Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Redclaw" data-source="post: 4202886" data-attributes="member: 53791">Eldan was finally settling in to start his supper after a long day.  Like most, he had spent the morning at weapons training.  Having mastered the basic techniques of the dagger, he had moved on to working with a spear, which he was surprised to discover had a very different feel to it.  The guardsmen had him using it similarly to the dagger, aim the point at the enemy and jab it at him.  While that seemed a reasonable starting point, Eldan had come close once or twice to finding a better approach.  He had even thought for a moment or two that two men, one using the dagger and one with a spear, might be able to work more effectively with each other than either alone.  He hadn't quite come up with a method, but it seemed like the dagger's quickness and the spear's reach would help cover for each other's weaknesses.  Just as he was about to figure it out, it seemed, his training time had ended and he'd had to rush off to the river.There he'd spent a typical afternoon with his father.  Enric didn't talk much while they watched the river.  Eldan believed it came from so many years of watching alone.  It had been over a decade since his grandfather had stopped joining his son for their duty.  The smoke and his chair had become too tempting, and Enric too capable to require his presence.  Now Eldan was on his way to being able to relieve his father at some point in the future.  The downside was that little of interest happened during the long hours of watching.  Every now and then he'd bring his rod and catch a fish or two, and once in a long while something truly unusual would find its way down the current and into town.  Just today he had once dragged a few logs, tied together with leather strips, out of the river.  He had wondered for a while about who might have tied them together, but then he had gone back to watching.He had returned home, as he did every day, ready to eat, rest, and then do it all again tomorrow.  Unfortunately, his mother had greeted him with the news that Jeilla was missing again, and he had to spend the next hour tracking his wayward cousin down.  He had first checked the usual place, the large building with all the windows, but for once she wasn't there.  It took him a while to remember the space she had cleared for herself in the bramble.  He still didn't understand why she didn't bring her 'treasures' home.  It would be much easier for her to look at them, which is what is all she ever seemed to do with them.Sure enough, he had found her sitting in the small clearing in the bramble, having dug up the wooden box she buried there, just staring at a piece of metal attached to a chain.  The shape, it looked sort of like a sun, wasn't even that pretty.  He expected young girls to be more interested in flowers or shiny rocks.  She just stared at that round piece of dull metal for another ten minutes before he could get her to put her possessions away in the box and bury it again so that they could get home.  By then he could hear his stomach over the sound of her worldess singing as they walked together.Now here he was, ready to eat, and someone was knocking at the door.  He accepted his duty and stood up.  He walked to the door and opened it, surprised to see the fixer, Karothen, there.  Eldan couldn't remember ever seeing the quiet young man away from his shop, where Eldan had brought him a few strange things that he had found over the years.  He couldn't figure out what the fixer might want that would bring him here at suppertime.  Still, he had always been a nice enough fellow, and Eldan's curiosity got the better of him.  Karothen, what brings you here? he asked, trying to make the young man feel welcome.  It has been a while.  Have you fixed anything interesting recently?</blockquote>

Verification