Today’s prompt of the week is:
A Strange New Life
My response:
Living in the village meant that I must work amongst them. It was a stark contrast from my life in the temple, where I spent most of my time in the pursuit of knowledge. I spent the mornings farming in the fields with the other villagers, who worked with me but did not say much to me. The old woman who ran in the village took me in because she had once known Evelyn. I spent my afternoons mending clothes with her. Dinners were usually held among the entire town in the temple three times a week; once a week I helped with the cooking and serving of this food, though cooking was not my greatest strength.
Despite the work that I did and the fact that I always sat at Edith’s-the old woman’s-table, I was friends only with the priests and priestesses and a couple of the other elders. There was a man named Vindictus who was very tall and said to be a half giant, and he was now growing old and had a silver braid hanging down from the back of his head. He had been a great hunter and warrior in his youth and was still fairly skilled; the servers at the temple were gossipers and said that his mother, a giant, had left him on the doorstep of his father as soon as he had been old enough to stop nursing. And there was a woman, a fully human woman but a powerful witch, named Aerith. She had lived in this village all of her life and was now very old. Most of these people had been in the village for only a couple of decades; plague came often but so did new arrivals.
I was not spoken to by most of the other villagers. I learned mostly about their village either from Aerith or Vindictus, who both had a talent for storytelling and a nature to tell many of them. Whatever else I picked up was usually gossip among the temple servers.
I hoped the people of the village would warm up to me sometime soon, quickly; but they did not. I adjusted fairly quickly to a life on society’s fringes, having always been kind of an outcast at the temple, neither priest nor trainee nor servant. I also had one day entirely to myself because of this, the one day when I did not work at all-for we worked five and a half days to keep the village running-when I read the books we had, limited though they were, and practiced my weapons. I also had time to practice before dinner at Edith’s, for she insisted on cooking the meals there.
Sometimes in the early evening I would see a man stare at me. He looked similar to Vindictus with sharp features, though he certainly did not seem giant; he wore his hair in a long ponytail which was still black. I did not know his name; I was not going to ask. I would wait for him to speak to me.
I did not take the time to contemplate the slight loneliness, this slight longing, for a true friend, perhaps a lover, which slowly grew in my heart. Such things were not to be considered; if I gave them thought they would only take form and grow bigger in my heart. I put them out of my head and worked my days away.
I did not think of the city; there was no going back. It was not my home without Evelyn.
Perhaps I would never have a true home without Evelyn.
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Please post the first 75 words of or a link to your response