Editing Kino no Tabi:Volume18 Frontispiece (section)

==The Province of Cows –Fountain-==

The province Kino and Hermes had stumbled upon was a bitterly cold prairie full of cows.

The flat plains outside the castle walls were like another world, the pasture struck flat in all directions.

They didn’t know quite why this place was the way it was, but despite it being winter, the white and black speckled cows were freely wandering around, eating the fresh green grass.

Likewise they weren’t quite sure why this happened, but the cows would have casually all gathered together and formed a line. They would then, one by one, enter a section underground.

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When Kino and Hermes went to go look at the underground area where the lines of cows were going, they saw on the other side of some glass a machine working hard collecting milk from the cows.

This province was bustling with tradesmen.

It would seem that flatbed trucks carrying large milk tanks would come from far away, dropped off their shipment at the city gate, then made a return trip to do it again.

One of the tradesmen, a middle-aged man, was taking a break. Kino approached him and asked who he was buying this milk from.

He replied: “Ah, young traveler. You don’t seem to know about this province. No one lives here anymore. Now it’s just called the province of cows”.

Hermes asked who the tradesmen are doing their business with.

"Nobody". He continued, explaining: “In this province, the cows are free for anyone to use. I don’t really understand why this is the way it is, but they reside here without ever becoming too numerous or too few. The cows store milk but naturally it doesn’t stay fresh long, so in the old days it was taken and disposed with outside the province, and in the prairie here these streams of cows continue to flow.”

Kino having heard this responded by saying: “So you come here to pick it up, huh”.

The young man replied: “Exactly right. But it’s not as fifty years ago without refrigeration, and we could carry the milk elsewhere warm when it’s still cold. Even if you considered the expenses and shipping fees involved coming this far, it’s still good business so we all crowd here”.

Kino and Hermes understood, and thanked the man for his time. Parting, the man declared:

“But it really is a mystery, isn’t it? I wonder where the people who have built this system this incredible disappeared to. We don’t have any records of them moving to a neighboring country. It’s all really such a mystery”.

With a puzzled expression, the man gazed down at the cows in the middle. By his side, Kino murmured:

‘Is this really a province like that?’