Chapter 2 Part 3

After everyone finished their meal, they all thank her for the delicious food she had made for them. The two siblings burst back out the front door to play again, leaving Christopher to help Sister clean up the mess left behind. He wasn't too bothered by this as he loves the company of books rather than other people.

Christopher grabs each wooden plate on the table and piles them up on one another to carry them all to the kitchen where Sister Helga had started cleaning the serving plate. He steadily puts the plates down next to Sister and goes into the drawer next to the sink to grab a linen cloth and magic cleaning liquid.

(Narrator) No one knows what in the cleaning liquid it's a secret recipe and no, it not LITTERALLY a cleaning liquid made by magic although that would be awesome.

Christopher walks back into the dining room and sprays the fluid on the dirty table. The instructions say to wait a few minutes for it to foam up, so to pass the time Christopher goes around the table to set the chairs back in their spots. Christopher takes a moment to think.

"Where did father go?" Christopher whispered, disturbed by this realisation.

"Uh... Sister Helga?" He asked

'Yeah?' Helga responded, still cleaning up in the kitchen.

"Father has... disappeared" Christopher cried out.

'Father Newman... you're a sneaky rat! you will not use your cloaking spell to scare Christopher!' Helga yelled in aggressive disposition.

At that moment Father reappeared in front of Christopher. It looked like he sighed, but we can't really be sure as his tongue was still indeed missing.

After that mild scare Christopher goes and wipes the lavender smelling cleaning spray off the table as fast as he could, he wanted to get back to the church book section to read. After the brief wipe down Christopher puts the now dirty rag in the washing basket and legs it towards the book room.

He takes a sharp right down towards and past his bedroom to enter the book room. He flings open the door and grabs a book called 'A brief history of Stocaea'. As soon as he sits down to read, he hears.

"Christopher! Come here please"

The voice was Sister Helga. He lets out an annoyed grunt as he gets up to answer at her call. As soon as he turns the corner back at the dining room. Sister Helga scolds Christopher for a poor job done cleaning.

"You didn't clean the table properly; you can still see the foam from the fluid. You will not be allowed to read your books today young man. first you mess up setting the table, now you messed up cleaning it."

'But Sister please' Christopher whined, finally showing his age.

"I will have no buts, y- (slight chuckle) you will train with Father for that time instead." Sister said also hoping it's going to hurt the old man too.

'I'm sorry what?' Said father Newman from the next room, worrying he misheard her.

"Stay here for a moment while I go chat with father" Sister instructed Christopher. He complies.

(Narrator) we are now listening in on the conversation between Helga and Father.

'You know we cannot start this early, it's not good for my back.' said Father.

"I know that, but you know how extraordinary that boy is. He's already reading the history books we have in the back."

Father's eyes narrowed. 'How many has he gone through?'

"All of them, he was also starting to re-read some of them."

Exasperated, Father Newman replied with 'so he's going to want to go to the magic library soon then?'

"I would think so. I've never seen a child with so much intelligence and curiosity at that age, I wonder what his magic will be like"

'No idea, maybe it's the affinity to read fast ha ha! I'm so funny'

As quick as you could say "what" Helga puts him down "No you're not"

'Fine, let's get this over with'

"Thank you, Father."

Father accidently bites his tongue as he gets up from the chair.

'OW!'

Grabbing his pained mouth his eyes widen.

"Oh, you only just realised?" Sister Helga giggled.

'How long has it been?!' Father said, still holding his hand over his mouth

Still giggling sister replied "about 15 minutes"

'Why are you still laughing' Father said spitefully.

"Because you finally got what you deserved, embarrassing Christopher like that was devilish, I went easy on you today." Sister explained, still laughing.

'Fine I guess' father sighed.

Sister Helga & Father go back into the dining room where Christopher is still waiting.

"Ok then Christopher, let's go train extra hard today, shall we?" Father expressed with extreme enthusiasm.

'Ok Father' Christopher said still upset that he can't read his books.

