The Odd Adventure of Noah

Chapter the first:

Once upon a time , in 1883 , in some country side in some corner of the earth , a humble shepherd lived with his beautiful wife and two (and soon three) kids in their small farm out in a distant country side , they were living as happily as a shepherd and his wife and their kids could live .

He was in his 50's but he still had the strength and persistence of a 25 years old young man, his life was the same every day , wake up as soon as the sun comes up , release the sheep , roam the plain that now he knows it like the back of his hand searching for a good meadow , and just sit there all day watching his sheep so they won't wander away. That's all of it , all day every day , the same old rhythm that he inherited from his father and his father and his father and all of their ancestors , and he liked it , he never complained or whined about his life . And all of this continued until THAT happened, that changed everything ...

One day , just like all the days before it and all the days after it as the shepherd wrongly presumed , Noah took his sheep out as usual, nothing out of the ordinary , he took them to the meadows were he knows that this time of the year it has the softest and freshest grass in all the surrounding plains , he spent the day sitting under a tree watching his dear sheep till he fell asleep by afternoon , and he had a strange dream , about a person that it has been so long he haven't seen , he saw his father , but not as he saw him last time , he looked much older but also seemed strong , he was wearing a strange cloth , one he never saw before , it was dark blue with golden sleeves and neck , and it had this strange shimmering that would enchant you if you stare at it for too long , he saw his father looking confused , anxious , worried , he was walking up and down a small room with weird greenish stone walls , his hands were shaking and he was mumbling strange words , the shepherd tried to understand what he was saying but he couldn't . Suddenly , his father stopped in the middle of the room and stopped talking , then turned at once at his son, grabbed him by the collar, and started yelling at his face with a dull , ear-piercing screaming that made Noah get ejected in the air and suddenly he was falling from the sky and the cold air was slapping into his face till it grew numb , he watched the earth beneath him get closer and closer and the trees and rocks get bigger and bigger till he eventually reached the surface and at the moment he touched the ground he woke up terrified from what he just saw , he took a long moment to clear his mind and relief the imaginary pain from the fall that he was feeling all over his body , then he opened his eyes slowly and looked at his sheep , they were right were he left them , he must have been sleeping for like 5 minutes but it seemed like an hour for time in dreams works differently than in reality ,the shepherd sat quietly under the huge tree thinking about what he just saw.

Of course he forgot all the details like we all do but he still remembers his father and the strange state he was in , he haven't seen his father for so many long years that he even forgot what he looked like , but still , he had a weird feeling about it , he gathered his sheep and headed home .

The next day , he woke up at the usual hour , took his breakfast and went to the barn to release the sheep , he was still holding the huge bundle of keys in his hand and shaking it making a nice metallic clicking when he saw that the barn had no lock !!! , he was scared that he might have lost all his flock but when he opened the door they were all inside, he felt relieved but when he counted them he found them missing, « I must have been over thinking about that darn dream till I forgot to lock the door and now I lost two sheep!! » he thought in himself, he looked for the lock everywhere but there was no trace of it anywhere, it was like it had just disappeared into thin air!!! , he was confused , but he cursed his luck then took his flock and on to the hills again , although this time he made sure he won't fall asleep again , and at the afternoon he went back home and locked the sheep inside with a new lock .