The Quest

  I stood outside my hut up on a hill that gave a good view of the hamlet where I grew up. The hamlet lay in a valley where the farming was good and the pastures good for the grazing sheep and cows.  Our family hut was on the edge of the hamlet just one of many that pretty much looked like each other.  There was a church in the center.  The church was nothing but a hut, in its own right, just a little larger that most other huts.



    My location also allowed me a good view of the castle.  The castle stood on a high hill not far from the hamlet and for all the trouble that seemed to have originated from the castle, it stood as clean and grand in the light of the setting sun.  The castle overlooked the hamlet as well as the great expanse of land that existed between the two. An expanse controlled by those that inhabited the castle.



    Of all those that lived in the hamlet only my family was said to have had any relation to the lord and lady that lived in the castle.  In fact, my mother was the daughter of the lord and lady that lived there, and for about five years I had lived there too with my younger brothers.



    My thoughts of the past are broken as I hear the approach of my two comrades.  One is female dressed in the clothes of a woods-person all in shades of green from her head to her feet.  She stands no bigger than I, and is built pretty much like me, except for her feminine parts.  As she enters our little camp I see a bloody knife in one hand.  The other a rabbit which would soon serve as out evening meal.



    The other person is also much like me and wears the same camouflage fatigues and black boots. that I am wearing.  As he enters our camp, I see that is is carrying a good size load of firewood with his bow and arrows slung behind his back. 



      They each set their loads down by their huts and store that gear they no longer need in their huts.



      "Anything new?" I ask them as I make my way over to the fire  and play with the embers as I slowly coax it back up into a fire to heat the water and food that we will be having  in a little while.



    "Nothing out of the ordinary, though the larger game did not seem to be anywhere in sight,"  the female reported.  Her name was Mary Jo.  About as old as I was.  Some said we could have been twins. Which may or may not be as close to the truth, as one could come if there really was anything remotely resembling truth in this part of the world.



    "She behaved herself," came the simple report of the man who went by the name of Barabbas.  Whenever he was not out and about with Mary Jo, he was reading the Bible, praying, or writing with  a sword at his side.



    That made for two writers in our little band for there was much that I had to record, and much that Mary Jo wished for me to record.