The House of Oldenrock

Adjusting

Chapter Five: Adjusting

            The rain poured down as if the as if The Spirit had decided to open up the sky and let loose all of the rivers in the heavens down to the parched earth below.  There had been no precipitation for a month, an uncharacteristically long time for a land such as The Olgenoct, especially during April.  On top of that, the weather had been unseasonably warm for April; a month that was prone to have a couple snowstorms intermixed with the rain.

            Now the sky was emptying all the rain that it had withheld throughout the drought.  The rain came down in sheets, and on top of that it was cold, only a few degrees above freezing.  To think that it would soon be May suddenly sounded preposterous.  And here Margot and Hal were running outside in the middle of the storm.  Margot and Hal both had two days off from their studies or work a week, depending on the person, and those were the days that Margot and Hal went on their longest runs. Today was one of those days, and it did not matter to them what the weather was like.

            Margot tried as hard as she could to keep her footing in the mud, but her leather boots had little traction, and there had been many times when her feet had gone sliding.  She had only fallen once, and that had left her completely covered in mud.  The same was true for Hal.  Queen Líess was going to have a fit when they got home.

            The temperature dropped, and a few snowflakes began to fall down mixed in with the rain.  It was not long before there were only snowflakes and no rain.  Finally, Margot and Hal reached their turn around point, which was halfway between Rock Hall and Edrick’s Overlook.  The two of them were not ready to run the entire distance to Edrick’s Overlook and back yet, for it was many kilometers away, but they could at least run halfway there.

            They came to a stop and Hal grumbled, “I thought April showers brought May flowers, not April snow.”

            “Hal, there has not been a single April since we’ve been alive that it hasn’t snowed,” Margot sharply replied.

            Hal sighed and said, “But I never remembered it snowing this late in April.”  Then he changed his tone and recited, while looking ahead towards Edrick’s Overlook, which they could barely see jutting up in the distance: 

“Oh, Edrick Oldenrock you nameless Clanless man,

Vanquisher of foes who stood while many ran.

United the Clans again, a King you were born to be,

And to end the Chaos Years and set a new age free.”

            Margot smiled and continued the poem by saying:

“Oh, Edrick Oldenrock let your tale here be told.

A man who ended wars that had raged since the old.

Set up Guardians again to guard this land in peace,

And let his family rule until this land shall cease.”

            Hal then said:

“Oh, Edrick Oldenrock, from nowhere he had come,

But adopted by the Briddger Lord who lost his only son.

Dark auburn hair and hazel eyes with a golden rim,

Charisma, kindness, and intelligence made a King out of him.”

            They would have recited the whole epic by trading stanzas, but Margot said, “C’mon Hal, we got to get home, and we don’t have time to recite the whole thing.”  That was true, for The Epic of Edrick Oldenrock took a whole hour to recite when done properly, and reciting it while running would only lead to oxygen debt and a lapse in focus on the slippery road.