If you’ve ever been on a beach at dawn, you’ll know its worth getting up for. Since it was the night of a full moon, everything was as black as squid-ink. The veil of darkness shrouded both the sea and the sky, making them indistinguishable from each other. When the first hints of sunlight appear, the clouds begin to brighten like a pink Himalayan salt lamp.
It was cloudy in the distance, which meant the sun wasn’t visible even as the clouds began to brighten and the highlight of the ocean became clear. The crests of waves were the first to brighten, followed by the rolling waves on the open waters. The sun broke out of the cloud cover like a newborn; with a pink hue that slowly melted into bright orange.
I remember a documentary about castaways pointing out how the horizon on the open ocean was further than you thought. And with the sun a bright but tiny dot in the distance, it certainly looked like the ocean stretched far, far into the distance.
Most of the Roja tribesmen were already ready to go. They’d checked the traps before the first light, and all the monsters and fish they’d caught had already been preserved in salt and stored in pouches and pots. Breakfast was salty, treated meat; the oldest meat that we had. There wouldn’t be any reliable sources of food along the way, so the tribe made sure to use their stores efficiently.
We left the cove at dawn. Some of the babies were crying, and the toddlers weren’t much better. Unlike the elves, there were a lot of children in the Roja tribe, which made sense since they were prehistoric humans. Before modern medicine came along, infant mortality rates were ludicrously high. It wouldn’t be strange for half the children of the tribe to die before reaching adulthood. And overall life expectancy wasn’t great either, which was why elder Kezler’s old age was an impressive feat.
Still, the adults did a pretty good job keeping their kids from wandering off. The kids were probably afraid of losing their parents, which must have helped, but since none of them left the cove very often, they were intensely curious and about as intensely unruly.
After the cove came a patch of mangrove forests and low alluvial plains. The major rivers that ran into the sea would flood from time to time, which meant the ground was relatively flat and not very densely forested. The rainy season hadn’t come yet, which meant we would be fine for now, but the elder said that they did sometimes get stuck at the festival site if the rains came early.
Dandelions and dragonflies. Wildflowers and honeybees. Miles upon miles of open grassland. A picturesque, fairy-tale landscape. We walked across the empty fields—a tribe of red-haired humans a couple of elves.
We came upon a wide river, flowing gently towards the sea. Since we were so close to sea-level, the river meandered in all directions like a snake, and was far too deep to walk across. Most of the Roja tribesmen knew how to swim, since they lived so close to the sea, but there were a lot of kids and babies and nobody wanted to fight against the flow of the river, anyway. Instead, the plan was to follow the banks of the river all the way to the hills from where its many tributary streams and rivers originated.
Even though it was the middle of summer, it wasn’t as hot as it had been on the Plains of Serenity. We still tried to rest under a tree around noon, but that was only really a priority when it was raining. We kept some distance from the river, just in case it overflowed, and also because it twisted and turned so much it would make our journey even longer if we stuck to it all the time.
I learned a lot from the Roja tribe on this journey. I learned about the many ways they tried to get their kids to stop crying. I learned the things they said to their spouses when one was slacking on their turn with the kids. I learned some stories; legends, myths, with a lot of religious-sounding tales about elves and magic.
Speaking of magic, we didn’t have a lot of energy to spare on practicing magic. It was only on days when we were taking shelter from the rain or replenishing our supplies, that Noel and I managed to get them to practice magic instead of lazing around.
We didn’t have any pack animals, so we carried everything ourselves. If it was hard trudging through miles upon miles of nothingness, it was even tougher doing all that while carrying sacks of clothes, packs of salted meat, and pots full of potable water. After a couple days of following their lead, I figured it was time to make things a little easier on everyone.
One evening, as we came about a thicket of suitable looking trees, I asked the elder if we could set up early for the night. He agreed and the tribesmen began setting up their camp. I asked Noel and Kelser to follow me to the thicket, where we cut down a tree with fire and water magic. I cut off the bottom of the tree and gave the rest to Noel and Kelser. I told them to turn their part of the tree into planks. They didn’t have to be even, but they should be thick enough to be able to bear some weight.
I stripped off the bark on my part of the tree and cut it up into four round, circular slices. I smoothed off the edges of each piece of wood, and checked up on Noel and Kelser. They were having some trouble shaping the wood into planks, so I helped them out a little. It didn’t seem like they would have enough wood, so I figured we could just use some branches and younger trees instead of making the whole thing out of planks. I had them come over and help me make the wheels.
The toughest part about making wheels wasn’t shaping the outside, it was making the hole in the middle. It was incredibly hard to make a large hole in the middle of a piece of wood without metal tools. You couldn’t burn a whole in the wood with fire, since fire was hard to control, and you were almost certainly going to mess up the whole thing. Fire magic, on the other hand, could work, but I wasn’t sure I could stop it from burning the whole thing. And using flint tools was out of the question, since it would take forever to chip away at the wood with them.
And so I got a small clay pot from the Roja tribe and broke the bottom. I placed it over the center of the wood and started pouring fire magic into it. I used wood to light and fuel this fire magic, which made it much hotter than the elemental or air-based fire magic I usually used. I alternated the burst of fire magic with air magic, which made the fire burn a little faster. I held down the clay pot to try to keep the fire from spreading, but I could already see the wood beginning to char. I doused the flame with water magic, dried it with fire and air, brushed aside the soot, and repeated the whole process.
Noel made a fire near the thicket. Kelser asked what I was doing, and I told him I didn’t want to lug around so much stuff on my back. How would this wood help with that? I told him that since we were following the river, the land was pretty flat, and we could roll our luggage around on what I was building.
Once the wheels were reading, I inserted some a couple of young trees inside them. I tied some monster-skin on either end of the holes, so the trees wouldn’t just fall out, and tested the young trees. Noel and Kelser helped me attach some more planks, branches, and small trees, all tied together with leather, sinew, and monster-hide. I attached a long lead made of tough monster-hide to the front of the wagon, and hauled it over to the main camp. Since there were no roads, it was tough rolling it over, so Noel and Kelser had to tie their own leads to the front and pull with me.
In the end, the wagon was pretty useful on the plains. We piled up most of our heaviest luggage on the wagon, and some of the strongest adults took turns pulling it along. There weren’t a lot of monsters in this area, but whenever we found one, I always checked if we could use it to pull the wagon. Unfortunately, we never found one that could.
The plains gave way to long range of undulating hills. I squinted my eyes as we got closer.
“Noel,” I said.
“What is it?” she said.
“I’m going to ask the elder to stop early again today,” I said.
“If you keep making us do that, we’ll be late to the festival!” she said.
“Hey, the wagon helped us walk further for longer, didn’t it? Don’t worry,” I said as we walked closer and closer to a very rocky and very important hill. I told the elder we needed to stop early again. The Roja tribe began setting up camp. I asked Noel and Kelser to follow me back to the first hill we’d seen.
“Noel,” I said as we approached the hill, “and Kelser,” I added as I bent down to pick up a rock, “welcome, my friends, to the copper age!”
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