Generation Next (MxM MxMxF Polyfidelity - Book Seven)

Prologue

Nine Years Ago

"Quickly Sarah, I want to get in and out before the townies wake up."

"Coming Dad," she answered clearly and respectfully, knowing her voice would travel through the house that was well and truly awake before dawn.

They'd finished the morning milking, and Sarah had showered and was dressed in a clean, warm pink and blue flannel shirt. Her jeans were faded but crisply ironed and warm enough to ward off the early morning chill.

She had already wrung as much water from her hair, knowing her curly length would drip for an hour or so yet. There was already the telltale shade of damp visible on her shoulder blades before she slipped her sheepskin-lined jacket over top on the way out the door.

Early mornings were Sarah's favourite. Her whole family felt the same. It might seem strange to the townies; even the smell of fresh cow shit on dew-soaked grass was part of the charm of life on a farm.

No matter where she went in life; Sarah would never forget the sweet sting of fresh morning country air. Nor would she regret memories of the way the stretched spring shrieked every time you opened the front door it would promptly slam shut again. Every time, the paint-chipped, mud-flecked screened door slammed woodenly against its frame. Waking dozing chickens on the other side of the yard, and announcing the comings and going's of family or guests.

It didn't keep much out but the flies, but this alone made it necessary to endure the noise of keeping it shut. Even if the dogs were equally as capable of opening it.

Sarah pulled on her brown leather Blundstone's work boots. She'd inherited them from her cousin Jess, but would take good care of them so that she could one day hand them down to her other cousin Chloe. These were her shoes for whenever Sarah went to town, or whenever they worked in the paddocks on dry days. Her gumboots would stand sentinel by the front door until the afternoon's milking, and she could smell the rubber, which gleamed in the light of the sunrise. She'd hosed them off after returning from the dairy at five o'clock that morning, but it was winter, and they were still wet.

Her father beeped the horn in his ute, and Sarah stopped daydreaming. Quickly, she skipped down the creaking wooden steps to the hard-packed dirt that was the result of two hundred years of continued foot traffic. The grass couldn't grow on the worn path to the driveway if it tried.

But like everything else in the country; it never gave up.

The entire vehicle seemed to shudder when Sarah pulled the door shut and settled back on the bouncy seat that always smelt like her father. It was a sweet scent of worn-in Brut cologne, cigarettes, and coffee; but it wasn't unpleasant at all.

It was also what his hugs smelt like, and he was her favourite person in the entire world.

Her mum was a close second, but she'd never say that much out loud.

The only other person on the farm was her brother David, he was a year older than her, and when he wasn't at school, he was knee-deep in cow shit himself.

Sarah had no illusions. One day all of this, the farm, the house, maybe even this rusty old ute; it would all be his. By Christ, did he work to earn it all though.

And Sarah did not envy him.

It was only the four of them on this farm, and whatever occasional farmhand came along and could stand working with her dad longer than six months. Sarah knew it was the truth; her mother had pointed it out several times. For her father, these 'young idiots wouldn't know dairy farming if it bit them on the arse.'

"Well that's not entirely fair now, is it Greg?" Her mother had challenged him one time, and not the first time. Not the last either. "You sent him twenty minutes into town to buy wood-welding rods."