He had always been afraid of this older brother of his there was something terrible in the way he determined things, how he always brought them to pass, how he disregarded the soft and the beautiful in his life and sometimes how he crushed, trampled people, things he wanted destroyed. But that was the reason the master would not let him go he could harvest a field in a morning that would require three men to finish in a day. He wondered how his brother could work that fast all day without pausing to rest, without slowing in the rapidity of his strokes. Vidal stopped in his work to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. But he would bend… he must bend… one of these days. The obstinate, young fool! With his queer dreams, his strange adorations, his wistfulness for a life not of these fields, not of their quiet, colorless women and the dullness of long nights of unbroken silence and sleep. It is because he knows how very good-looking he is, how he is so much run-after by all the women in town. How stubborn, this younger brother of his, how hard-headed, fumed Fabian as he felled stalk after stalk. The swing of Vidal’s figure was as graceful as the downward curve of the crescent-shaped scythe. But when he stopped to heap up the fallen palay stalks he glanced at his brother as if to fathom the other’s state of mind in that one, side-long glance. So many palay stalks had to be harvested before sundown and there was no time to be lost in idle dallying. The rhythm of Fabian’s strokes was smooth and unbroken. The palay stalks were taking on gold in the late afternoon sun, were losing their trampled, wind-swept look and stirring into little, almost inaudible whispers.

Laarni A Dream By Loreto Paras-Sulit