# Fields of the Past



## Selandra Xantharus (Oct 6, 2003)

"Sit back and relax gentle listener for the tale I am about to tell is a tale of adventure and excitement.  Well, that is what I have been told; I myself do not find the tale that remarkable.  Life is merely a collection of decisions that are made for you, whether you like them or not and this is just a story of those decisions as they affected my life.  Take what you will from this story, for my guarantee of its accuracy is small.  I guarantee that many things get warped through the lenses of my eyes, so what you are about to hear is a warped tale from this lonely survivor.

‘My tale begins on a cold, windy autumn night.  The moon had risen completely in the sky, shining its light red light upon the forest, giving us just enough light to see by.  The smell in the air gave away the fact that winter was just days away and if we did not hurry, we would not reach Dorfall before the ground was contaminated with snow.  My father and I had been traveling for about fifteen days now as fast as we could, the exact purpose of this journey not quite clear to me.  However, I did not question, for as long as I have known the man (my entire life, of course), when he was this determined to accomplish something, it must be something important indeed.  For the last few nights however, I could tell something was different in him.  I don’t know what it was, but he just was not himself.  Looking back, I suppose it was obvious.  He was obsessed with his journal.  We wouldn’t go more than 15 minutes without stopping to jot something down.  He had this journal for as long as I had known.  By now it was nothing more than hundreds of sheets of worn, tattered paper bound by leather, but it contained everything that he found odd or of note over the past years.  

‘I had only been able to look at his journal once before, when our barn had caught on fire.  I was only five then, but I remember it like it was yesterday.  I was playing with Darka, my dog, when the smell of smoke gently made its way into my nose.  Darka must have smelled it to since we both leapt from the ground and started running inside the house to find Father.  When I got inside I could see to the other field where the smoke was coming from the barn and my father was busy opening the doors and trying to get the animals out.  I ran out the back of the house and I locked eyes with father, and I could tell he was scared.  I ran towards him but I never got all the way there.  Instead, he barked something at me.  At first I could not tell what, but eventually I realized he was yelling at me to get his journal.  I turned around and spotted it immediately on the workbench next to the house.  I ran to it as fast as I could and returned it to my father, who was carrying out some more chickens from the burning barn.  He waited for me and grabbed the book out of my hand and flipped it open seemingly to a random page and pointed at it.  “READ THIS!” he screamed at me as he ran back into the barn.  I hesitated for a second; not really knowing what he wanted me to do.  Father ran a few paces and looked back at me, and yelled something that I couldn’t hear.  But his eyes were pleading with me to do as I was told.  I looked at the journal and slowly started reading it as fast as I could.  Granted, back then I was just reading it syllable by syllable, but it was the fastest that I could manage.  After what seemed like an eternity, I finished reading the page.  I looked at my father who was running out of the barn again, herding 3 pigs.  He looked at me, and I looked at him, for I had no clue as to why he wanted me to read that.  As he got the last of the pigs out of the barn, he ran back and picked up two large buckets of water just outside of the door and doused the fire, saving the majority of the barn.  I have wondered to this day why Father just did not use that water to begin with, and why we asked me to read his journal.  I asked him about it afterwards, and he only responded with a rough and cryptic response: “You have begun learning today... everything will be clear with time.”  Yet, when I journeyed with him 15 years later, I still knew very little and nothing seemed clear to me at all.

‘Well, I seem to have gotten away from my tale. I suppose I should get back on the path... After that day, I never asked about the journal, and the same was true that autumn day.”


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