Fiction Cont.

(Continue from Fiction.  If you haven't read that, don't read this)

The teamster who was taking the boy part way to the city was only planning on a three day journey to a nearby town where he would sell his fair and return.  He was an old teamster, used to long, silent trips, but was not unlikable.  He could have a fine conversation with young children, having a few himself.  However, he knew of the strange boy, and knew that he could be left well enough on his own, so the first day of the journey passed in silence, save a smattering of instructions when it came time to bed down for the night.  The sun rose on the second day with a likewise short conversation as they headed onward.  The second day passed much like the first, though the teamster noticed the boy paying quite close attention to the scenery and the wagon.  Often alternating his view between the two.

On the third day, the teamster tried to engage the boy in conversation.  It began something like this:
"So boy, what do you think a' life outside the town?" asked the teamster.

"Hmm...?" replied the boy.

"I asked, 'what do you think a' life outside the town?'"

"Oh, it's nice enough.  Pretty much all the same so far though isn't it?" queried the child.

"Oh I suppose," countered the teamster. "Though, it's gettin warmer as we leave the shadow o' the mountain.  There's a big ol river that we'll be driving over soon, bigger n' the one at home.  An there are diffren types a' trees.  That one there," he said pointing to a stump of a tree, "is called a Birch."

"Huh," replied the boy, "I hadn't really thought about the trees yet."

"Adn't thought about the trees?  What have you been starin at this whole time then boy?" the teamster demanded a little affronted that the facts about his track had been ignored.

"Well sir, I've been staring at the country side going by," the boy replied, quite unperturbed.

"Tat's what I was just tellin you about!" now fully upset at the daftness of the boy.

"I know sir, but is it really moving by us?"

"What are you talkin about, of course it isn't movin by US.  We're in a wagon, we're goin by it," replied the now baffled and annoyed teamster.

"I get that sir, but here," the boy pulls an apple his mother packed for him to eat and places it on the bench between them. "Is this apple moving?" he asks.

"No ya daft fool, its sittin right there."

"But we're moving, in the wagon" explained the boy.

"Well yeah," replied the teamster, now just baffled. "The wagon is movin, but us an the apple, we're just sittin here."

"Moving with the wagon," prompted the boy.

"Yes," the teamster posited.

"Okay sir, but supposed the wagon, and us, and the apple, we all stopped moving, would we stay in the same place?"

"Okay, now your just bein ridiculous boy.  The wagon here is movin, with us and the apple here, and we three are just sittin.  If we stopped movin, we'd stop goin forward, so we'd stay in the same spot."

"But sir, in school they taught us that all the times, the ground we're standing on is spinning around in space like a top, and while its spinning, it's moving around the sun.  That's why we get day and night and summer and winter."

"Well yes, right, the earth is movin and spinnin, but the wagon would be sittin in the same place," explained the teamster again.

The boy sighed.  He didn't seem to be explaining himself right.  "But sir, it isn't actually sitting in the same place is it.  Cause for it to be sitting in exactly the same spot it would have to stop moving.  But it can't do that in a wagon, or sitting on the ground, cause the ground is moving."

Fully fed up with the boy, and thinking to himself that he should have charged for this trip instead of taking it on as a favor to his old friend the miller, he replied, "I think I've had enough of your fool notions boy.  We should just continue on as we had until we reach town where you can go spout your crazy ideas to some other poor man."

The boy shrugged, used to being talked to like that.  It didn't bother him that people thought him strange.  In truth, he though himself a little strange, because no one else seemed to be like him.  Though he did begin to look at the trees.  In fact, he watched them all the way into the village, where he and the teamster parted way's.  The teamster to drown his sorrows at the tavern, mumbling about sitting things and moving things, and the boy to get a good nights rest before making the rest of his trip to the city.

Fiction

In a valley, which rests at the bottom of a modest mountain, there was a village.  It wasn't a place of magic.  It didn't spawn legacies of heroes.  It was not the seat of a great crime empire.  It didn't even have vast mines or wealth.  It was wholly unremarkable in every way.  The people who lived there didn't think this, but ask anyone else and they'll tell you its not important.  That is if they've ever heard of it.

The people who lived in this village however, knew that it was a place of magic.  That heroes did live among them.  And it was a wealthy place.  Their children born every year, who grew up battling monsters, showed the adults the magic of their imaginations.  The miller who single handed saved the village from starving by sharing his grain was one of their heroes.  Or the silversmith who made the beautiful rings for handfastings at no profit to himself, just because he loved love.  Their village was filled with people who knew and cared for each other.

One day, a child was born who was unlike any other child.  His parents were just like the other villagers, and they loved their boy.  They were no better off or worse than any other.  He did not possess amazing gifts, could not conjure fire or float things with his mind.  He was different, because he was bored.  The monsters and villains the other children summoned for play did nothing to amuse him.  So he grew up mostly alone, occasionally trying to play with the other children, but to naught.  His parents figured that he was either a little simple or he would grow out of it. 

The time of apprenticeship came and the boy could not decide what he wanted to learn.  It was traditional for children to apprentice with their fathers, but some had in the past taken other paths.  At a young age, the boy confessed to his father that he though the profession of a miller, which his father was, was boring, and his father wouldn't subject his son to that.  He didn't have the temperament to stay in one place for very long, so most of the other apprenticeships were out as well.  In fact, it only left the trappers, and they all said he was to loud to be any good.

Luckily, the boys family had a feeling something like this was going to happen.  So, with much reluctance and shame, they gave the boy, still young though old enough to start out on his own, some money they had saved, a good pair of boots, and directions to the city.  They hopped the sites and sounds would keep him entertained even as he found work.  So they found him a teamster who was driving part of the way there, placed him on the wagon, and said goodbye.