The two of them head out to the front of the church and start stretching before starting a jog around the village. After 15 minutes of stretching, they start their workout.

They begin their run beyond the wall that the church is behind and head off. The two lads run 350 meters past the potato fields and hit the start of the residential area and pass the first set of houses.

They take the first left in on the main road in the open central plaza. On the left of the plaza, we have all the homes for the villages people. The village isn't so small that everything is just dirt roads, it's just enough for level slate paths to have been set down in the main portion of the village. On the right side of the plaza, we have the shopping district.

Like I said the lads turn left and go behind one of the 4 market areas inside the plaza and then behind the other three market areas in each corner of the plaza. We also have the town hall in the centre middle of the east of the plaza and a water well directly in the centre. I guess you could say that the village was built around it but that's preposterous right?

On the opposite road that the church is located on you will find a magic library, every village has one and they contain every book except forbidden magic that's a big no go.

Any whom, they spin around the plaza 5 or 6 times and then head back towards the church to take a break. Sister Helga comes out with two glasses of clear liquid for the boys and being their tired selves they down the cold liquid. Thank god it was just ordinary water because magic made water is salty, c'mon the magic is coming from people's body it's going to taste gross.'

After a 20-minute break, they stretch, and father makes two heavy stones from a grey rune circle and 10 runes engraved into it and drops one of them into Christopher's hands. The stones weigh 5kg each. What?!, did you think it was going to be heavier? C'mon the kid may be remarkable but he's not buff.

They do 10 reps of lifts from the floor to above their head and do this 3 times. The two stones disappear after the reps were done, hinting to the fact that father was constantly using his magic to keep those stones in existence while also doing the same exercise. Now that's dedication especially for a man of his age.

*huff* *huff* *huff*

"Please Father, can we stop for a while. I'm so tired, need water." Christopher begs, barely keeping his balance.

'Sure son, we will take a bit of time to recover' Father replies with compassion and empathy.

Sister Helga walks over to Christopher with an herbal stamina remedy potion.

"Drink this lad" Sister said as she bent down to give the bottle to Christopher.

'What is it?' Christopher asked concerned for what the contents were.

"It's a stamina remedy potion. It won't cure your fatigue like a magic potion, but it will help you recover your stamina faster." Helga explains.

Christopher takes the potion, opens the cap and a putrid medical smell assaulted his nose. *gag* Christopher almost throws up at the smell but clamps his fist and chugs the potion down.

'Why did that taste so bad?' Christopher inquires.

"it's a herbal remedy, it's not supposed to taste good sunny" sister explains.

'Well, I didn't enjoy it, and I definitely don't feel any different than before' the boy pouts.

"It will take about 10 to 30 minutes to take into your system, it's only a herbal potion so it takes time lad" sister bites.

The three of them sit together chatting and waiting for the potion to take effect in his system. They played eye spy, chatted with a farmer watering his crop and just sat in dead silence for most of it, there wasn't much to do.

After the next 25 minutes pass the twins come running from the north and enter the church. The sister then looks up and realises its lunch time, so she springs up from the seated position she was in and sprinted into the kitchen leaving a dust trail behind her. She prepares a simple lunch just some pickle and cheese sandwiches with a pitcher of lemonade. Nice, quick and simple.

The Sister calls everyone to lunch in the dining room. Christopher and Father get up from the side of the dirt road and enter the Church, each sitting at their respective chairs.

While panting sister swiftly blesses the meal

"In the name of the Mother, in the nam- *huff* name of the Father, bless our meal. Ok everyone eat. *huff*"

The Churches residents don't question the abrupt blessing and just eat the lunch they were prepared. The sandwiches look rushed as one would expect but no one had the balls to say it looked or tasted bad right now, so they all just ate the food.

Everyone at the table, after finishing their mean all say. "Thank you for the meal" and the two twins headed off once again back up the north road, who knows what they are doing up there.

The other three stay seated to let their food settle for a while. The room was stagnant until Father burped and then spewed all over the table.

