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-VB-

Arnold liked working here.

There was a sense of improvement and creation that was lacking in Travaos and its monotonous daily grind.

Here, Hans built himself a new home, and Arnold got to help out. He wasn\'t sure, however, why Hans bothered to make timber walls around a massive area. In fact, it was so massive that there was only one real way through the valet now: through the walled-off gatehouses that now led through this keep.

Hans was an unnaturally strong man. He lifted and dragged an entire timber log by himself, dug holes by himself, and brought the timber log to its place so that it could slide in.

He was also smart and educated. He knew things that boggled Arnold\'s mind.

Though Hans claimed that he was not a noble, he spoke well and had manners befitting a noble or knight. He spoke of alchemy and astrology. The beginning of all creations, the way God Almighty shaped this very world, and the wonderful creatures he put on it all for His children\'s sake.

It made him like Hans. He shared freely and laughed without contempt. He didn\'t belittle him or his sister for not knowing what he knew.

This, however, made him feel guilty about what he and Albia were supposed to do.

Father had asked Alvia to … seduce Hans.

Arnold got into a fight with his father over that, but now that he was here and saw a lone man build a wooden keep - and wall it off - by himself with no help from the only other man in the gorge, he knew why his father had asked so.

Still, what had he seen on the battlefield to get him to make such a decision so decisively?

"Arnold, can you check if there are fishes in the trap?" Alvia called out from the other side of Hans\'s tower.

"I will!" he called out to Hans.

It was also shocking to Arnold that Hans insisted on cooking, and in the week he and his sister lodged here, Hans had been not just gracious but also generous.

Every dinner, he served fish or meat and knew how to cook.

His mouth watered at the thought of fish "pan-fried" with salted butter. Sure, he liked meat more, but Hans cooked everything well. Alvia certainly liked learning how to do the things he did.

He left the walled compound and walked towards the river.

He frowned as he came up to the river and knelt down by the fish traps.

No fish.

… this could mean meat dinner.

Grinning, he stood back up but then paused.

"Ah, man. There\'s fish in there," he muttered to himself as he walked over to other traps and found the fish.

He reached in and grabbed the slippery beasts before walking back into the keep. He walked around the edge of the compound and then made it to the front of the tower.

To his surprise, he found Hans training.

He swung his massive sword (Arnold might have made a joke about overcompensation, but Hans wasn\'t small down there as far as their river bath had shown him) at a steady and fast pace.

The wind blew gently but firmly with each of his swings.

Arnold walked around the training man and stood next to Alvia, who watched Hans with eyes no brother liked to see in their little sister.

"How long has he been doing this?" he asked her.

"For the past hour."

Arnold\'s eyebrows shot up. "An hour of swinging that massive sword?"

"Yes. And that\'s after he did that \'push up\' of his."

"He did a hundred and he still has the strength to keep swinging?"

One of the things he learned so far was how to count and do "basic" arithmetic. Hans taught both him and Alvia in this.

Being able to count higher than fifty was great.

"Yes," Alvia hummed with a faint blush on her cheeks. "At this rate, I\'ll be the one seduced."

Argh, he did not want to k on the details.

"Where do you want the fish?" he asked.

"In the kitchen."

The kitchen was a newly constructed attachment to the first floor of the tower. It had the same size-sided shape as the tower.

He dropped the fish into a small tub filled with water. Hans liked to keep his fishes fresh and did something with them with his very fancy and sharp knife. Something about a quick death for better taste.

When he walked back out, Hans was still swinging.

Could he become as strong as Hans?

He looked up. Oh, the sun was setting.

"Herr Hans! It\'s time to make dinner!" Alvia called out as she moved towards the kitchen. Hans paused mid-swing before he let the sword drop gently.

The lightly sweating man walked over to a "showerhead," which was a device Hans made to drop water on top of him for cleansing and pulled the lever to let himself get soaked.

Arnold was going to wait until the fires in the kitchen started; Hans had made it so that the stored water for the "shower" would get heated when there was a fire on in the kitchen.

"Coming."

-VB-

Alvia saw a world beyond the valleys, gorges, and mountaintops of her homeland.

When Hans described a flat plain as far as the eye could see, she didn\'t believe it.

But then he drew

it.

Using charcoal and on what he called "paper," he drew for her the "Eurasian Steppes." It was a place of unending grass and a sky dotted with fluffy clouds.

Oh, she knew why she was here. She was here because her father was afraid of Hans, but now that she spent time with him, she wasn\'t sure why he was afraid of Hans.

Sure, Hans was monstrously strong. She knew of no one else who was capable of picking up a long log thicker than he was and put it on his shoulder, carrying it over to a hole, and then planting it deep inside.

Well, she didn\'t really care about that.

No, she was far more enthralled by his "toilet."

It wasn\'t a latrine, but some kind of complex device that vacated the large bowl with a comfortable wooden seat of the filth it received. With a clean flush of water from a jar above, it sucked up both water and the filth up, and according to Hans, and tossed them far away far down the stream and away from any wells.

There were other devices in Hans\'s house just like the toilet. Things that she never thought of or heard of. It made her wonder if these were normal outside her village\'s quaint valley.

"And done!"

This was another thing.

It was a new device he just made on the spot over the course of the day. It had a round wooden board on top, but if someone pressed down on the "pedal" at the bottom of the device half as tall as she was, then it would spin.

Then he fitted some kind of stone he\'d prepared yesterday.

"This will help you facet the gems I find," he grinned. "Don\'t worry about making mistakes!" he added as he pulled out another "paper" and set it down on the table next to this grinder. The paper showed her all kinds of shapes and sizes that she could learn how to "facet" the gems into.

She watched as Hans sat down and pulled out a few gemstones, though none of them were particularly big. It took him a few gemstones, but by his third try, he had a cube of malachite by using the rotating stone to grind away at the gemstone.

"Like this!"

She held the roughly cut malachite cube and fell in love with it.

"C-Can I try?"

"Yup!" Hans grinned. "It\'s not like I can sell them since no one passes by this place, and I\'m too busy, so have fun with the gemstones I leave at the table. Just know that if there are none there each morning, then it\'s either that I haven\'t gone into the mine or there was nothing for me bring back that day."

And then promptly unloaded from his pocket a small burlap pouch. He untied the string holding the mouth of the pouch closed and gently emptied the pouch sideways onto the table.

Alvia\'s eyes sparkled at the sight of red, blue, green, and more.

"Oh, by the way, if your village has scrap metal, you\'ll tell me, right?"

She nodded absentmindedly.