Reading Buddies!

My mother, well, it’s hard to say much about her… mostly because, there is so much to be said in the first place, it would be a very fat book, and yes the pun is very intentional if you know her. Ever since I’ve known her, the last 22 years, give or take 9  months, she’s been juggling just one or two things too many, and getting bye, with an élan that would put ‘happy go lucky’ to shame. She has always known how to enjoy the smaller pleasures of life, maybe that’s why she chucked me out of the house, once I grew up a little – Not small, not pleasure! Okay, I’m being charitable to myself, but then this story isn’t about me.

Reasons

“Sometimes,” said the monk, brushing his close cropped hair, “it is right to give up the path of peace and fight. There are some reasons, many reasons in fact, when the path of war, is the right path.”

“What are those reasons?” “When should one fight?” asked the young boys in attendance.

“Ah,” He replied, quietly stroking his head again, as the slightest of smiles curled his lips up, and twinkled in his eye, “there is no answer to that question, not even the wisest can say.”

It was a cold morning, in the hills. A quiet morning, with the peaks still not ablaze with the first light of the sun, but with light, sneaking it’s way over them, into the valley. There was no breeze, not even a breath, the needles  of the pine stood still. It was a lonely place to be, for young Dema, even though he’d been up here for months now, it still felt lonely in the morning. He leant against the pine, wondering for the umpteenth time, if having some music would help him, thinking back to his flute, in the village. He would play for hours there, in those carefree months, when other boys came here to watch.

But there were no distractions allowed up in the watch post.

At the head of the valley, was a small hut. A small hut, hidden in a small copse of pine, and other trees. A hut just big enough for one boy, and no food. The food came each week from the village, dried meat, and bread, enough to get by on, and occasionally a piece of cheese, if it could be spared. The village wasn’t very rich. The village sat at near the river, at the bottom of the valley.

The watch post, with its small flet in the pine trees, was meant to look across into the next valley, from where the horsemen came. The horsemen were fierce, but not many made it to the valleys in which the people lived. Those that did though, were famished, exhausted, and reduced to animalism by hunger, and hardship. It was rumoured that they never dismounted, and rode even as they slept. They could shoot arrows from horse back, and wielded great swords with both hands from the saddle. They had deep rumbling voices, in which they would bark at each other as they attacked.