The beginning of a New Era!

Meeting the First King

1. Meeting the First King

His wish came true. The bond is broken. The prophecy is fulfilled. Just different. Much different from what Zeno had anticipated before. Though a part of him had always been aware of that possibility.

His long cherished wish ..to see the ones, who once perished before his eyes. Their ageing...their dying process...he was a quiet observer, a visitor but not one who participated in life.

Small gaps existed in the airless, quiescent room where he waited...and waited long days and nights, changing months, exciting and uneventful years, whole decades, tiring centuries and millenniums.

These tiny little fractions of time warming his inner self, his partly frozen heart. Zeno in his youth was a different guy.

One who felt pain when people died. Their anguish...being born during a time of war. His mother was gone before he even had the chance to even remember her consciously. She died of malnutrition, when was barely two years old, his grand-father told him that later. A leader of a foreign tribe had declared war on his tribe, could have also been the other way around. Zeno doesn t know it and it really doesn t bother him in the least.

Essential is just this one fact: Most of their crops had vanished. Had they been stolen by the „enemy "? The earth was dry and growing plants on it, was a hard work. Even during "good periods" with no armed conflicts who had been present ever since the beginning of all times, there was hardly enough for this village. Had they been burned to ashes during an attack? Who knew that after 2000 years?

Important is just this: Many people had much less food in the winter following that war.

"It was bad, Zeno. Much worse, then you could even imagine, child of mine. We had to eat pretty much everything what was available. I can tell you, after that winter, I didn t look at a tree for a couple of months. ,"his grand-pa told him. How was he? 8 years maybe? Usually his grand-pa hadn t talked about such topics. Maybe it had been that person, that inspired him to call death by his name.

Death is a natural occurrence, but if you talk too much about it, he joins you too soon. So better tell a joke, then complain about events you cannot change. Better smile, then cry.

But his lack of a mother s warmth, Zeno hasn t ever minded.

When he thinks about a mother, his grand-mother s face would come to his mind. His father who died early on in one of those countless battles. Zeno has been an orphan ever since.

His grand-parents were kind, hard-working people. Being born in a village at the hills that bordered the land that would be later called the Fire Tribe. It was a harsh climate and a barren land. The people there prayed to the gods daily. Zeno didn t understood that. As a child, was clueless about such things. When he said clueless, Zeno meant that he knew of the gods, but he was not aware of them.

As a child, he was unable to sense their existence. The gods were as important as his father or his mother. He liked thinking of them, but they didn t really influence his world until that day.

To his grand-parents though, the gods were as essential as bread and water. Zeno folded his hands and stared at his grand-parents faces, when they fell silent for a period. Occasionally mumbling to themselves.

Especially his grand-mother. The person closest to Zeno at that time. Every time so often, she looked at the sky and her face lighten up. Zeno nearly hurt his neck, to see, what was there, that made his grand-ma laugh.

But he was unable to see „them ". It was still too soon for him. „Seeing „and „Talking „with the gods was as natural as breathing to the people of this tribe. There were several other villages that had counted to the tribe, he had been born into.