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Chapter 8 - The First Day of The Rest of Your Life

Mum, Dad and I woke bright and early like we did every day. Ettraillians rose when the sun peeked over the horizon and retired when it disappeared, ensuring maximum daylight for our activities. I can't really recall a night when I didn't get a good night's sleep as a child until I was a teenager plotting my escape. To this day, I still get a bit tired almost instantly after dark.

Sometimes when I woke, my parents were already gone to work, leaving me to my own resources to procure a morning meal. That was also one of those days. I sleepily worked my way down to the ground floor, picking crust out of my eyes. I took a look inside the cooking pot hanging from the fireplace. I smiled at the contents simmering inside the pot. Potato chowder. I liked potato chowder. No, loved is more like it. It was the meal I always requested to have for dinner on my birthdays because my parents insisted they'd cook anything I wanted. Mum and Dad had cooked breakfast and left me to eat as much as I wanted of the remains.

It would be my job to put the leftovers away when I was done eating. We'd keep it in our storage bins and reheat it later in the week. It still tasted the same after a week of being frozen.

I scooped a massive proportion of my favorite food into one of the wooden bowls my parents had left on the table. We did have private dishware and utensils for eating at home. They rarely got washed immediately after eating thanks to the druids limiting our water supply. I brought the bowl back over to the table and pulled the chair closer to the table, so I could actually reach it.

I had a tendency to overeat potato chowder every time I was around it. It was like a weakness. Never ever have I vomited from overeating, though. Since I discovered the outside had something called chocolate, chocolate became my favorite thing to eat. Potato chowder always remained a close second, even if no bed and breakfast made it the way my parents did.

I ate at a leisurely pace and did what my parents would've expected of me by emptying the leftovers in the pot into a food storage container. I scrubbed out the bowls with a rag, cleaning what left over residue I could out. Then I put on my shoes and stepped outside. Sometimes our door would stick if frost covered the ground. A winter or two ago, we'd woken up to find our door wouldn't open because it'd been frozen over on the outside. I remember clearly some of the druids had to break us out of our own house.

There was early morning frost covering every surface. I had forgotten it was almost winter. I didn't bother to go further. Instead I went back inside and dug around for one of my long-sleeved winter shirts. Along with the winter top, I found a knitted shawl that Dad gave to Mum as a present some time ago, which I also tied around my neck. Mum wasn't too particular about me wearing her stuff. She would want me to be warm. After all, I was wearing Dad's old clothes.

My breath became seen in the chilly weather as I stepped into the open air a second time. Eventually it'd be time for us to dig out our winter clothes and we'd be wearing heavy fur coats and boots with large frames mounted to the sole acting as snow shoes for months on end. I followed the dirt paths formed from feet that trampled grass down the slight slope to the fields, where I saw my parents, the other farmers and the druids enchanting the soil. I approached slowly so as not to alarm anyone or draw attention away from the druids'.

The druids needed to use their magic on the soil at least once a month during winter otherwise the magic faded and our staple crops would die. The full moon night was the night they marked on their druidic calendars for such an event.

Some of the farmers were already plowing for new rows. Others were sowing the seeds of fruits and vegetables we pulled out of our food while eating it to keep it for this specific purpose. Ettrail didn't really like convening with the outside world. So much that we didn't purchase basic necessities from elsewhere. Assassins weren't even really allowed to bring random items home. The person an assassin wished to marry were among the only things they were allowed to bring and most times the druids would not let them enter our village without conducting a thorough search.