“You know Gan… you didn’t have to walk all the way here with me.”

“Bah… what sort of friend would I be if I let you walk to the outskirts by yourself? God forbid an animal or bandit jumped out and end your journey before it barely began.” I rolled my eyes as Gan chuckled at his joke. As if there were any beasts large enough around the town to harm a human. And as far as I knew there hadn’t been a bandit attack within a three-city distance in over a decade.

“Yes, a most shameful way to go,” I replied in mock concern, although I was quite happy to have the company.

The final weeks leading up to my coming of age had sped by quickly and I hadn’t seen him since his party. A true failure on my part as I was too busy gathering everything I needed for my journey. I hoped it didn’t sour our friendship but I had to focus on my goals now.

I had no horse so the trip to my destination would take a week or two depending on the weather. I wasn’t too concerned about that. I had my hunting bow and a quiver of arrows to pad my meager supply of preserved food. Water was more of a concern but I had two water skins and knew generally where there were rivers and creeks along my route. Not to mention the few small towns.

Then there were my weapons. I had my sword strapped to the bottom of my pack so it slung across my back. I could still reach the blade if I needed to but having it slap against my leg for the entire trip as I walked didn’t sound pleasant. The dagger was tucked tightly behind the boiled leather vest and near my shoulder. Yeah, I had decided to get the armor instead of a new buckler. I still had my practice buckler hanging off the side of my pack by a leather strap. Not exactly easy to reach or fast to equip but if I needed the shield in a hurry it was probably already too late.

On that same side, I had my unstrung short bow and ten arrows. As long as I didn’t break the arrow shafts, I could tie a new tip on the arrow and re-fletch them if I needed to. It wouldn’t be an enjoyable process, but I could do it.

I was prepared for almost anything. Bedroll, thin canvas tent, food, and a change of clothes. The largest predator around these parts was a wild cat, and they wouldn’t come near a fire. And I wasn’t a novice camper. Over the years – while my father was away – I learned how to survive while camping.

Mostly just outside the city limits but I taught myself how to start a fire, where best to camp to avoid flash floods and all the little things you needed to keep aware of outside of a civilized city. Was I an expert? No. But I would survive.

The sounds of our footsteps slowed as we reached the way stone that marked the edge of the city. Everything beyond this point was wilderness until you got to the next town. I gave the town a final look as the dust, kicked up from the gravel road, blew past us.

“Well… this is as far as I go, I’m afraid,” Gan said pensively. He looked like he wanted to say something else and I swear I saw hurt or anger in his eyes but I may have been mistaken. Or maybe I was trying to convince myself I saw what I wanted to see.

I reached out my hand to offer him one last shake before I left. He scoffed, grabbing my arm, and pulling me into a one-armed hug. “Be safe out there…” again it felt like he wanted to add something else but he didn’t.

I patted him on the back. “Come on, I’ve prepared for this day for four years. There isn’t anything out there to worry about. Besides, once I earn my calling I’m sure you will hear stories of my heroic exploits. Then when I’m famous, I’ll come to visit. You just make sure to stay out of trouble while I’m away. You don’t have me to watch your back anymore.”

Gan let go and wordlessly nodded, his eyes wet with unshed tears. And just like that our moment was over, he turned and began his walk back toward the town. I had never seen my friend so conflicted like that. He was always so open and forthright, so it made me wonder what was so important he held his thoughts back now?

As he walked away, I realized I may not see him for a long time. And this goodbye made me realize I had lied to myself all these years. My feelings for him had never really gone away, I had just ignored them because of my insecurity, focusing solely on practice. I cursed myself for being an idiot but maybe it was for the best. I didn’t know if he felt the same way. How could he? He was courting Chian.

Asking him would be the easy choice but I was afraid. What if he said he didn’t feel the same way? It would crush my spirit. Or worse, if he said he did feel the same way for me…I didn’t want to give up on my dream. I kept hemming and hawing about shouting out and asking him as he continued to get farther away. In the end, I took the coward's way out and remained quiet. I didn’t have the courage to find out either way.

Now I was left to wonder what was going on in my friend's mind or what might have been if I had been able to express my feelings. Did I just lose the one person I cared about more than anything? My heart ached to find out but my drive to become something more won out and I turned away from the town and began walking.

At times of high emotional stress, we tell each other that things will work out fine, that everything will be ok. I was repeating those hollow words to myself as hot tears fell from my eyes. Maybe one day I would be strong enough to learn the truth.

***

The worst thing about this trip was the heat. My coming of age day was early in the summer but the land where we lived was baked by the sun most of the year. The large brimmed hat I wore kept most of the heat off my head and neck. Not the most efficient way to stay cool but it's what I had available.

I passed a few other travelers and we nodded respectfully at each other as we passed. From a distance, I looked like any other traveling hunter. My sword and buckler might quirk some eyebrows but it wasn’t unheard of for a hunter to have either of those. The leather vest was probably a dead giveaway that I wasn’t a simple hunter though. Not that anyone cared what I was as long as I didn’t disturb or harass them.

The first day of my trip was uneventful. I passed through the next village over, only a few hours after leaving mine. It was a smaller village than my hometown since the ground was much harder to work in the area they resided.

