The story of Aldorem

Chapter Four; Part II: A surprise for my parents

I slowly awoke from my nice and sweet dreams while hearing noises from my slightly opened window. I could hear carriages rolling over the roughly paved streets, birds singing their lovely songs, people speaking and shouting from the market.

But those things never bored me, even after hearing it over and over, every time I awoke. After listening to the noises for a few minutes I stood up and shut the window. Then I wanted to go down stairs to surprise my parents, by preparing breakfast, but on my way out I spotted my backpack in the corner. So I turned around, went back to it and unpacked it – which I wasn't able to do yesterday any more. In it was still a bottle half filled with water, which I put on my night-stand next to my damaged pocket knife. And thereafter I found the main reason why I unpacked it, pretty fast, as it was quite big—the carving for my dad, which was luckily still in one piece. I placed it beside me on the floor, brought the backpack back to its previous place and then went with the carving downstairs.

In the dining room I prepared the table and placed the gift for my dad on his seat. Having everything ready, I went upstairs to wake up my parents, they were quite happy as I carefully waked them up and hugged them. After a short time my three siblings to came into our parents room, after some time playing a bit around, all got some fresh clothes on and went down.

As they saw my surprise for them, all were happy, and my father seemed even more surprised, as he saw my gift for him. At first, he stood there still and stiff, like a dummy, without changing his expression, until his look smoothed and he took the gift in his hand. He looked at it from all sides while smiling before giving me a long hug. Then he told me how proud he was of me for making such a beautiful work.

After our breakfast, my father placed the gorgeous carving on his desk—never to be forgotten again by him.

When our nice breakfast ended my parents made everything ready for the expedition out of the chasm, to the place where I fought the Iwàrt. They decided we would go already today, as both of them didn't have to work today, so they had more than enough time for it. For the adventure, they packed their luggage in one bag and took another two with them to later fill with the disassembled parts. They packed into one food, water, sharp knives, and other things, whereas I only took my pocket knife along with me to carve while my parents were working.

Before finally starting our journey, we rapidly delivered, on the way to the stairs, my two brothers and my sister to my grandparents. Thereafter my parents followed me on the way to the alley with the staircase at its end. As we stood before the nearly endless staircase, the surprise could be seen in my parents faces, they couldn't believe what they were seeing even when it was in front of them. While the sun was still hiding behind the chasm's edge, enlightening only the topmost part of the chasm, we finally climbed the first steps, one after another.

Going up all those stairs was a struggle as ever, and even more so with my parents, who needed every now and then a rest, and asked often how long it would still take. But we made it all the way to the top until the early morning, even through all the breaks and my parents questioning all the time, whether we would even come out from the never ending tunnel.

Arriving at the top, we decided to rest in the shade of a tree, out of the blazing sun, and then eat our lunch. As we sat there, we could see all of Aldorem, and its streets were filled with thousands of people doing there business.

After resting, we made our way through the forest, which was easier with three people and only took us about half the time I normally needed. The whole journey was unadventurous and kind of boring; nothing out of the ordinary happened; there were just different shades of green and grey wherever I looked. But my parents didn't thought so and looked around all the time, as if they never saw trees in their life—which wasn't impossible...but unlikely.

Coming to the plains, I realized a huge problem: all looked the same, and there was nearly no chance to find the spot where I had hidden the corpse.

So we searched the plains for the place where I had hidden the dead iwàrt, which took its time. In the end, I was the one who found the right place and yelled my parents to come here.

As I removed the leaves, with the help of my parents, they seemed shocked to see what lay underneath. They just stared at the corpse, then looked at me and back in disbelieve. After a short recovery, my mother said we needed water to clean the dirty wolf before dismantling it.

There were two ways of doing this: either to get water or to get the corpse to the water. But getting water from the river to this place was impossible due to a lack of transportation possibilities.

So we decided on option two, and two hours later we put the wolf down on the riverbank. We washed it there, and afterwards we split up because my parents thought it was nothing for me to see the process. So I went to my spot, which got me bored after sitting there for hours, so I decided to go along the river and search for new spots and then carve there.

Firstly I got my parents quite easily agreeing to my idea, who where just beginning with their work. Whereafter my journey began, I crossed the river, then went upstream around a hump, then even more eastward, until a huge hill came which I climbed up to its top and then went it down a bit.

Behind the hill, I had a beautiful view of a valley through which the stream flows on its way to Aldorem. The valley was full of plants and some huge trees that stood out from the rest. It was quite noisy inside the valley, the birds were singing their songs and the river was murmuring quietly. Beyond the valley, I could see many more hills and, in the distance, clearly the mountains, where the river has its source. Far at the northern end of the mountain range, I could finally see snow on the mountains again for the first time since May, which means that winter is getting closer and closer.

I sat on top of the hill for many hours, waiting for my parents to finish, which took a long time. Meanwhile, I was carving on a new project, a gift from me to myself; it will be a trophy, a memory and a memento for my first killed beast. The carving will be that of a majestic iwàrt howling into the sky, with a knife pierced trough it's heart by a little human—myself.

Time passed quickly, and it became quieter and quieter as the birds stopped chirping and the soothing sound of the river faded into the background. Which wasn't apparent until I realized it.

Towards the afternoon, I heard my parents shouting for me to come back rapidly. This was easier said than done, and it took me considerably longer than it did to get here because I needed to be very careful going downhill so that I didn't fall all the way down and hurt myself.

After I was on flat ground, I ran over the steadily falling ground to where my parents and I split up.

When I got there, I couldn't see much, just my parents with their overstuffed backs. When I asked them where the rest of the wolf was, they just pointed to a spot in the grass where there was a pile of dirt, with some wildflowers on it.

On the way home, I carried the back with the items we brought with us around, while my parents had the honour to carry the heavy, overstuffed backpacks with the dismantled parts. On the way I asked them some things that interested me. Like what they are gonna do with all the material, how it can be used, and what one can make out of it. They told me that usually the only interesting loot is the beast's skin for clothing or equipment and its claws or fangs for blades, spears and arrows.

Late in the evening we arrived home, we all were pretty much done and where out of power. We all decided to first all get a nice shower and then eat a nice, good meal. Sitting at the table, while eating I asked my parents what was now with our bet, they just pointed at the still packed backpacks, and told me to chose what I want to take. I decided myself after some time thinking for the longest and sharpest teeth I could find. With the plan in my head to make myself a knew, better knife with the teeth. But for this I would need a handle, which I thought wouldn't be a problem as I knew how to carve one.

As I was pretty much half the time asleep while eating, I decided to immediately go in my room and to sleep after choosing my loot. My backpack I threw carelessly in the corner, the teeth I placed carefully on my bed-side table, and at last I threw myself into my beloved bed, where I directly fell asleep.