I see they are passing the hat again. There is a fundraiser for the serpent-folk farmers down in the Faded Lands who lost their crops, and Luna and Grandma Windward’s Beastiary are behind it, hauling the cute animals out onto the green to draw a crowd and asking every good soul on the Downs to open a purse as if we have the money to spare.

I am sorry they had a hard season. I really am, but I did not sour anyone’s milk and I did not wilt anyone’s field. What I know is that the ground down there has been worked by the serpent-folk farmers longer than any of us have been alive, and it is their ground that turned. When we had the flooding and the fires I didn’t see them operating a fundraiser on our behalf, and I also don’t see our local farmers having this issue. So one has to wonder if it’s a serpent problem.

Luna of course means well and I am not angry at her for wanting to help. She handed the key to the city back rather than keep a thing she felt she had not earned, and I respect her for it, and she would fundraise for the tuskboars too if you let her. But now she has got Grandma Windward trotting her manticores round the green to raise coin for serpent-folk, which is a joke that very near tells itself. And the unwitting half of the Downs, I’m sure, will feel very good about their donations tonight.

We need to stop passing the hat for every hard-luck story that comes up the road, and keep what little we can spare for our own. There are families right here on the Downs who lost stores to the floods and the fires and never had a green day got up in their name. Look after them first. Charity begins at your own gate, and lately I think we have forgotten where our gate is.

Merrigan Ploughwell farms the middle fields outside Brannock Crossing and now writes a regular column for the Rolling Downs pages. She can be reached by owl, or by standing in the lane and hollering, which she does anyway.