Vaeludar soared into the air and tilted his wings to maneuver in the air with great ease. He rose high above the tower and landed on one of the platforms built around the top level. He quickly walked through a man-sized entry.
Inside the top level of the watchtower, a wide empty room with bows lay on the walls and quivers of arrows laid in rows beneath the bows. The ceiling was dome-shaped as the layout of the room was rounded, able to fit about thirty men. There was enough space for a squad of elite soldiers to fire their arrows from this towering position.
In one spot, Vaeludar saw an unlit fireplace with very dried logs ready for burning. Next to the fireplace were a few more bundles of logs ready for burning at any time. He inhaled a lot of air and spat out a blazing fireball to the fireplace.
Might as well as make this my sleeping place tonight, thought Vaeludar. I just hope sleeping here makes me feel a bit better in the morning.
The hybrid knelt with the joints of his legs bending and his wings covered the most of his human skin. His eyes paid attention to the ground, as his vision went blank his eyes stayed wide open.
A SUDDEN ATTACK
V
aeludar was awoken by an annoying fly buzzing around his eyelids. He lay against the wall while seeing to the fly flying around his eyes. Then he exhaled a gush of wind, blowing the fly toward the ceiling and then he spat a small fire spark toward the fly, burning it to ashes.
“Flies,” said Vaeludar, disgusted. “If these insects learn not to bug me, then I won’t burn them.” Vaeludar pushed himself up from the wall using his wings and hands. His hind, curved legs flung him straight up.
It was the fresh scent of the first day of autumn. Leaves turned golden yellow, crimson ruby, and bright brown. The breeze was cool, and the air was scented with freshness of the pine trees. The breeze he was feeling in the dim coldness like a cold lake. The hotness of summer of yesterday had changed within a whole night. It seemed time to turn over a new leaf of a new day.
And the day could not have started any better: he looked into the distant horizon of the eastern skies. There was a little pink mist glimmering low altitude. The sky paled a slight of the shadowy night, and it was slowly beginning to brighten by a slow rising sun.
Dawn was approaching and Vaeludar was awakened at the right time to see a new, bright dawn. After Vaeludar spent several minutes waiting, the blazing sun rose. Its pink haze doused through the dark blue sky and the horizon with its spectacular yellowness spreading across the eastern sky.
He gave a deep breathe at this sight and his lungs were filled with a lot of air.
After seeing the rising dawn, Vaeludar heard the sound of marching peasants going out to the cornfields. Sounds of cutting and picking the corn from the plants echoed in his ears. Vaeludar rose from his strange, kneeling-sleeping position and stretched out his wings wide to get his blood flowing. He stayed that way all night long: kneeling while sleeping with his eyes open. It was a strange standard of sleeping, but it managed to work for him.
Vaeludar walked toward an open window and saw the people pacing themselves throughout the entire village. Many were carrying farming tools in their bare hands and many carried sacks of flour; these people were getting ready for winter. When the first day of autumn dawns, winter was right around the corner, and no plants would grow in the middle of winter.
Heavy snowfalls would bury the plants and the trees would wilt during the midseason of autumn. Autumn was the time that everyone had to work hard to get whatever they can from wheat flower and put their food into storage before the plants began to wilt when the cold weather comes.
Vaeludar once helped out with storing food. When he was eight years old, he alone ran fast from here, there, and everywhere. He trimmed the flower seeds from the wheat plants and grinded them into flower dust, the flower was used to make bread. What could have been done in hours Vaeludar did in minutes. His ability to breathe fire was extraordinary.
This caused some great concern for the village around that time; they thought Vaeludar was trying to steal the seeds for himself, but Geraldus convinced the village the hybrid was only helping out with the villagers. Geraldus said to the village, “He was trying to help out. Judge not by his appearance but by his actions and you will see this person is someone who does have meaning in his inexperienced life” and very few people listened to him.
The villagers didn’t want their duties being taken away by a single hybrid; it was a tradition for these people to grow and crop their own crops that they were trained to harvest. They were not accustomed to having a hybrid doing their own work for them. They spend all day harvesting their own crops and their muscles grow used to pulling and scavenging for weeds.
Vaeludar felt pressure of people growing mad at him and decided to quit and let the farmers do their work without him interfering. Ever since the unhappy event, Vaeludar kept his distance from society and concealed his presence to Geraldus’s house or in the watchtower, which was rarely occupied.
Now, Vaeludar was old enough to walk on his own and find his own path and not worry about any more disasters for
