Somedays, it's a burden, bending over her farm, tilling the soil, watering the crops, or harvesting them. Somedays, she pauses and knows that she could have it easy, could finally rest and really feel sleep seep into her once weary bones and try for a different kind of life.

Ukraine isn't a quitter though, and while she's known as 'soft' compared to Russia and Belarus, she doesn't desire to be made truly soft. The work is difficult, but the value was never in ease or relaxation or pure bliss, but rather, in the things that aren't sunshiney lists. It is in the long hours of work that make her feel accomplished, that prove her worth, with every hint of exhauation and the stupor that is nearly put on her.

It is in the ways that her citizens respond to her: in kind, with warm, affectionate love. It's in the fact that the arrival or lack of wealth has never killed her or slowed her down any, or made her forget just how it felt to bury herself in manual labor, instead of only the tiresome task of filling out paperwork, reading over and over again policies that sometimes feel like dead weights on her throat. It's better to work, as a mind is free to either wander in blissful daydreams or be pulled into sharp focus. It's in the routine, that seems to always mean more than a signature on a page.

It's when her crops are fully grown, and Ukraine begins that journey on foot, to sell her 'excess' or rather, the crops that she had grown to share and to sell and to trade. It's in the fact that she knows the names of who buys her crops, and not just in a faceless manner, but fully realized. It's in the human friendships that sustain her and keep her going, as her family life always falls more on the wayside.

It's tiresome, and she often doesn't get enough sleep. Ukraine though rests with joy in her heart, wakes up bright and early to work, without the worry of losing herself within the governmental care or the way that nations sometimes elevate themselves infront of and by their people. She dreads the idea of using them, so she contently makes herself one of them, and sees a side of her country that otherwise goes unseen.

Ukraine smiles, amid the back pain, and though the other nations think her insane, she remembers the years that have went before her, that marched steadily on with this work, and the many generations of families that she had come to know. Some swear by leading armies into battle, and she vows herself into working among her people for all of their welfare, knowing that hardwork produces discipline and discipline a kind of joy that otherwise is forgotten about and discarded.

Hard work, despite the taxing pain of the effort, makes her smile as she knows that all of her work is for and with her people, and that somehow she can form the familial bond with her citizens that she misses more often from her blood relatives, and that her friendships on her soil are formed from the difficulty of daily work, and yet blossom as trees bloom fruit and life continues on.

Katyusha doesn't mind at all the fact that the work tends to heighten her back pain or that she must stay up late after farming to catch up on paperwork or that she's isolated in her own ways from her fellow nations. The pain and the toil of it, just bring her the great joy of a bond with her citizens that is unlike any other.