The man hooked the pitchfork into the soil with a grunt.
"You're standing like you lost your shadow," he said. "Your mother's already angry. Again."
Jake blinked at him.
"My… mother?"
Hendrik turned, eyes narrowing. "Don't start that broken talk. You fall, you stare at the clouds, and now you forget your own house?"
"I don't belong here," Jake said. "I was somewhere else. There were buildings. Cars. A roof—"
Hendrik grabbed his collar and yanked him forward. Not hard. Not gentle either.
"Listen to me, boy," he said quietly. "You are a farmer's son. Farmers don't have the luxury of being weak."
He released him and stabbed the pitchfork back into the earth.
"This land doesn't care about your foolishness," Hendrik continued. "Neither does the world. You don't work, you don't eat. You don't grow strong, something stronger eats you."
He glanced back over his shoulder.
"So wipe that lost look off your face before the fields finish what your thoughts started."
Jake stood there, heart hammering, hands shaking — not from fear.
From the slow, horrifying realization that this man was right.
And that this world would never wait for him to catch up.
"Food's getting cold, Hendrik!" a woman's voice called from the house. "And don't tell me you're teaching the soil to walk again."
The man grunted and motioned Jake toward the farmhouse.
Inside, the air was thick with steam and voices. The wooden table was already crowded — uncles with broad shoulders and hands like carved bark, aunts in faded dresses, neighbors leaning wherever there was space. Someone had brought a basket of bread. Someone else had placed a jug of milk so fresh it still smelled of grass.
And all of them were smiling at him.
"There he is," a grey-haired woman said, patting the empty spot beside her. "Our little storm cloud."
"Did you fall again, cub?" another man laughed. "You fall more than the apples."
Jake hesitated at the doorway.
No one had ever waited for him to sit before eating.
Marla wiped her hands on her apron and crossed the room in three firm steps. She cupped his face — not gently, not roughly — the way someone checks whether something precious is still intact.
"Your eyes look lost," she said. "You dreaming while standing again?"
"I—" His voice snagged. He wasn't ready for this many people to care about at once.
She kissed his forehead, then pushed him toward the table. "Sit. You think hunger solves itself?"
They made space for him like it was instinct.
Plates were shifted. Bread was torn in half. Someone filled his bowl before he even reached for it.
"Eat, lad," an uncle said, sliding a chunk of meat onto his plate. "You're too thin again."
Jake stared at the food.
At the hands that had given it to him without asking what he'd earned.
Back home, food had been a calculation. A guilt. A luxury that argued with rent.
Here, it was a rule.
You feed your own.
He lifted the spoon with fingers that still didn't feel like his and took a bite.
It was simple. Salty. Real.
And something inside his chest folded inward so tightly it almost hurt.
Because for the first time in years—
He wasn't invisible.