The First Day and Night

Alfroth sits atop the sturdy molba, its rhythmic gait carrying him away from the village. As he looks back, the familiar sights of his home grow smaller and start to vanish, while the grand kingdom behind it seems to shrink in the distance. The stone houses, the wall now seem with no detail, and the large castle with a huge tower stands out the most because of its length and with its roof made entirely out of gold shining in the distance, the only thing that gives him a sense of direction and a waypoint for his home.

'The wind carries a bittersweet farewell as he embarks on his journey, leaving behind the only life he has ever known only to disappear in the endless nights.'

'Whoa, are you a poet now suddenly?' Mauka teases Alfroth as he finishes.

'I wish I could be one, at least that would earn us some bama,' Alfroth looks at the sky bored out of his mind.

'How do you even come up with that?' Mauka questions him.

'I don't, it's from one of the books that big brother Fraadh has in his collection.'

'Wait, he has books?'

'Yeah, and a lot of them. He has some that go over mana, science, and some that discuss the layers of realms stacked upon each other,' Alfroth tries to show some excitement.

'That's why you have no friends at all. You just hole up in the inn reading books and becoming a total bookworm,' Mauka laughs at her own joke but gets no response at all from Alfroth.

Alfroth ignores her question entirely and keeps looking all over from left to right and then left to right again, just to find something that could relieve him from his boredom. But nothing attracts his eyes except for a few wild sheep grazing in the grass field. He lays his head on his sister's back to support him as he begins to sleep, but suddenly is pushed back and is forced to awaken completely.

'Get OFF my back you moron,' Mauka shouts at him.

'Big sis, you meanie,' Alfroth turns to his right holding his chin.

'It's not my fault you get bored after just traveling for a few hours.'

'I thought we would be fighting, hunting, and exploring, but we have just been following this damn path for seven hours straight without a break,' Alfroth speaks with frustration.

'What do you think an adventure is? All of your books consist of the best parts, but none of them tell you how a real adventure is. It's mostly just traveling for hours on end.' mauka spays with frustation.

Alfroth didn't even try to disturb his sister for another two hours.

'It's getting darker. We will camp a bit off the road for the night,' Mauka says as she stops the molba and gets off it in a single jump. She grabs the reins with her hand and guides the molba off the road to a nearby tree. Mauka takes the leash and ties it to the tree, and both of them settle under the tree to wait for the night.

As the sun is about to dip below the horizon, Mauka gets up to start a fire. She tells Alfroth to find rocks and put them in a circular shape for the pit. Alfroth, nearly asleep, gets up grudgingly and starts to look around for rocks in the nearby grassland. After finding around seven or eight rocks, he returns to where Mauka is and places them where she points. Mauka then brings out something from the bag and puts it in the center of the pit. Alfroth questions the black-looking rocks, but Mauka urges him to wait for the sun to sink below the horizon, brimming with excitement to reveal something to him.

As the night envelops the landscape, Mauka and Alfroth make their way to the fire pit. Alfroth, with a glimmer of excitement in his eyes, eagerly follows his sister. Upon reaching the fire pit, Mauka tells Alfroth to sit back and maintain a distance between himself and the pit. Alfroth complies, taking a seat and turning his gaze upward to the star-filled night sky. He finds solace in the celestial display, but a snap of Mauka's fingers draws his attention back to her, sparking a sense of anticipation within him.

Mauka slowly brings both of her hands to the top of the fire pit and starts focusing on it. After a few seconds, a spark appears, startling Alfroth. After a few more seconds, multiple sparks appear in a random order. She pulls her hands back, and a fire rises into a big flame from the rocks and calms down in the pit.

'How did you do that?' Alfroth questions Mauka in surprise. Without any response, she forms her hand as if she were holding a bowl and then slowly raises them to her face. A ball of fire emerges from the pit and rises upwards into the sky following the trajectory of Mauka's hand. After raising it to the sky, she positions her hands as if she were pushing a ball and slowly brings them forward. Following the movement of her hands, the fireball moves away to an empty patch of land. With a swift snap of her fingers, the fireball explodes in the air and disappears without a trace.

'See, this is why your sister is the best sister in the world,' Mauka says with absolute confidence.

'Wait, you can practice fire magic. Why did you never tell me?' Alfroth questions her in excitement and surprise.

'Hmmm... I don't think there was any need for it at all. But it's not fire magic. These rocks burn from the inside, but with their hard shell, you can barely tell a difference between a normal rock and this one. With control magic, you can bring the flames out of the rock, making the spectacle I did.' she says, shrugging her shoulders.

