Her Tiny World - pt. 2

Chapter 34. Rookies

Harvey

The day began to dawn as the first orange rays of the sun appeared between the tops of the trees. Dew dripped from the leaves in little balls of light that crumbled to the ground. As we prepared for another day some were still yawning and rubbing their eyes, trying to shake off the drowsiness. Fortunately I was resistant to fatigue. We were kind of a small class of young people, aspiring to become future explorers. There were six of us in total. Roxie, Jenny, Daya, Ottis, Callel and I were the only ones in the entire village who volunteered for the job. That certainly meant something.

Our community didn't have many rules to follow, but one of them was maximum law. It was expressly forbidden for anyone to leave the safe area under any circumstances. This might seem exaggerated and even authoritarian, but the truth was that no one was against it. The safe area was considerably large so we could walk around a lot. Furthermore, people were well aware of the risks of going too far and that was enough to stop them from breaking that rule. In fact, we were all already used to that lifestyle, so it wasn't a problem.

However, an explorer was the only one allowed to cross those boundaries. They could come and go as they pleased, there were no limits to the 'outside world'. Also, they were the ones who looked for resources when in short supply, such as certain types of materials and food that wouldn't be easily found anywhere near. It was also part of their responsibility to watch the woods in order to protect our people from possibly dangers which basically meant some animals and insects if they were luck. But it was not always true. Sometimes it could also happen that the work involved humans. If the situation reached that point, things could certainly go south easily.

For all that we were going through long training hours and demanding tests that required good, if not great survival and fighting skills. However, those were tiring days. Much more than we actually expected. Our bunch was young and we had never had such a rigorous routine before. So during those two long and exhausting weeks of hard work it was quite common to find dark circles under our eyes and find ourselves yawning and blinking, wondering about when would it be time to take a nap and finally rest. But there were no excuses for us, no matter what. Every day we performed new, challenging tests. We had to show our level of dexterity, strength, agility, quick thinking also a sense of self-defense, combat and the like. We were being taught how to survive in different situations, most of them hostile to beings our size. And for that we were constantly being evaluated and judged. I just need to do my best today. Nothing else. We sat in two groups, the boys and the girls, and had our breakfast before starting the new day. As we took seeds seasoned with salt and sugar to eat I noticed Callel could barely open his eyes due to exhaustion. What had he done this time?

"Are you okay, Callel?" I asked him.

"Yeah, just a little tired." He yawned. "I stayed up all night."

The boy scratched his eyes lazily, fighting the sleep stamped on his face. He looked like he was about to pass out at any moment.

"Why didn't you get some sleep?"

"I was making sure that no human would go unnoticed while you guys were sleeping."

"I guess it's quite hard to be sneaky being a giant creature, but are you sure you didn't let any slip away?" I couldn't help but tease him. "Maybe you blinked for a second."

"Ha, ha." He replied, ironically. "So fun."

I chuckled as I bit the spicy seed shell. We had learned that seeds were the basis of any explorer's diet as they were easy food to find in the middle of the woods. They fell from the trees, birds carried them from one place to the other, even the wind scattered them around. That was one of the secrets to surviving so many days away from home. Although the taste wasn't the best at all, at that point we had gotten used to it. At least used enough to eat more than one. If only we could bring real food.