I mulled over this and other thoughts as I sat next to the small fire I built. The short hill near the road where I made camp gave an excellent view of the surroundings. The sun was just reaching the horizon but I had already set camp. I knew from experience that setting camp in the dark was a nightmare so it was best to rest early and often. Pushing through the night was dangerous at best and suicidal at worst.

In the distance, I could just make out the massive red and grey boulders that gave this area its name. Rusty Boulder Canyon wasn’t very inventive as far as naming went but it was apt. I had come through here once with my father and asked him about the strange rocks that seemed so out of place amongst everything else.

He told me a story of how a great flood of the Mother’s tears washed them here from days away. When this flood happened, he couldn’t say, but long before people settled this shallow valley. He said the first settlers came here to mine the rocks, thinking they were chock full of iron due to their coloring. It was true, they were full of iron, only the Mother had turned it into useless rust and the Father laughed at the greedy peoples' hubris.

No heavenly judgment came from the Mother or Father in the form of another flood to wash away the new sinners. So people remained and made a living off of scrapping the low-quality iron out of the rocks. It wasn’t good for making weapons or anything that was meant to last but it was still useful.

As for the story… I never much liked that story or any religious stories for that matter. Sure I believed in the Mother and Father like everyone else. Denying their existence was fool-hardy. You could see their handiwork in many things, those massive boulders were only a small sign of their influence. If only the ancestors hadn’t angered them with their hubris and desecration. The remnants of what the ancestors left behind were further proof of the Father's anger over what they had done to the Mother.

Even to this day the Mother still loved her children. To that end, she kept the Father’s demonic beasts contained inside the fallen cities of the ancestors. And if you were brave and virtuous enough to brave the dangers of those monuments of the past, they would choose you as one of their guardians by granting you a calling. It wasn’t that the Father and Mother were at odds with each other. It was just the Father’s duty to protect his wife, and the Mother’s to love all her children despite their faults.

I much preferred that story of the Chosen over the Origin of Sin story that my father told me. While it was still religious it was far closer to my favorite story, The First Chosen. Nobody knew who wrote any of the accounts in The First Chosen, I liked to think they were written by the First Chosen themselves.

***

The next days blurred by with much of the same scenery. I had never been this far from home, even the land was beginning to change. The sun-baked reddish tan rocks were slowly replaced by dry dirt and low scraggly trees.

There were trees back home as well but they weren’t more than bushes. These were beginning to look like actual trees with wind-whipped trunks and canopies of vibrant green leaves. But they were still sparse. The majority of the landscape was flat and featureless, filled with grass taller than a man.

It was almost unsettling as it made the landscape seem to close in around me as I walked. If it wasn’t for the sporadic farm here and there, I might have mistaken this place for Limbo it was so unending and featureless.

The thought made me shudder as I adjusted my pack and kept walking.

Two hours later I arrived in a town. I couldn’t read the faded sign hanging outside the town, but it didn’t much matter, I knew this was Golden Fields. From here my journey would turn east. But I decided to stop, get some food, and rest for the night in an actual bed.

The inn was nice enough. I sat down at an empty table and ordered food and drink. I got a small loaf of fresh bread, some type of gruel with salted meat chunks, and a large glass of beer.

The bread was delicious and helped with the bland taste of the gruel. The beer helped wash down the overly salted meat that I nearly choked on in surprise.

I thanked the innkeeper for the food and purchased a room for the night. The food and room cost me five plates, dwindling my small reserve of money but it was worth it. Three days of eating trail rations were not that enjoyable. I had been in so much of a hurry to get to my destination that I put off hunting. I endeavored to rectify that mistake on the next leg of my journey if only to change up my diet a bit.

The room I walked into was clean and well maintained. I set my pack down next to the bed and removed my armor, forgetting my dagger was tucked behind it. It thudded to the floor and I winced. Had it been a ceramic blade, it might have chipped or shattered. I mentally berated myself for being so careless and retrieved the dagger from the floor.

I was weary from travel but I still dug the box out from my bag and set to work cleaning the rust already setting into the blade of the dagger from just my sweat. After finishing, I put everything away and lay back in the bed. I was asleep within minutes, the dagger and its sheath still clutched in my hand.

***

I ran up and brushed my hand across the rough bark of the tree. A real tree, not those stunted misshapen things on the plains. I had first spotted them a few miles back but I didn’t believe my eyes at first. My memories didn’t do them justice. And the smell. I inhaled deeply, taking in the fragrant scent of damp wood. They weren’t the same kind of trees from my childhood, but they were trees and that was all that mattered. I knew that meant my journey was coming close to its end. Two days more at the most.

The weather had held out during my entire trek allowing me to make great time. Even now the Mother smiled down upon me and there was barely a cloud in sight. I took my time walking along the grove of trees. It was an experience lost on anyone who got to live it daily, but I basked in the cool shade and the sounds of birds chirping. The grove came to an end much too quickly for my liking and I returned to the road with a sigh. But my spirits lifted as there were more trees in the distance. I smiled like a little kid as I jogged forward, eager to experience more trees and maybe an actual forest.