely at their hosts until Sheryl pushed him into a chair. He stopped staring, but his look of disbelief remained.

The chicks hopped down the ladder one by one while Clara filled six bowls with porridge and placed them on the floor for the chicks. She filled eight more and set them on the table in front of each guest. She spread her wings. “Shall I fan 'em for you? It's piping hot.”

“No, thank you,” said Sheryl.

“Sorry there's no milk or butter. We've just the one cow, and she's taken ill.”

“I'm sure it's fine. This is more than enough,” said Sheryl.

Clara nodded and returned her attention to her chicks, who were each fanning their porridge with their little wings. “Coquina, after you eat, you and Perseus take the horses outside and put 'em in the stables. And don't touch nothing. They're robots, so there's no need to groom or feed them. Just get 'em into the barn.”

“Yes, mum,” said two of the chicks.

“Is that a real giant?” said one of the other chicks.

“Are they attercops?” said another.

“Is that man a pirate?” said a third.

“Amber, Michael and Charles!” said Clara. “What did I say about minding your manners? These people's business is their own. Folk is Foke is folk.”

“It's all right,” said Meat. “I ain't a giant, but I've seen one. You think I'm big? He was bigger than a mountain. Used whole trees as toothpicks. It took a thousand workers an entire year just to sew him a pair of pants. He slept in a hammock with one end tied to the North Pole and the other end to the South Pole.”

“Did he eat whole cows in one bite?” asked Michael.

“Nah, this giant was a vegetarian. He'd scoop up a cornfield in one hand and eat the ears like pistachios. He could eat a whole ton of broccoli in one mouthful, and every time he farted it caused a hurricane.”

The chicks giggled. Even Barb might have smiled, though with a cat it's hard to tell.

“One day he saw a lady giant, with hair like spun coal. Her clothes were woven by a trillion silkworms. Every time she sang, stars fell from the sky just to be closer to her. The giant wanted to meet this bewitching creature, but as soon as he approached her, she turned and ran away. Do you know why?”

“He was ugly,” said Charles.

“He was mean,” said Amber.

“As a matter of fact, he was very handsome. And he always tried to be kind to others. No, this was an issue of hygiene. His mother always told him to bathe every day, and to brush his teeth and comb his hair. But he didn't listen to his mother. He hadn't taken a bath in years. He stank so bad, skunks sprayed him to make him smell better. He smelled like a sewer dumped onto an onion farm. When the lady giant ran away, she was holding her nose and waving the air like this.” Meat made a face and demonstrated. The chicks giggled. “So the giant knew what the problem was. He was lazy, but he wasn't stupid. He uprooted an huge redwood tree and brushed his teeth with the branches. Then he found a nice lake, big enough to use as a bathtub. First, he washed his clothes and hung them on the Moon to dry. The water was all right for laundry, but when he dipped his big toe in, he knew it was too cold for a bath. He was very smelly, so he needed some nice hot water to scrub off all the stench. So he reached up into the sky, tore a piece off of the Sun, and dropped it into the lake, but he'd grabbed too much. The whole lake went whoosh and turned to steam in a flash. With all the steam, the giant couldn't see, and while he was fumbling around, he ran straight into his shirt tails, still hanging off the Moon. He yanked at his shirt, but the shirt was stuck, and he yanked the Moon right along with it. That piece of the Sun was still on fire, even after splashing into the lake, and it started melting right through the Earth, making a big hole full of fire and lava. The Moon, still festooned with the giant's clothes, went hurtling into the hole. It went straight down, all the way through the center of the Earth, and came right out the other side. It sailed up, up, up into the air, but not high enough to get back into the sky, and by the time it came crashing back down, the Earth had turned, and now the Moon was red hot from being inside the Earth, so it punched another hole and came out the other side again, and it kept doing that, over and over again, until the whole Earth was a mess of lava and fire and broken rocks. All because that giant didn't listen to his mother and take a bath every day.”

“But the Earth is still here,” said Coquina. “The Moon didn't destroy it.”

“Well, the end of the world isn't the end of the world,” said Meat. “The giant's friends came over and helped him put the Moon back in the sky, but now it's all mottled instead of smooth and pearly like it used to be. They threw water in all the burning holes, but there were a lot of holes, so now we've got oceans all over the place. But that giant never did meet the lady he had a crush on, because his clothes all burned to a crisp, so he just sits in his cave all day out of embarrassment.”

“His friends should make him some more clothes,” said Michael.

“They should,” said Meat. “Friends should help each other out.”

By the time Meat was done with the story, everybody had finished eating. Barb looked at Meat and blinked her eyes approvingly. He nodded back.

“All right, children,” said Clara, “The Sun is well high. Time for chores.” She opened the door for them. Michael, Perseus, and Charles ran to the door and crowed in unison at the rising Sun.

To the guests, Clara said, “Either help by cleaning up, or get up in the loft and out of the way.”

Matthew and Steven offered to do the dishes. “Thank you, boys,” said Clara. “There's a water pump around back of the house. You'll find a bar of soap out there, too.”

The rest of the travelers chose to get out of the way. Meat lifted Burts straight up into the loft.

Sheryl hung back for a moment and pulled Clara aside. “Those two boys, they're good workers,” she said. “I don't know what happened to the rest of your people, and I won't ask. But I think you could use some help on your farm.”

“You're asking me to keep them on as farm hands,” said Clara. “Humans on a Foke Farm.”

“They're good boys. They'll work hard. They don't care what you look like.”

“I'd be doing you a favor,” said Clara. “Whatever it is you're headed into, I can only assume you don't want those two there with you.”

“You're right about that,” said Sheryl.

“I'll admit it, we could use the extra hands. We came here in a wagon train with a pack of dogs. Mutts mostly, and one German shepherd. We built this farm together. Eight years we've been here. We were hit hard by ravagers last year. We lost all the dogs. Some they killed, some they collared. They tore up our crops, burned some of them. Took most of our livestock. I'll admit, it has been hard this past year with just Barb and myself. The chicks can do some work, but they're so young. If the boys want to stay, we'll keep them on. The old man, too, if he wants to. We could use a mage.”

“Thank you,” said Sheryl. She joined the rest of the humans in the loft. Steven and Matthew returned a few minutes later with a stack of clean dishes.

“I'll take the first watch,” said Sheryl when everybody was situated in the hay.

“You're just as tired as the rest of us,” said Bob. “And I thought you trusted these people.”

“I trust them, but one of us needs to stay awake in case something happens.” Sheryl took a pill from a pocket in her belt and chewed it up. “That'll keep me going for a while. I don't sleep much anyway. If I start to doze, I'll wake you.” When Bob didn't answer, she looked over and realized he was already asleep. Sheryl was the only one left awake.