Blessed are the Burdened: Chapter 2 – Wake Up Call

Chapter 2 – Wake Up Call

The birds sing their morning song to wake me up and let me know that a new, wonderful day has begun again. I go about my daily routine: praying, saying good morning to neighbors, getting dressed, and fixing my hair. Going downstairs, I have breakfast while my father talks about current events, complaining about them and what should be done. He mentions something about people becoming bandits and criminals because they didn’t like the results of the recent wars and political decisions made in light of them, all of which go over my head.

“You should take the day off to do some training just in case they attack,” are the only words my father says that catch my attention.

“No, I can’t. I told Oshry and Ziv that I’d help them out and this time I will for certain,” I say.

“I can get someone to take your place, you know. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“No, I don’t want to make someone work harder just because I can’t be there.”

“Okay, fine, but you should make time to train, especially since you can’t fight that well.”

“I will, father.”

At first, I do my best to get done my work as efficiently and as quickly as possible, and by lunchtime, it seems like I’ll keep my promise to get my work done and help my friends, however, I feel burned out by the time I get back to work and start to slow down. I try to take it easier, but I end up slowing down more than I expect to, and the beauty of Matias distracts me so much that I notice that it’s almost sundown by the time I get up from my rest. Now I have to rush even more to get done and help my friends. While doing the best I can to get down, I hear the sounds of commotion and see strangers wandering the gardens and farms. New workers come here all the time and travelers are allowed to take from the gardens and farms assuming they put a day’s work in, so I pay no attention to the strangers.

As for the commotion, this place can get rowdy sometimes since there are restaurants, bars, and halls for celebration in this tree, so hearing it isn’t out of the ordinary for me either, especially this close to the end of the day when people stop working. While I finish pulling the last of the grapes and filling my baskets, a knife is put to my throat from behind me. I freeze in place not knowing what’s happening, what to do, or what to say. Looking to my side, I see a gloved hand picking the grapes and hear someone eating them behind me.

“Stay here, act like this never happened, and you won’t die,” a woman says from behind.

I can only struggle to speak before stopping myself and swallowing my nervousness.

“I’ll take that as your agreement. Thank you for the food. It’s some of the best we had in a while.”

People clothed in leather armor and hoods take all the baskets I have and silently walk away from me. Despite them leaving, I stand in place in complete shock and embarrassment. I feel like I should’ve done or said something instead of letting those people steal from my family’s garden. What do I do now? This has never happened before. Do I go to my parents or the guards who were supposed to be around here to tell them what happened? Should I just forget about it?

Before I can decide on anything, I hear the sounds of screaming and fighting. Running to see what’s happening, I see the guards, my coworkers, and my friends fighting against the hooded bandits who stole from me. In the chaos, I see Oshry and Ziv poorly defending themselves as they appear too tired to fight. Even though the sight of violence around me is hard to handle and I can’t do anything to help, I absentmindedly run to my friends’ aid with no plan for how to help them. Two people kill each other next to me and drop their blades in front of me. I pick up one of the swords while trying not to mind the blood on it and continue to run to my friends with the expectation of using it, but I freeze up again and only end up distracting my friends with me being in the midst of the fight, leading to their deaths.

The sight of seeing them die and a bandit approach me isn’t enough to get me to move, and by the time I do, I can only swing the sword a few times before it slips out of my hands during the fight. I do my best to dodge the bandit’s attacks while trying to get away until a guard comes to my aid, killing the bandit, and taking me to safety as the rest of the guards, workers, and hunters drive away our attackers. Once the guard takes me home, he sticks around with the other guards to keep me safe and promises that my father and mother are safe and will be home soon. What he says turns out to be true as my father and mother come home with two guards and workers with weapons behind them. My father is bloodied with a bow on his back and daggers in his hands, but he doesn’t have any cuts on him while my mother is completely uninjured and not dirtied by anything besides the dirt of the day’s work.

I embrace my parents in tears and tell them everything that happened from the grapes being stolen to witnessing the deaths of my friends. They hold me tight and tell me that it’s fine and not my fault that my friends died. My father then commands the guards to hunt down the last of the bandits and take the remaining workers home. The guards do as they’re told while two of them convince my father to stay with us until the situation has calmed down. It’s sunset now and my mother offers to make dinner, but I tell her I’m not hungry and simply stay in my room while trying not to cry anymore.

An hour passes before a messenger comes to the house to tell my father that the bandits have been dealt with, some of which have been arrested and interrogated. My father then rants about how they took advantage of our kindness to steal from the gardens and farms of this tree and how the government doesn’t do enough to exterminate the criminals that roam this part of the Holy Land despite our importance to the world. I block out all the yelling and talking as I cry myself to sleep. Waking up the next morning, it feels as if what happened last night was a nightmare until I smell the blood on myself that I didn’t manage to fully wash off. Images of my Oshry and Ziv being killed fill my mind, especially the image of their blood flowing to me as if their blood was pointing at me, blaming me for their deaths.

