Farmer Gillian is a familiar figure in the village near the Eastern Origin Spring, known for rising early, working steadily, and expecting little from the world beyond a fair day’s weather. His routines rarely change. He tends his livestock, mends what breaks, and measures time by seasons rather than events. In unsettled years, that consistency alone makes him noteworthy.
Soldiers stationed nearby test his patience more than once, particularly the younger ones with idle energy and poor judgment. Gillian becomes a favored target of harmless mischief, waking to find his animals rearranged in improbable combinations. Goats stand bewildered in the henhouse. Hens flutter indignantly in the cow stall. Cows regard the pigpen with quiet confusion. Each discovery earns a long stare, a slow breath, and a muttered complaint about “damned military boys with too much time on their hands.”
Despite the irritation, Gillian never reports the pranks. His temper runs modest, his humor dry, and his perspective long. He understands the difference between cruelty and foolishness, and he recognizes restless youth when he sees it. There is even a sense that, beneath the grumbling, he takes some private satisfaction in providing a moment of laughter during difficult days.
Gillian does not shape history, but he endures alongside it. In village memory, he stands as a reminder of ordinary life carried forward through uncertainty. His fields are kept, his animals fed, and his patience, though tested, remains intact. In times of upheaval, Farmer Gillian represents the quiet resilience of those who keep living while larger stories unfold around them.