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I am Ellei. I'm sitting in the yard with my best friend Hast. We came up with an activity where you throw a rock and try to get it to land as close as it can to a naia stone. We've been coming up with lots of games to pass the time. The yard feels smaller and smaller every day... I wanna go outside and see what it looks like... but Armun says there's nothing special out there. But I've heard there are endless walls and anims. I've only seen dead anims they've hunted, I want to see a real one...
I wonder where Bansel and Dinna are, the grown ups say they are on a travel, but when are they coming back?
Ikus comes over. He keeps trying to play with us, but he still doesn't understand when we explain the game. He'll just have to watch.
Arbella is sitting next to us, cutting skins. She spends a lot of time making cloth covers... she's been figuring out how to make strings out of almer hairs.
"When do you think we will become grown ups?" Hast asks.
"I do not know... I hope it is soon..." I say, throwing a rock that lands pretty close. "We are more than half of their height now. So we are close, right?"
"We must be." he says, looking up at the bone weapons that are placed on a skin platform, so high that we can't reach. When we can reach them, we will probably be real grown ups, right?
"Stand back, kids." Arbella says suddenly with an urgent voice, stepping in front of us as she takes a weapon.
"What is it?" I look up at where she is looking, and see an anim sitting on top of the wall. It's a real living one, with two thin wings... that's a jamn, right? It just sits there... then it leans down... is it going to attack?
I'm holding a rock in my hand. I throw it at the anim. It gets hit in the head, which makes it stumble, but then it dives down.
"Ahhh!!"
I'm about to run, but Arbella stabs through it, and it goes still.
"I have it. Do not worry." she says. "Ellei, that was very dangerous. You should be careful to make anims more angry."
"Sorry..." I say.
"You hit it right in the face!" Hast says. "That was a good throw!"
"Yes! If it was a real weapon, I would have killed it!" I say. "Arbella, when can we learn hunting?"
"I think it is a good idea that you learn it... but I have to talk to Armun about it." she says.
"Please tell him we should!" I say. I want to learn to hunt! The sooner we learn it, the sooner we can leave the home, right?
The day after, Armun comes out to me and Hast. "We have decided that you should learn how to use a weapon..."
"Finally!!" Hast says.
"First, you must be careful." He takes down a blade. "They are very sharp. Always hold the round part and do not touch this part. You can very easily hurt yourself. Do not swing it around for fun, it is not for playing with."
He shows us how to hold it. The next days he shows us how to swing it and uses dead anims for practicing on. Over a long time we learn how different anims move and how to fight against them.
Soon, I'm 30 skulls old. But they still won't let me come hunting with them...
"It is not fair... I am good at it now..." I say.
"Gatyk says the outside is not that interesting." Hast says. "Maybe it is fine here. The anims will not hurt us here."
"What do you think happens if an anim attacks us?"
"I think they will eat us, like we eat them."
"Will it be painful? Like when I dropped a rock on my foot?"
"Maybe. But we will probably also die. When they are dead, they look like they are asleep forever." he says. "And if I sleep forever, I can not play or hunt. So I do not want that."
"Me neither. I want to grow up and do a lot of things. I want to make my own home. And it will have a very big yard where you can run really far."
"That sounds good..."
ns 15.158.61.8da2
