Part one of one of my short stories

Kraven Amberwood

(Part1)

            The man stood alone in the dark. It had just begun raining and all he had to light his work was the dim shine from the stars between the clouds. A sheep was standing next to him, tied to a post in the cold evening air. He paused to put his hood up and to listen to the rain drops splash off his head. The white sheep bleated to complain about the freezing rain which caused the man to return from his drifting thoughts. He slowly raised his axe and kept it up in the air to gather the strength in his arms. The sheep bleated again, this time perhaps out of fear. The axe swung. Chop. The wood that the man was cutting, split in half and fell to the ground.

            The man’s name was Feros Kailer. He lived in a large hut on the outskirts of town bordering the Grand Forest. He was a young, simple farmer who lived a normal life; that is, until that fateful night when he was chopping the fire wood.

            Feros picked up the pieces of lumber and threw them onto a large stack of similarly cut wood. The sheep was his companion that evening, for Feros hated being alone when nightfall was coming. But then he heard a noise. It was a sound that he could not place. It was a single note suspended in air yet it sounded like a symphony was being played. Feros looked around frantically trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. And then finally he realized the soft melody was emitting from deep within the forest. Feros, as if in a trance, walked beneath the towering trees and entered the Grand Forest.

            Sometimes the sound would get quiet and Feros would panic in fear of losing the sweet music. But then he would find the direction the sound was coming from and he would follow it again. After about an hour had passed, however, the sound began to get louder. Feros began traveling with haste, eager to find out what could possibly make such a beautiful sound. Eventually the sound became unbearably loud, so much so that Feros almost went insane, but then the sound stopped and he tripped and fell into a small clearing. Feros got up while clutching his arm, for he had scraped it when he fell. But then he looked up and saw something on the opposite side of the clearing. Now even further curious, he slowly walked over to what appeared to be a pile of leaves woven together in the form of a blanket. Feros bent over and examined the strange item. It was a small sack with only enough room to hold a loaf of bread. As he sat there in a crouched position he almost fell over, for the sack began to move. It was then that Feros realized that something living was inside the bag. Cautiously, he removed the material that covered the top of the sack and to his surprise, found a new born baby inside.

            The baby was sleeping but as Feros picked up the baby with his large, rough, farmer’s hands, it began to stir. The baby quickly blinked its eyes and stared at Feros. Feros in turn stared back. And then for some reason, the baby began to smile. Feros returned a smile, but then frowned when he saw something shine in the branches of the trees that surrounded them. He looked around some more and saw that everywhere he looked something was shining. Suddenly the small fractures of light began to move and then Feros saw what they were. Now circling around them were ravens; there were hundreds of them. And sometime between when he left his house and when he found the baby, the sky had cleared, causing the light from the bright and silvery moon to glint off of the wings of the many ravens. It was truly the most beautiful thing that Feros had seen. He looked down to see if the baby was watching, and to his shock, found that the baby was not only watching, but laughing happily. And then Feros thought of something, “Now before I take you back to my house, surely you must have a name that I can call you by?” Feros then noticed that the baby had a necklace around its neck and that there was a small piece of wood with the letter “k” attached to the necklace. “Ah, this must be your first initial, now what could the rest of it be?” Then it struck Feros, “Hm, perhaps I shall call you Kraven?” The baby looked up when Feros said the name. Feros smiled. “Kraven it is then.”

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