(From A Child Perspective)
Dear Diary,
There are famous people, there are kings, there are farmers, there are weird people, and then there is me. I have never considered myself to be anything special, I come from a family that has learned to survive life the hard way, my father used to be a hunter, meaning he was one of the lowest ranked free members in our little society. I am writing to you because my family left me alone at home today, sounds kind of creepy, but honestly, there are so many people all around, a person might wish to be left alone. Many of my friends say their lives are very boring; they just do what their parents tell them to, get orders all the time, and are treated like slaves. In this case, where I live right now the highest person in our society is King Julius the 2nd, his weird rules most of the time make our lives easier, but we don’t always get respect. Both my parents are traders, this means every day they go out with whatever we have, usually with the things my 3 older brothers bring back, they are real good hunters. My parents taught them how to go hunting and how to farm crops. Farming takes longer, so usually that is my mum’s job, she gives all her effort into growing healthy crops which are usually cereals, and making sure they can be sold or in our case traded for something better. Hunting is a hard task, nothing is guaranteed, sometimes my bros even stay away for 5 days… that scares me a little because I always get the feeling some wild animals might have killed them, but they are 3, so they should be able to help each other. Talking about the ranks of society, there are 4 stages, from highest to the lowest, my family is medium/low ranked, we aren’t anything special, just a random family from the whole city, I like to consider my 3 big bro’s my slaves, if they don’t do what I want, I tell mum, but that’s only sometimes, on the other hand they are the ones who are sacrificing their lives for us. I must say, I probably have the best life of all, I don’t have to do anything, if I wanted I could just stay home forever, but no, that’s not me. I believe everyone here has to do something for the society, and my role, is to listen and stay out of people’s ways.
I could never say I’m rich, I do live a pretty healthy life style, but I don’t have everything I want, and I believe life is just about that. There are traders here that trade bronze I think that’s what they call it, I am not sure what it is though, nobody will tell me, I only know that adults talk about how they melt rock and get some sort of other material, and mix it with another and something happens.. arghh I don’t even know what else, being an adult must be so confusing. I love to sleep, and when I wake up everyone is already gone, I usually get up when the sun is about half way past its daily routine, the sun must be very fit, everyday appear and then disappear into nowhere, who knows how much energy it is consuming. I like my city very much, it has many buildings, of which one is huge, I guess it’s the kings. I’ve never been in there, the king does look kind, but his voice just scares me… Behind our houses there are stable, big brown “sticks “ with some green stuff which look like clouds from a distance, I’ve decided to call them trees but no one listens to me so I’m keeping the name to myself for now. Most of the time the sun always shines, however there are some days that big drops of water fall from the sky, they remind me of someone crying from the sky, we believe that when someone dies they go up into the blue sky. Whenever it rains I think of our dead dog hondije, it means puppy, he was the best dog I ever met, he protected us from any harm. He died last year when my brothers took him for a hunt, he tried to track down an animal, and my second oldest brother accidentally threw the arrow right at him. So every time it rains it makes me think he is crying but when the sun shows up, he is telling me to be strong and walk proudly. My whole family loved him and we always will, he is buried up in the field close to our city, at the exact spot where he died, I go to visit him whenever I feel something bad is going to happen, I talk to him and he talks back, even thought he is gone, he really isn’t.
Every afternoon is nearly always the same, it becomes dark, my parents come back from the trading market, my brothers return from the hunt, my dad makes a fire so we stay warm, and my mum either puts the dead animals to cook or she prepares something new. My mum is like my role model, it might be because I am a girl, or maybe because she does the most in our whole family. She is the one who makes sure my brothers don’t wake me up, she cooks for us, she wakes up in the morning to go trade goods, and she is the best person I’ve ever met. Every night she tells me stories about her and her childhood, how her and her sisters got along, how time has changed since she was small, but probably what I admire most about her, is that she never forgets who she is and continues believing. She believes I will grow up and discover something that hasn’t been discovered yet, I hope so too, even thought there are so many things already, bronze was discovered, more advanced building were built, what could I possibly find. Oh, there it goes, I’ll go talk to the king about the big fluffy green looking “clouds”, I believe they should be called trees, and who knows, maybe they will become that, wish me luck dairy! Here I go, and the adventure begins again : D