"Oh my! What happened" Sister inquired

'I just couldn't keep it down, Sorry for the mess I've made Helga' Father apologised

"*sigh* That's fine, Christopher go fetch me a bucket and a mop love" Sister asked the lad

'Yes sister' complied Christopher

Christopher walks towards the bathroom and passes it by 2 meters, he stops and finds a utility closet. Grabs an empty bucket from the floor and a mop that was hanging just above it. He closes the door and walks back to the dining room when Sister asks "can you put a dissolvable fire rune in and fill the bucket half full of water" Christopher sighed and walks into and past the kitchen where he finds a drawer full of dissolvable runes each labelled and neatly sorted so they are easy to identify. He grabs one fire rune and places it on the bottom of the bucket. He then goes outside and round the back to the churches private water well and fills the bucket halfway.

As the rune gets wet, it lights up and produces enough heat to boil the water before completely dissolving. Christopher grabs the handle of the now scolding hot water and takes it back inside where he puts it down next to sister. He grabs the mop that he left in the kitchen, as well as a bottle of lavender smelling oil and passes them both to Sister.

Sister opens the bottle of lavender oil and puts a single drop of the concentrated liquid into the bucket. She puts the cap back on and proceeds to pass it back to Christopher to put away, she lifts the mop and into the bucket and stirs the now lavender smelling water. After a quick squeeze with an attachment on the bucket she uses solid wind magic containing 1 rune circle and 10 runes to produce a solid wind wall and slowly moves most of the vomit into the bucket. She then uses the mop to finish the job.

"Now that the table is clean and smelling fresh, rest up you two so you can continue your workout" Sister said with mild frustration.

Father and Christopher head back outside to sit back down on the road to rest in the sun. don't ask me why maybe they want a tan. 10 minutes of chatting go by and they finally stand up and stretch again. They move their torso side to side as well as stretching their arms and legs.

After the Zumba class Father started making metal beams using metal magic, he makes 6 beams and stands 4 of them up while attaching the remaining 2 between the standing poles to make pull up bars. Each one is appropriate to their height as to be realistic. They both do 5 sets of 5 reps each and call it a day for pullups. They then both do 5 sets of 5 sit-ups to finish todays workout. This gives Christopher a nice chunk left of the day for him to read his books. He beams with joy on his face, so he starts running into the church straight to the book room. But before he even gets a chance Father Newman shout's "Now hold on young man. Rest for a while you just finished your workout"

'But I'm only going to read my books Father' Christopher cry's out.

"It doesn't matter come here and rest for a bit" Father instructs Cristopher.

Christopher does as he is told. He walks back over to Father and they both sit back down at the wall on the road. To no one's surprise the 4-year-old passes out after he closed his eyes. Father smiles, stands and picks up the kid and takes him to bed for a nap.

A few hours later about 1 hour before sundown Christopher wakes up to Sister gently shaking his shoulder as she speaks.

"Christopher. Christopher. Get up lad dinner is ready"

Still groggy Christopher replies with. '*groan* 5 more minutes,'

"no Christopher you need to eat" sister replies with slight frustration

'ok fine' Christopher said with a bit sass.

Christopher gets up from his bed and starts walking to the dining room with sister. She had prepared lumpy mash and toad in the hole with gravy for tonight's dinner. Now they everyone is present Father blesses the meal. "I bless you in the name of the Mother. I bless you in the name of the Father. I bless you in the name of the Spirit who moves through all things. I bless you in the name of the animals and plants that provide us our food, Amen"

After the blessing was made, Chatter and laughter filled the room. The twins were laughing amongst themselves while Christopher, Helga and Father was chatting away to each other about today's events. After 20 minuets of conversing and eating they all finish their meal and the orphan's do their nightly routine and head to bed.

Sister clears and cleans the dining table while father goes to the prayer room for the second and final time of the day. *cough* Sister has developed a slight cough over the course of todays events. Weird detail I know but surly it can't get worse right?