The Storm: Part Two
Hello again everyone! This is the next part to the ongoing fantasy story I started a couple of days ago, called The Storm. Hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think.
"I have to go to Oastin to talk to the Elders about our sheep dying, will you look after Sadie while I’m gone?" Jordan said, picking up the cloth sac from the table and throwing it over his shoulder. He turned and looked at me with a fatherly look on his face.
"She’s 15 Jordan. I think she can take care of herself." I replied, brushing off his look. I don’t think he did it on purpose, I just think that’s who he was now that mom and dad were gone.
"I know but I worry." He said. "I just don’t want anything to happen to her, or you for that matter and until the Elders can tell us what is killing our sheep," He trailed off with a new look on his face, still fatherly but worried now. "I would like it if you could just watch over her while I’m gone. Okay?" He started towards the door of the small shack that we called home. "And no magika until I get back unless you absolutely have too. I should only be gone for a day maybe two at most" He threw in before leaving and then he was gone.
I sat down on one of the beat up wooden stools we had placed around, an even more beat up, wooden table and started cutting vegetables for breakfast. I could hear Sadie snoring in the small room, actually the only room, at the far end of the shack. Jordan and I thought it best to give her the room since she was so young.
After I finished cutting up the veggies I walked over to the door, which wasn’t so much a door as much as it was just a couple of pieces of wood nailed together, and watched Jordan climb up on our family horse, which was too old really to be carrying anybody, and start down the dirt road that led to Oastin. The sky was full of orange and reds as the sun just started to come up and after a few minutes Jordan started to be washed away in color.
"Hey," I heard the voice from behind me, it was quiet and coarse. "Where'd Jordan go?" It was Sadie. The horses hooves must’ve woke her up.
"He just went to Oastin to see if the Elders know anything about the sheep dying." I replied and started towards the make shift ice box that we kept what little meat we had in. "He'll be back in a day or two. You hungry?" I pulled a small lamb shank out and started cutting small pieces off of it.
"Sure," she said and, without me having to ask, she started making the fire. "What do you think is killing the sheep?" She asked without looking at me.
"It’s probably just a wolf or some other animal. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Jordan just wants to make sure. You know?" I answered. She shook her head to show that she figured the same thing.
After the fire was going she came and sat next to me on one of the other stools. She looked at me with such adornment and I knew it was because I was able to use my magika and part of me wished that she wouldn’t. I mean I was only seventeen and didn’t really know how to use my magika and if it wasn’t for Jordan I probably would’ve burned down the house, or worse. But she continued to stare.
"Jacob, can I ask you something?" She started.
"Sure. Anything." I replied and got up to grab a pan to cook the lamb in.
"I’ve been thinking about how next year I’m going to get my magika, and I was just wondering if it hurts?" Her voice was shaky and nervous, but that was understandable. For people like us, getting your magika was a very big deal, and some people couldn’t handle it. Jordan had told me and Sadie stories about other people that had turned sixteen and got their magika and simply lost it. For some people it’s just too much.
"It didn’t for me and I mean everyone is different, but I don’t think it will for you either." I said putting the meat in the pan, grabbing the stool and walked over to the fire. "It’s funny I actually asked Jordan the same thing before I turned sixteen and he told me that it didn’t hurt for him either." Sadie did the same as I did and sat next to me in front of the fire.
"Okay, I’m just nervous." she said looking down into her hands.
"I know I was nervous too but afterwards you feel so..." I searched for the right way to describe it. "It’s kind of like when you’re really hungry, like that one year when all of them died from disease and we didn’t have much to eat, and inside, you feel so hungry. You're still yourself but something is missing and then you finally get something to eat and you feel so complete and fulfilled. So energetic and you feel like you could do anything." I turned toward her and saw that she was staring at me with amazement in her eyes. "It’ll all be okay, I promise."
"Okay," Her voice sounded reassured and her eyes were now filled with hope. "So speaking of being starving, Is that done yet?"
"As a matter of a fact, it is." I said and started putting lamb on the plates with the raw cut up vegetables on them and sitting at the table. "Let’s eat."
"Can you tell me more about magika?" Sadie asked, crunching down on some raw carrot.
"Sure, I mean I don’t know a whole lot but I’ll tell you what I know." I said. "Well you go to Oastin, where the Elders look into your destiny and decide if you are worthy of getting magika in the first place and if they decide that you are, then they perform the ritual of the three." I looked at her chewing on a piece of raw celery. "There are three different kinds of magika, water, earth, and fire and each is given by their respective god. Most humans can use all three but each individual has a special strength in one." I spoke with a mouth full of lamb. "My specialty is water and Jordan’s is earth."
"What do you think mine will be?" she said, setting down her fork and looking at me to wait for an answer.
"I don’t know. It could be any of the three." I replied.
"I hope its fire." She said. Her voice was full of excitement. "That would be the coolest. I could throw fireballs and burn stuff down." She threw her right hand out, palm first, and made a swooshing sound as she said this. At that moment I could tell how young she was still.
"You need to remember though that fire is the most dangerous of all of them since it’s the hardest to control." I said looking at her with a similar fatherly look that Jordan gave me earlier that day.
"I know. I know. I just think it would be cool." She never sounded more like a younger sister than at this moment.
"So that’s pretty much all that I know." I finished, swallowing my last piece of lamb and looking up at her and realizing that she hadn’t eaten much since we started talking. "Now finish your food, while I go out and check on the sheep."