Chương 64: Oops!

"Pa! Pa! Something is in the field! It took a goat." The young boy rushed through the door panting.

"Pa?" He stopped nearly in the middle of the large wooden barn looking around he searched for his father who had been in the barn fixing some damaged paneling.

"Calm down Chris. Now what's this about a goat?" His father came out from behind a newly built wall meant to separate the kids from the adult goats. With an exasperated sigh he walked over to his imaginative son."You only have one job kiddo, it's the easiest job on the whole farm. And you keep getting bored and leaving the goats alone. When one roams off I'm going to have you out there looking for it." He pats the young boy on the head before turning him around and walking him back to the barn door.

"But PA this is real. Something came from the hills and picked up a goat and just walked off with it! I promise!" Clarance was getting a bit annoyed.

"You promised last time too tho." He said with heavy eye contact.

"If I go out there and it's nothing, what do you expect me to do? What if there's ever a wolf pack or poachers? If I can't trust that you're being honest then how am I supposed to give you any job on the farm?" Chris lowered his head and kicked a little at the dirt on the floor.

"I'm sorry for playing games Pa, but I'm telling you the truth right now." Then he looked up at his father with a confident expression.

"If I'm lying you can take my toys for a week." That gave Clarance pause. The boy was headstrong and imaginative, but he never volunteered for punishments. He let out a deep sigh and walked over to the workbench to put the tools in their proper places. While he worked on that he said "go in the house and grab my bow. I'll take that deal kid." The father and son walked back to the field they had lead the goat herd to earlier that morning.

The goats roamed but they almost never left the group and anyone could correct a few strays as they didn't tend to run away. They would wonder while they ate grass so honestly a turtle could probably herd them. It was normal in this town to give kids the smaller simpler tasks that saved the recourses it would take to fence in miles of grazing lands. The goats had to be moved every few days to another grazing area to keep them fed and happy.

The mountain their village was built on didn't host much in the way of predators so larger farm animals stayed relatively safe. They would lose any chickens and even some baby animals to the eagles that nested up higher if they didn't keep them under some kind of cover. The small community had less than a thousand people living scattered in various flat areas or near the base of the mountain itself.

Anywhere they could build a house and barn was probably taken at this point and the next generation would be building out away from the base of the mountain. The weather was amazing in the area having a mountain blocking any of the storms that pummeled the other side of their small range. The village people were self sufficient but faced few hardships due to the region having plenty of fertile ground and very few dangers for herd animals. Food was plentiful even if it required some daily chores.

The two came over the last hill as Chris started visibly getting nervous. From the top of this hill you could see the entire herd grazing in the valley below. He crested the hill and pointed his father in the direction of the missing animal.

"Something came slowly down that hill there. It snuck up on the goats and picked one up and took it back over the hill." He was talking quietly which wasn't his normal and Clarance recognized his son's anxiety.

"What do you mean something?" He said while looking over the herd below for anything out of the ordinary. That was when he saw the small line of smoke rolling over the other side of the hill his son had pointed at.

"Could it have been a person in some kind of cloak?" The young man thought for a second before responding. His father looked back at him and recognized the child was struggling with the idea.

"Even if it is a person you'll keep your toys kid." With that statement he saw the young man relax before he nodded and replied, "I guess it could have been. I really thought it was a wolf at first tho, but it did stand up on two legs and carry the goat away. It might be a person." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. His father slung the bow across his chest and waved for him to follow as they began walking down the hill to cross the valley.

Clarance was confident there was no animal that would make a fire. It had to be some wanderer who stole a goat.

"Son sometimes people take things that aren't theirs. It may mean they can't afford to pay for it, and it may mean they are just a bad person. We do need to hear them out before making a judgment tho. If they can't afford it we will request they pay for the goat and let it go. Hopefully we don't need to involve the village." Lessons on what's considered moral happen all the time. This is the perfect time to show his son how theft is dealt with between adults.

Raising a respectable young man was difficult work when all you had was lectures. Most of the time showing was better than telling.

The goat meat was nearly dark enough as the bird started trying to snatch it from the skewer. Blick bounced a small nut off its beak with a chuckle.

"That's still hot you have to let it cool down first." He said to the bird knowing full well it couldn't understand his words.

"Excuse me fella. I believe that's one of my goats you have there." Blick froze at the voice from a good distance behind him. And then his eyebrows scrunched as he processed the context.

"You own this animal?" He called out without turning around. His experiences with people so far sat in two clear categories. The first was a calm rational people who would ask first and fight as a last resort. The second, while less common, were those who would react with hostility first and only ask questions when they were sure they controlled the situation. If this person was the talking type then Blick would talk.

"Well yeah did you think these animals were just wild?" The voice got closer as the man approached.

"You right scared my boy here with that fur cloak. You must be a hunter? Got you a bear of some sort?" Blick turned around slowly while responding.

"Unfortunately I was born with all this fur." The sight was both sad and a little amusing as the large man tripped over his own feet trying to scramble away from blick.

"What the hell! Chris get back!" Blick was calmly sitting while the man recovered and pushed his son behind himself and yanked his bow over his shoulder. Before he got the arrow nocked Blick raised his hands in surrender.

"You wouldn't shoot me for accidentally eating your animal would you?" The man froze processing the information. Blick could see the terror and confusion on the man's expression as he stood there in front of his sone with two hands on his bow and arrow, one step from raising it.

"I'm not a danger to you and your son, if you don't raise that bow." Blick told the man while they made eye contact.

"I will defend myself though." The bird broke the tension with a loud squawk hopping over to snatch the meat from the skewer on the fire. This made the boy laugh and Blick turned around to see the bird snapping small chunks off and fluttering around in obvious pain from the hot meat.

"I told you it was too hot." Blick said and that was when the man decided there was no threat and separated his arrow from the bow. The three sat in a small circle around the fire while Blick roasted another chunk of goat meat. The boy with deep black curly hair and a wide nose stared at Blicks fur and the man who had the same features but a darker skin tone likely due to year in the sun asked a ton of questions.

The usual "what are you, where are you from, why are you here" questions that Blick already developed prepackaged answers to. After that awkward introduction was finished he asked the man one of his own.

"So if this animal is yours, what can I do as an apology? I did not know people owned animals outside of small pets and beasts of labor." This seemed to surprise the man who had managed to slip in an introduction between his astonishingly lengthy questioning.

"You really don't have any farms where you're from?" When Blick shook his head left to right Clarance scratched his head and continued explaining the lifestyle his people lived. After nearly an hour of discussion Blick made the man an offer.

"I am probably much stronger than your average villager, I could help you out until you feel I have covered the debt?" Blick wasn't interested in being a thief. His lack of knowledge about people would keep getting him into a bind until he learned what not to do. Clarance stood and dusted his pants off as he chewed on his final piece of goat.

"Sir i definitely have some work you could help with. But I'll have to walk you through the village. I don't know if you're aware but if you wonder into the village square you may be mistaken for a beast and attacked on site." The bird squawked and took flight as the trio cleaned up the fire pit and traveled back towards the two humans home.