The road in front of him was neither of good quality or bad quality, it was somewhere in the middle. It had a subtle feeling when walking on it. It was hard but not enough to become tiresome to walk on. Some dirt roads gave a muddy smell as you travelled on it, this one was dry and did not. The sound of Alexander's leather shoes hitting the floor made a rhythm of consistent sounds.
"How were roads made" Alexander pondered. Usually, a road was made when enough people travelled a specific route but what gave some roads a sense of order, was it a natural occurrence?
As Alexander travelled on the road he looked at the trees, he saw a bluebird sitting on a branch staring at him. Alexander looked at the bird for a fair share of time before looking away, it was the same bird from before.
Life would often get boring when you lived so isolated from other people. There were after all only his parents he could interact with most of the time, small details like a reappearing bird were what gave life a sense of spice.
Eventually, he saw a figure in the distance approaching him, he could not accurately make out the details of the character but he saw stead and a man. As they got closer to each other, he could see that the stead was a donkey and the man was quite old.
"Hey" the man called out.
"Hello" Alexander stared back at him with an eye similar to a deer.
The man took out his hand signalling Alexander to shake it, and Alexander did.
"Quite a beautiful day today, don't you think?"
"Yeah"
"Can't see a cloud in my sight"
"Yup"
"Don't speak a lot do you?"
"No, not a lot."
"Well, where are you heading, I see that you are holding a spear. Wait let me guess, you are heading to the admittance aren't you?"
"Yeah"
"ooh, that's quite interesting! I'm gonna guess that you are wanting to become a warrior"
"No, a mage"
"How come the spear?"
"Hunting"
"Right, of course. Stupid question on my part"
"Don't say so how were you supposed to know that?"
The man simply stared at Alexander, Alexander stared back. Alexander had caught him off guard. Who the hell would say such a stupid thing as excusing manners? The merchant excused himself and kept on walking, the conversation was not very pleasant and he had better things to do.
Alexander kept on walking. The warm weather coupled with the constant walking had made Alexander sweat like a poorly made roof on a rainy day. He smelled like shit, so much so that he could smell himself and Alexander thought shit was a really good word to describe the smell. On top of that, the sweat had made the clothes around him sticky which would make his clothes cling to his skin in a bothersome fashion.
Nevertheless, he kept on walking and eventually, night came. He drunk half of his remaining water and ate all of his fish. It tasted like bad fish, but the texture said otherwise in Alexander's mouth. The water, on the other hand, not drinking more than he did was an incredibly difficult task. It felt as if his hand refused his mind telling him to put it down.
The next day when he woke up he was greeted by similar eyes, the bluebird was back and stared at him. To Alexander, it felt like the small bird was looking down on Alexander. "Who are you looking down at?" He asked the bird. The bird simply kept on staring at him without a change in its eyes.
He kept on walking and soon found that his road merged with another road. He followed the same direction he had been going before, but prior to doing this, he looked back at the road merging with the original one. There was a lone boy only 50 meters away, Alexander paid him little attention and kept on travelling on his road.
However soon he heard a bunch of steps coming from behind him followed by a loud panting. Alexander turned to look behind him and saw the boy standing bent over with his hands on his knees.
"Hey you, where are you headed"
"Berytus"
"Me too, wanna walk together" He could barely mutter these words as his voice returned to breathing.
"Sure"
"Well, what's your na…"
Before he finished Alexander had already started walking, he ran up to Alexander and starting walking at a similar pace even though he had trouble breathing. After a short moment, he regained his posture and started talking.
"My name is Orion, what's your name?"
"Alexander"
"Ohh nice name, you live around here?"
And so on their conversation continued. In this brief period of time Alexander realised just how much his new companion liked to talk, he knew about his favourite food, his village name, the fact that Orion was left-handed and much more. The most interesting part was that Orion wanted to become a mage similar to Alexander.
After an hour of walking, Alexander got very annoyed with Orion, this person did not stop talking. It felt like Orion was not even breathing, he had been talking non-stop. It was making Alexander dizzy, the worst part was: it was not a conversation, rather an onesided monologue.
Alexander took two seconds to look at Orion. he was quite a skinny fellow; on his back was a bow and a quiver filled with arrows. On top of that, he was carrying a bag which Alexander presumed was filled with food. Alexander felt his stomach rumble and wanted to begin hunting for food.
Alexander abruptly interrupted Orion and told him he was going to hunt. Orion liked the idea and decided to tag along if he got a share of the meat. Alexander had to think twice about this, it would not be a problem if he caught larger prey but it would be a huge problem if he caught smaller prey. He wanted to eat himself full, and did not want to share but he would not have much of an adventure if he did things alone, so he decided to let Orion join him.
Alexander asked Orion if he had hunted before and Orion said yes; it was a common tradition for boys at this age to follow their father out to hunt. (I don't know what I am talking about when it comes to hunting so forgive me for the next chapter)