It seemed familiar. From the terracotta roofs to the arched windows, the crush of the city blocks, it might have been a sleepy town in Spain or his native Oaxaca. But the town, and the buildings, were not even so old as he was.
It had been ten years since Raúl left Oaxaca, and Earth, for land and open sky and a life of tending his maize. He’d built a modest farmhouse a kilometer from the town, a sleepy place called San Ignacio after a saint who’d died long ago on the world Raúl had left behind. Living off the land on an alien world made saints of them all, each giving of whatever he had so that all might thrive.
By day, he tended his milpa, where his maize grew alongside beans and yams. Like the people of San Ignacio, they lived side-by-side, each helping the other to grow and prosper. By night, he’d stroll into the town, and sit smiling as the day faded, and the star he’d left blinked into view.
Written for the FFfAW Challenge – Week of July 17, 2018. Word count: 174. Read other stories based on this prompt at InLinkz.com.
Michael T. Kuester 
I suspect that level of peace would last only so long. Once the population density became high enough, people would form different factions and eventually states or nations. Hopefully, they’d cooperate in peaceful trade, but then humans are who we are.
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Perhaps, unless they truly do model their society after the milpa. A milpa is a traditional Mesoamerican farming technique in which a variety of crops are grown together, rather than in separate fields. Each crop takes certain things from the soil while depositing others, and each both consumes something only the other provides and provides something the others lack. I felt that served as a good metaphor for how a successful colony would work: everyone serves their purpose, and while their purpose may be great or small it is nonetheless unique.
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I was thinking generations or even centuries down the line when the population began to diversify.
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Lovely story! He seems very happy to be in another world and living off the land.
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Wow, I just hope that this idyllic state of affairs can last.
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