Trip To The Inferno [OLD VERSION]

Part 44

I looked at the man who had a sadistic glint in his eyes and felt a small shudder go down my back. This dangerous edge of Laird excited and scared me at the same time.

'Okay.... how will it save us?' I asked, still curious about many things and wanted answers.

'Think about that. Who will be the first one to know if the volcano is ready to erupt?'

'The person who keeps track of the lava level in volcano's crater' I answered scientifically. At least that's how I think that part was called. Or was that a went? My 6th grade geography memories were fuzzy since I was more into water bodies and marine biology. 'In other words, the hole at the top' I finished and watched as Lird's smirk slowly widened.

'Correct. And who are the people who watches the volcano?'

'That would be... ohhhhh... But how would we leave the island and where would we go?' More questions rose and Laird chuckled, leaning back and clearly satisfied.

'Unlike other tribes who live without a worry in their lives, we actually took our sweet time in exploring surrounding sea and documenting our findings. There is an island about 20 days by boat that is a little bit bigger than this one. When we see that the volcano is on the verge of eruption, we pack up, hop into already prepared boats and quietly leave while other tribes live clueless until the fateful day.'

I listened to the explanation and my mind finally brought up home. There is a boat that could be used to travel. Finding the boat would be the challenge, but once that's done, packing up and sneaking could be easy. If I could tell all of this to Allan the-

Suddenly, my hair was pulled back as my head automatically leaned back as well. I gasped at the sudden motion and heard Laird chuckle. He brought his face to my neck and I felt him run his nose up, breathing in and sending shivers down my spine.

'Look at you, already planing an escape. Only I and Cane know where the boats are' he softly growled and I frowned.

'Who is Cane?'

'Ogden's beast' he replied and finally let my hair go.

'Oh...' Was my only response since I still was a bit lost about the beast thing. I couldn't sort my feelings about it and I knew that it would take time.

Silence stood between us for a minute as my attention went back to the burning flies. The moon has already peaked through the lazily hanging clouds and the only source of light were those amazing bugs. I felt a light tap on my cheek and looked back at Laird who rose an eyebrow.

'We are not finished here'

I blinked, remembering that we were talking about the volcano. Those fire flies were damn good at stealing your attention.

'Right. How can you be so sure that they will die and not escape as well?' I went back to the topic and upon hearing my question, Laird smirked again, this time with more sinister smile.

'I'll make sure that they do'

'You.... really hate them' I frowned, disturbed by his open hostility towards other island inhabitants.

'With passion'

'O-okay, back to the history' I requested, ignoring the amusement on Laird's face because of my discomfort.

'Anyway, seasons passed and with expansion of their exploration, they found that the only other dangerous predator apart from them were wolves. One huge pack of wolves, but we will get back to that later. Around that time a boy was born in Earth village. A boy that was really skilled in hunting and by the age of 10 already went on the hunts with other men. Some believe that he never missed a single arrow, but that we can't check as he is quite dead. He hunted only elks and stags to the point where their numbers were dangerously low. With elk numbers dropping, he encountered wolves more frequently as they too hunted almost eradicated animal, but the boy or now a man, never hunted them. One day, he was hunting a huge white male stag with the antler crown as big his own body. He had tracked it down to a small meadow and was ready to shoot when a female wolf jumped out of the bush and startled the stag. It began running away, straight towards the man and on the last second, the stag saw the man and lowered his antlers. Before the man could react, he was pierced by them and thrown on the ground, the stag running over him in fear of his life. The wound punctured his heart and the man quickly bled to death. The last thing he saw was a female wolf looking at him from a far.'

As I was listening to the story of the man, I slowly pieced the details. The story was about the man that had a statue designated to him. Why I thought that it was a deer was beyond me. I mean, I never saw the animal and no one thought us about them. New York youth, I guess.

'So, then he descended into godhood and chose stag as his animal?'

'Correct, he chose the stag because he hunted those animals his entire life and was killed by one of them' Laird nod in affirmative.

'Okay, I see the death aspect of his worship and the stag statue, but where the harvest comes in?' I asked as other questions rose up as well.

'Well, with the hooved animal numbers rapidly going down and three villages needing the food, he began focusing on wild vegetables and grains that grew around the meadow and in the forest. Keep in mind that everything happened hundreds if not thousands of seasons ago. The man, with the help of other people from other villages, began growing wild plants in their own home gardens and tried to regrow them in places where those plants didn't naturally grow. After many failed attempts he succeeded and other villages slowly began adapting their diets more around vegetables than meat, so that it would even out. But the change was going very slowly and majority of people still prefered only meat diet, so the hunts continued.'

'And on one of the hunts he died'

'Yes, and that is how our God of Death and Harvest came about. But to understand why we worship him, you need to know the story of our second goddess and creator, the Luna'

My eyes went wide as the title that I was addressed so many times rang around us and I vigorously nodded, ready to take in even more information as everything was finally slowly coming into one piece.