"Daunts"
"Daunts..."
"DAUNTS, WAKE UP"

The moment I heard that loud voice tinged with anger, I knew
that I had messed up. I weighed my options, either I can
apologize to Master Grodel or I can try to convince him that
I was doing some mental calculations...

Lisom had already pounded into my brain how awful my acting
was and that left me with option 1, what a drag..

I stood up and bowed deeply and took a deep breath to push
all the words out at once.

"I am sorry, master. I won't repeat it again."

Thankfully he wasn't able to see my face, otherwise he
would have tossed me and my apology out without a single
glance.

"Just remember one thing Daunts, this is your one and only
lifeline unlike almost all of the other students here.
Absorb the knowledge that I dispense, cleanse your mind and
may be, just may be, you might be able to contribute
something meaningful to your family."

Aaah, Just allow me to stand straight before you go on your
diatribe... I have heard the same thing over and over for
soo long that it had long lost all meaning to me.

Yeah, I knew what he was getting at and I had long accepted
that I won't be anything more than a street peddler, why
won't he just leave me alone, like everyone else ?

"All right, that's enough I guess. Sit down and listen
properly, who knows, you might even find something
interesting."

Yeah, right..

Giving me a look over again, Master Grodel continued his
teachings as before.

"Anyhow, where was I? I believe I was talking about how our
calendar system came to be. You see kids, as far as we have
discovered my means of research into our history, there was
a period between the fall of Laslik empire and the
establishment of our Magnar empire that we know almost
nothing of. Laslik empire had their own calendar system and
our Magnar empire adopted the same to ease the adoption of
ancient wisdom that we recover from time to time.

The problem here is that we can't verify the veracity of the
claims made in the documents from that time. According to
them, O Stella Cadere and O Nat a star fell to the earth.
Scholar Himel in his book 'Deliberationes nostrae Laslik
imperium' theorized that the event can't be taken literally.
As all you might know, from the information that we have until
now, the Laslik empire was much more advanced than us and we
also haven't seen any signs of belief in the supernatural
from them. Based on these facts, Himel put forward the
theory that star fall might be a literary allusion to
something else entirely. The Elder council ultimately
rejected the inclusion of his book into the scriptures on
the basis of the fact that at some time in the future, his
base assumptions might be proved false.

After all, after all these years, we still don't know much
about the Laslik empire and their way of life..."

Right about then, the town bell rang 3 times.

"That's for today's lesson I guess.. Just make sure to
practice recording your knowledge in written form. Your
family will surely appreciate it."

Finally free... Master Grodel is a good man. No master needs
to work so hard to make us less unfortunate learn something,
but I dislike being forced to attend these classes. I could
have earned some money from helping out in the pastry shop
by the city square, but nooooooo, my mother insists on
stuffing something into my head. Its frustrates me so much
that she checks up with him about me everyday.

Anyway, I have to go meet Lisom right now, I don't want to
ever see her angry again.

Like Master Grodel once said,

"Even if someone offered me their family books, I would never want
to deal with a woman scorned."