"Ellipse!" she called again as she followed Ellipse into her bedroom.
"what?" Her sister asked as she emptied her bag off its contents and packed different clothes. Clothes she was scorned for making and those she impressed a lot of people by making. Especially the women.
"what did you mean you need to go home?" she asked. Ellie smiled at her and and packed what she called boots. The heavy, yet warm leather shoes she invented earlier and were taken by military and mass produced for battle and winter. "isn't this your home?"
"it is, but I need to go were I was born originally." she smiled and took out her hide jacket and folded it back into the bag. "don't worry, I'll be back."
"Why do you need to leave?" Illyra asked sitting on the edge of Ellipse's bed. "Because I need to find my daughter."
"You have a daughter?"
"Yeah." She took a deep breath and looked down. She paused her packing for a second then continued. "I had one. A baby girl. She was beautiful, tiny and... she had her father's eyes and his dimples but... she'll be twenty a full moon from now on. I hope she's eats her meals and she's healthy." She smiled sadly.
"She's around twenty years old right now."
"Are you sure she's twenty?"
"Yeah." she closed her bag and took off her clothes and started trading them for leather clothes. Or rather armor. A leather trouser, a long sleeved shirt and then breast plates over the shirt then a hide coat over everything. Her arm braces, she flung them onto her bag.
"The shooting star that passed yesterday, I was killed when it was just passing little gaga."
Illyra frowned not knowing what Ellie was talking about.
"That star, it passes every sixty years, i died before it came and death spat me out." She said as she added on a brave smile. "The sky haven't changed. So it hasn't been that long yet. Just a few seasons."
She kept on talking about the stars, her old home and her daughter but never about her father. As she spoke, Illyra could tell that she really loved her daughter. The very same look her mother had whenever she spoke about them, she had it in her face.
Memories of her father refusing to acknowledge Ellipse as his daughter and the fights her parent's had crossed her mind and Ellipse's tear wrecking words to her mother crossed her mind.
She hugged her and asked her if she could just stay one more day.
She refused saying she wants to meet her daughter and protect everyone here from her sins of the previous life. She cant have a god raging here because of her.
"Then..."
"Elder sis, don't worry about me. I'll be fine." She smiled and kissed her cheek.
"Thank you for everything." she said and walked to the door.
"Ellie."
"don't worry… oh wait." she went to a corner and removed a wooden board to reveal a chasm in the floor filled with scrolls.
"what's that?"
"I don't know if this would help but, give this to Livia." She gave her a huge fabric scroll. "Tell her to made these clothes with the very material I made here and not make any change to the materials. She can change the the size only."
"What is this?"
"this?" she peeked at the pale blue scroll. "Its blueprints for crystal armor. If he follows everything precisely and do everything as i said, even without being lanced with magic, it will stop magical attacks."
"Give this to dad and tell him it would really make me happy if he wore it before a fight." She gave Illyra a long sleeved vest that seemed to be made out of a white scales sandwiched between see through cloths. All the scales had a curving that resembled the curving on the wooden sticks and on the various patterns on her designs.
The curving looked a lot like letters from an alien language and all of them were always within a circle with various stars and shapes that had something that looked like a small stone at the center.
The door opened and Darren walked in followed by an old man with thick messy hair that clearly was meant to be a short dreadlocks but now wasn't. His wrinkles were kin to that of a a scrotum, except they were in the face and neck. His eyes were as white as a pearl and didn't have any pupils in them.
Looking at him one would think he was blind, but he wasn't dragged by anyone. Rather he was the one who has dragged Darren behind him. The only reason that Darren walked into the room first was that the old man had needed to catch his breath before walking into the house.
"Ellipse!" He shouted as he saw her disappear into the hall.
Mortified, Ellipse jumped and froze, slowly turning around like a car in display. She saw his heavy cow hide thrown on his back and swallowed hard.
"Tobi… as?" she forced a smile that looked as creepy as creepy could be.
"why are you still here?" Tobias the seer asked holding his staff with an amethyst at the tip, like a club.
"I was just about to leave. I promise." "Good, BEAT IT!" The old seer shouted at her. She bolted off without even saying goodbye or even turning back.It took her almost an hour to reach the outer gate of Irandum.
Like all states stemming from the states of Alkebulan, the village was a round fortress without rims that separated the noble residents from the commoners. But rather, Irandum's was a village that had the chieftain house at the center surrounded by a twelve rings where a community of a single family of seven generations dwelt.
At the center of each circles stood courts were the family heads watched over their respective families. The residential buildings were all made from baked mud bricks with cow dung as mortar and grass as roofing. They houses were all circular except for the community buildings.
Between the outer wall and the residential circles, a clearing of almost two football fields stood were families could extend with new generations and farm vegetables for daily consumption.
Outside the walls stood countable farms were grains were grown and beyond the farms, a few kilometers away stood the cattle post were all manner of livestock was reared and kept away from the fields except for winter and after harvest were they would be used to clear the fields and their manure used to fertilize the lands before the farming season began.
In this village, there were no slums as poverty was almost non existent. For struggling families would either borrow animals from their wealthier neighbors to farms their lands or milk them. As long as the animals were taken care of they could use them without any quarrels.
If the animals multiplied one out of every ten each year would be theirs. If they borrowed two, after five years, they would be certain that after five years, at least one cow would belong to them whether the animals gave birth or not. But milk for all those days was theirs to process and trade. Or in days were their crops failed, they could help harvest the crops for at least a fifty kilogram bag of whatever they harvest to be theirs from wherever field they help harvest.
That is if the owners were stingy. While a cup from that harvest went to the storerooms for both future use and another as tax they could borrow.
Even to build a house for them needed only materials they could procure for free and two full pots of food to offer to the builders when they build. Nothing more. As tightly knit as they were, it was almost a shock for why their princess was running out of the village. Being unaccompanied wasn't the problem. The problem was her leaving the village that the watchers wondered what was wrong.
The chief owned the entire land but no one expected him to go out of the city except in days of war where he would be the first to kill and the last to withdraw.
Farming and all that was their duty. They fed him and his family through tax and the mines were his and he had the monopoly of every metal in the village that for any implement bought, he took a fifth of the items bartered to enrich them, but could be traded with food.
No one complained as that very same food would be theirs if famine struck and the cups paid as tax when farming season came would be the very same seeds they would plant and return two cups for next year.This fact prompted her to apologize and waste time telling everyone everything was okay.
By the time she was out of the village, she had wasted an hour were everyone would have taken almost twenty minutes to leave the village. Once out of the village, she borrowed a horse from the traders leaving for the cattle-post and went towards the mountains.
Before ascending the mountain as the sun approached the western horizon, she let the horse free and it ran back to the village.