I’m sort of amazed at how quickly I’m picking up on this Ranger stuff but still how slow I actually get it correctly.
Weird way to start but Ranger training has picked up as of late and it’s sort of amazing how I’m getting better but never feels like I’m improving enough compared to others. Probably not all that amazing considering I’m one of the three N.Rs that actually joined the Ranger and I’m apparently the best among them but is still losing out to others just a half decade younger than me.
Ranger training has progressed to small excursions in close areas to get more hands on training. This means that current trainees such as myself are split into smaller teams for the Rangers to teach us more personally. My group of five was; Lana, Jonathan, Ahmir and Toland (myself being the fifth member) and our Range Master (weird title that just sort of stuck among the Rags (another weird name that stuck)) being Davith (not David, remember that!). Out of the group Lana is definitely the best of us, which is somewhat disheartening when she’s the youngest Rags among us. She only just turned 19 and she’s outpacing the rest of us in terms of Ranger training.
While the others seem to have taken this personally (and so did I, a bit), I managed to move past it managed to get some tips and tricks from her during our training sessions. I didn’t mean for it to turn into a weird friendship but it somehow did (which makes sense when the others of the group make it into a not-so-friendly competition and I’m just trying to get better).
Turns out the reason why she’s so much better than the rest of us is that she’s been doing stuff like this since she was 9. Her parents had gone through a divorce and had split up drastically with her mother going to nearby city while her father stayed in town. Her dad hunted often (and is currently one of the Rangers right now) and would teach her when they were together. She says she’d always been outdoors girl and so took to the hunter stuff quite well, going out on hunts with her father at least once a month on her visit with him. Her wanting to join the Rangers just felt like a natural choice to her and a way to stay close to her dad, seeing as her mom was, as far as she knew, unavailable.
She’s honestly a better conversationalist than the others in my group and it’s always helpful spending time with her during training hours since she gives little tricks to figure this stuff out easier. Considering my time as a Messenger is going to be coming to end in the coming weeks and I’m going to devote to more ranger training, I’m thankful I made at least one friend in this side of my work.
Which brings up how much little time I’ve been spending with the other N.Rs. Due to training being more physical, I’m usually left pretty tired by both my training and my runs. So it becomes harder for me to choose hanging out with Harris, Dorian and Samantha when the bed is right there and I hit sleep like rock in mud.
I don’t think it’s been too bad, but I’m definitely missing out on some stuff since the one time this week I managed to forgo the temptation of sleep and play at least a couple round of poker with the group, I was a little confused at the conversations going on around me. I got idea of it; Harris’ group of mechanic had been told that they would be trying to fix the windmills that were delivering some power to the city. When the hell was it decided that would go down and how would they get there? I know I heard some of the Range Masters talking about orders from higher up about guard patrols but this seems like a huge stretch. Samantha was talking about the small numbers of doctors that had essentially shifted into becoming chemists/herbalists to try and restock meds that were running low. I guess that makes sense but it seems like this jump was new and where were they going to get the herbs from?
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It’s surprising how much you can miss in a week.
What I didn’t miss was the opening of the town.
‘Opening’ isn’t the best word for it since it’s not like the town wasn’t already open, just that a lot of the usual spots in town had been shut down due to how crazy everything had been. The reorganization of the town was basically finished which meant that getting back to a normal was the new priority and apparently, bars and some restaurants opening up was the way to go.
From what we can gather from Dorian during the night hours, what the town is like now was how it tended to operate on very slow days.
Some quarter of the bars that town had originally had opened up and people were actually going to them to hang out. While they were selling drinks, it felt weird to pull up cash and pay for them as we hadn’t yet established if it was still going to be used. Haven’t heard anything from either the Mayor’s office or the Rangers so hopefully it’s not useless but also that we didn’t just blow all our saving on 3 drinks.
Harris, Samantha and I headed out to one of them on Thursday after the work ended early. It was nice to relax for a bit and catch up with them even if it still felt a little stilted and behind. I was tired after the day but those couple of hours felt sort of relaxing. It was nice to catch up again. I even saw Ahmir and Toland at the bar we went to, although they didn’t response to the invitation to drink with us.
Come to think of it, not a lot of people did. Hopefully this isn’t a thing with other N.Rs.
As mentioned before, some restaurants have opened up as well. It looks like a lot of them have basically consolidated into larger restaurants in an effort so better manage food and customers. It’s hard to know how long they’ll last but hopefully I’ll be able to visit a couple of them before they eventually close down. I’m not entirely sure how some of them are still selling certain dishes since there isn’t a ready source for them right now. I’m pretty sure fish is still hard to come by purely because of the distance any rivers with large enough fish population to harvest is from this town. Which makes sense as to why it’s the current cheapest on the menus. Probably trying to move product before it goes bad.
Still, after a pretty good training session Range Master Davith took us out for pizza. It was sort of amazing how great pizza tasted after not having anything but basic stew, rice and meat for nearly the past month.
Seeing the town slowly attempt to roll itself back into a functioning state was interesting to watch and sort of fulfilling. Although I can’t help but think I have to prove myself more once my Messenger jobs runs its course. I mentioned before that Lana has been helping me out with the Ranger training but if I hope to have a place here for the coming future, I better try and pull my weight as best I can. It’s a nice town and I’d hate to be force to leave it.