Again, I start to cry, causing my mother and father to run up to my room and reassure me that everything is fine and that what happened won’t happen again. I hardly eat my breakfast since my stomach still feels sick from yesterday and hungry at the same time because I didn’t eat anything.

“There will be more guards and hunters patrolling the area for a month to keep this tree and the neighboring trees safe,” my father says. “I know you’re going through a lot now, but I need you to learn how to defend yourself.”

“Honey, she needs to rest. Look at her. She’s a mess,” my mother says to which I disagree in part.

“No, mother. I’ll…I’ll go for training. I need something to do to keep my mind off of what happened,” I say.

“Working in the gardens and farms will do the same thing.”

“I don’t think it will because it’s where everything happened. I need to be away from it for a bit.”

My mother sighs and reluctantly allows me to go for training. I then go with my father further up the tree where people train to master fighting with weapons, magic, and influence over animals and nature. For the first day, I train with daggers, bows, and swords, none of which I’m terrible at given my minor training with them already but I improve a bit through today’s work. On the second day, I try wind magic for the first time. My trainer shows me how the wind can cut through almost anything if harnessed correctly and tells me to use it with the mindset of cutting something with a dagger.

With my trainer’s advice, I attempt to use wind magic but only end up using it as a blunt weapon rather than a cutting one, which isn’t bad but also not what it’s always used for. Still, I’m not that good at using it, and if there were anyone around in our personal training room, they’d get hurt by my slippery handling of the wind.

My trainer says, “Don’t worry about not being able to handle the wind. As with all magic and talent, God dictates your proficiency in it and will to do it, and failure could be your hint that you’re not meant to use it.”

“You’re right,” I say as I pick my head up and smile. “Thank you.”

The third day sees me training with animals and nature to see if they’ll obey my command and act nice to me. Unlike the other training sessions, I have to leave the tree to train. Once I leave the tree, I look up and realize that I can’t even see my home from here because of how high up it is and see that there are many more buildings and people down here than I previously thought as a small town surrounds not only my home tree but the others as well. I am taken to a clearing where many hunters and trainers are working, some of which are bringing the animals I’m training with today such as a white deer, a brown bear, and a golden lion.

“Are you sure these are the right animals I should be training with? I thought I’d be starting with birds, cats, or dogs,” I say.

“Nature is more willing to listen to us wood elves, so these animals are perfect to test the talent within you. If anything goes wrong, we have their trainers here to help you out,” my trainer says.

“Okay, I guess. I’ll try.”

First, I try my hand at handling the deer. This animal is easy to handle and the animal trainers allow me to ride it around for a while before coming back to try to influence the other animals. Feeling confident, I reach my hands out to try to get the lion to act like a kitten. The lion doesn’t take too kindly to me doing this and starts growling at me.

“You have to make it do something that fits within its nature, but don’t force it,” the trainer suggests.

Going with the suggestion, I make the lion roar, run around, and attack thin air, a display that the trainers approve of. Last but not least is the bear. Not sure if this is one of the cuddly or aggressive bears, I make it stand on two legs and roar out before running to a tree and knocking it down. Despite the trainers being impressed by this display, something feels wrong. The connection between me and the bear tells me that the bear is okay with this but doesn’t really want to do it, so I make it come up to me and cuddle me, which it does like a big dog and makes me laugh.

“It seems like he’s taken a liking to you. Elves who take a liking to a certain animal who likes them back are paired with that animal. Would you like to have this bear as your partner?” my trainer asks.

“Yes, I would,” I say with a smile while the bear nudges my head.

For the rest of the day, I train with the bear whom I learn to fight with and command. I’m even able to ride the bear around just like the deer. In addition to being with the bear, I command the trees to bend to my will, the ground to open up, and the vines in bushes to whip around. By sunset, the training ends and I head back home, impressing the trainer with what I’m proficient in.

“I guessed you would be talented in using nature since you’re a gardener, but I would never think that you’d be able to connect with a bear,” my trainer says.

“Me neither. I can’t wait to see what my parents say,” I say while petting my new friend, bear.

Sure enough, my parents are shocked and happily surprised to hear what I say and to see my new friend. While we celebrate and watch the daily fireworks, a messenger arrives with an invitation to Oshry and Ziv’s funeral. This funeral is a combined funeral that is paid for by all the owners of the businesses in this tree as a way of giving the deceased a proper funeral because of the tragic circumstances of their death. I’m surprised to hear this news and thank my parents for contributing to it and I agree to go. While at the funeral, I try not to cry over my friends’ coffins and say my goodbyes.

“I’m sorry that I never really helped you out with work or took the time to be with you while you were alive,” I say. “I’m sure you’re both surprised to see me riding around on a bear and training my hunting skills. If God hasn’t told you my thoughts yet, I’ll surprise you with a new bit of news. I’ve set my heart on becoming a hunter in addition to being a gardener.”