'Well, we can talk about that later, but do you want to try it out for yourself?' Mauka turns to Alfroth's surprised face.

'Wait, I can?'

'Of course you can, with me as your teacher, you can control all the fire you want in the world,' Mauka laughs to herself.

'I don't know sis, i have tried this before but nothing has come out of it,' Alfroth looks at his empty hands.

'Don't worry about that, just follow what i tell you and you will be good to go'

She moves to his side. 'First, you imagine a ball in front of you, then you feel your mana slipping out forming the ball.' Alfroth follows every step without speaking a single word. 'After that, you position your hands beneath the ball where you can feel its weight due to the mana between you and the ball, and when you do feel it, you lift the ball up, got it?' Alfroth replies with a yes and positions his hand beneath the fire and slowly lifts his hands up. To Mauka's surprise, nothing comes up at all.

'What happened? Why couldn't you do it?' Mauka questions Alfroth.

'I don't know, it never happens for me,' he looks to his hands.

'Did you not feel a force or any weight on your hand?'

'No, i never feel anything whenever i try to do this'

'Did Carmilla or Fraadh never teach you this?'

'They did. Carmilla aunty tried multiple times, but I could never do it, and big brother Fraadh told me various techniques to do it, but neither I could control it nor any of the techniques ever worked.' Alfroth's face drops down.

"Children around the age of ten can learn this, alfroth not being able to use control magic at it's lowest degree might be a problem for him, if he cannot use it, then he would probably be considered a failure by everyone" mauka thought to herself.

'Well, I guess with a bit more practice, you will probably be able to do it. Don't worry about it at all. Everybody does it at some point, some later, but late is better than never.' Mauka tries to cheer up Alfroth, but this has a completely opposite effect on him, making him more depressed, clearly her choice of words weren't that great.

'Don't worry, I will bring some bread from the bread, and then you can sleep. You must be tired considering you wanted to sleep so badly before.' Before she can make things worse, she hurries to the luggage set aside by the sleeping Molba and quickly grabs some packed bread, a special treat, and hurries back to Alfroth.

'Here, she packed some tream for you,' she says as she hands him the block of sweet cream.

Alfroth's face glows up at the mere sight of tream, a dish that is solid edible sweet cream. 'Oh my god, she is the greatest aunt of all time.' He devours the tream and the small loaf of bread while Mauka eats her large loaf of bread. After their dinner, they both cover up a small space beneath the tree with cloth for them to sleep.

'You can go first, I will keep a lookout for a while, so sleep without any concern,' Mauka reassures Alfroth as she sits near the fire.

Alfroth lays down on the sheet of cloth and immediately falls asleep. He wakes up from his sleep in the middle of the night and slowly opens one of his eyes to peek and sees his sister drinking by the fire. Disappointed in his sister, he turns to the other side presuming the drink is alcohol as always and falls asleep, taking one last look at the sky filled with stars.

'Alfroth, wake up already, we need to get going,' Mauka says, tapping Alfroth's shoulder. His response is to turn around, which annoys Mauka.

'Wake up you dumb idiot!' she shouts, immediately waking him from his sleep.

'I'm up now, sister, please stop shouting,' Alfroth says with annoyance.

'Get ready, we're leaving in five minutes. Pack the remaining things,' Mauka says as she stands up and walks away from her brother.

Alfroth grudgingly gets up, washes his face using the water bottle, and packs the sheet. He places it on top of the shelf at the back of the molba and ties it with a flimsy rope. With all his work done, he walks towards his sister to affirm that he has packed everything and is ready to go.

They both get up on the molba and are about to resume their journey, a sudden shadow engulfs them, prompting both of them to look up. To their amazement, they see a magnificent white creature gracefully flying above them. It is clear to both of them that it is heading towards the finger. Its voice, smooth and enchanting, washes over them. Mesmerized by the sight and sound before them, Alfroth and Mauka sit in silence, immersing themselves in the surreal moment.

'Is that a dragon, sister?' Alfroth's presumption was based solely on the creatures magnificent wings and the longest tail he had ever seen and how the creature soared through the sky.

Ignoring Alfroth's question, Mauka speaks, 'I think i might have miscalculated the remaining days of our journey. Thanks to the molba, it should only take us around three more days to reach Garuba's finger, as opposed to the nine days I thought before.'.

'Why did you say nine days before? and answer my previous question as well' Alfroth inquires.

'Because i always travelled alone, on foot' she turns to him and then back to the creature.

'A Wayran is headed towards our destination,' Mauka reveals, her voice tinged with concern.