In a small village called Chansa in the outskirts of the republic of Ayrilia.

The village is surrounded by a desert,

yet contradictory to expectation there are a lot of lush areas within this desert.

The people living in this village mainly rely on the lush-green cacti for food and thelush-red cacti for water.

Lush-Cacti are a sort of yellow Cactus that has a purple colored orchid blooming

from its top and is emitting a fragrance that reminds one off a cool dessert-wind.

Once they reach an age of around 5 months,

they create a cluster of globular-shaped Lush Cacti with different colors around their yellow core.

The ones colored red or green are used for nutrients due to their edible nature. The other ones are typically hackled

and prepared into a natural kind of mortar or used as dye.

Once they created one cluster of Lush-Cacti, the yellow ‘Core-Cacti’ periodically create clusters of cacti every 4 months.

<>

Currently Haja and his family are on a trip to harvest the lush-cacti for their weekly trip.

His Grandfather Hamish is sitting together with Haja on the side, while Hemilia and Razeff are doing the harvesting.

<

It seems like the cactus can’t absorb everything from the liquid and these balls of cacti are made from the stuff, it can’t use.>>,

Hamish answers with a slight amount of stuttering.

<> Haja inquires, his curiosity peaked.

<>

<>, Haja answers

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<

They are born, they grow up, and after some time they die. I hear that plants can even make children and go to the toilet>>,

he explains while laughing.

<>Haja asks.

His grandfather is visibly sweating from the little one's questioning before nervously smiling and saying

<>

<> Haja exclaims, visibly happy.

At this point in time Haja is on the brink of turning 9 years old. When compared with other children,

he always tended to be more curious than his peers. His parents had a tough time because of that.

Even though they were relatively well educated for their location, the education in the outskirts of Ayrilia was still dramatically worse

than in the central areas.

This meant that they increasingly relied on Hamish for answering the young boys questions.

But even that solution seems to be close to ending.

During the last 9 years, Hamish has been networking with the merchants traveling to and from Chansa

and looking for a suitable mentor for his grandson. At the same time he has made it a habit to,

once a month every month, write a letter of recommendation to his childhood friend Mey.

Of course, he never expected her to answer a single one of them since they hadn’t been in contact with each other in ages.

Furthermore he realized the position of her was too big for an old relationship to have any impact on her decision making.

Regardless he has continued to diligently write to her every month for the last year up until the last month.

Up until Haja reached the age of four, Hamish was living in a separate house from his family but once the little boy started learning to talk,

he grew more and more attached to him and at some point under Razeff’s suggestion

he eventually sold his separate house and moved in with the three of them.

The profit he gained from selling that was used to aid the family in their daily struggles

while a decently sized part went into preparing an allowance for Haja when he grew into an adult.

Haja became fascinated with the stories, Hamish told him everyday.

They were stories of two of Hamish’s friends, who became merchants and traveled the entire world.

They traveled in large caravans from one place to another and made their profit from buying and selling goods.

Hamish intended to spark a flame of passion for the art of trading inside the young and gullible boy and he partially succeeded.

Haja indeed became interested in the profession of a merchant but in all the stories that his grandpa told him,

the money that was the driving factor of being a merchant never had any appeal to him.

But he never expressed that part of his after seeing his Grandfather try and entice him like that.

Haja was a smart child. Contrary to his grandfathers belief, Haja noticed that Hamish was trying to make him want to become a merchant.

Even though he noticed it, he rarely spoke a word about it, perhaps out of some kind of consideration for his family?

Because of his grandfathers tales about the world outside Chansa, Haja eventually developed a single dream.

Of course, since he was still very young and immature he didn’t quite understand what he really wanted. In reality,

Haja wanted to become the freest man in the world.

And that dream is getting a lot closer than anyone could have imagined...