Seekers

Chapter 1

1.1

The sky was clouded like most days, accompanied by a fine mist hanging in the air. A young boy was running energetically through the living room of a small stone cottage, frantically opening the few cupboards there and looking around.

"Valeras, come now, we have to go", he heard the deep and friendly voice of his father resounding from outside.

"One moment Pa, just grabbing something", he quickly yelled towards the door while ruffling through the contents of a wicker basket. He always wondered how he could never find things in such a small house. Finally, he found what he was looking for. A piece of flatbread in one of the storage shelves. A bit hard but perfect for a quick snack later on. One could quickly grow hungry up there after all.

"Val, let's get some work done while the day is still young", his father shouted again. The boy involuntarily rolled his eyes. He has heard his father say this way too many times by now.

He stuffed the bread inside his jacket pocket and ran through the door, snatching the small tool belt his father made for him from a nail by the door. Rushing past the small field in front of their house, he spotted his mother, Ilthris, and quickly shouted: "Bye Ma, see you later".

A woman with bright brown hair neatly tucked into a bun stood up in a field of neat rows of plants with large stems and yellow-green leaves. She wasn't the largest person and he knew the caltrap would soon outgrow her. She waved at him and gave him a warm smile.

"Bye sweetie, be careful and listen to your Father!", she said while giving him a slightly worried look like she always did when he did go out to help his father.

"Will do!", he replied and ran towards the short pier next to the house while fastening his belt under his sturdy woven jacket.

The sight was as astounding as always. They lived right at the edge of the island, directly behind the encircling wall of stone and trees that kept the ever howling wind at bay. Behind it, his father had built an improvised dock for their small sky raft. From there he could see everything the cloudy sky allowed him to. He saw a huge island far away from his own. where he could make out the colored rectangles of large fields bearing fruit, producing the majority of food for the capital and the surrounding villages. He saw the seemingly endless sea of clouds encompassing everything he ever knew around him and stretching into the abyss below. And of course, he saw the huge and ancient aqueduct, right before them, towering majestically over his island and dwarfing the houses on it. The huge arcs bridging the base pillars were stretching in both directions to the neighborliness islands, motionlessly hanging in the air. The sun was rising high already, shining through the row of small pillars in the top row over the supporting arcs and causing the monument to cast long shadows over their land.

Up there, among the pillars and bridges of stone was where he had spent most of his days over the last months since his eleventh birthday. His father was the appointed aqueduct engineer of their sector after all, and as his son, he was very likely to be selected as his successor when the time came. Because of this, his father took him to work as often as he could, showing him the ropes and lecturing what he could about stone-masonry, architecture, and math whenever he could. He tried to teach him anything the obligatory school in their village couldn't. Which as he often complained about was a lot and not even close to what he needed to know to get into the University as he did as a young man to study for a better appointment. And even though appointments were often inherited, a good education was always an important factor in securing critical ones that required special knowledge like being an engineer of the state. His father even managed to raise up his family's occupation of herdsmen through his graduation with honors.