A few weeks had passed and many things had happened in the first week then things had slowed down for a bit. I had kept getting up early and packing up the remaining boxes which wasn’t too bad I had then gotten a new job helping make new boxes, and repairing old ones. This was not limited to only the wagon yard boxes and I had become pretty proficient when it came to making or repairing most types of canvas and wood boxes. It was incredibly dull and to be honest there wasn’t much to do working in the wagon yard. I had been steadily progressing my skills at reading and could now read sentences and short paragraphs, I would practice all that I could. I had yet to miss a single one of Mr. Hislop's classes. I also had perfect attendance at Remis's workout sessions we had made a schedule that she called push, pull, and legs. At first, I thought it was weird that legs got an entire day but I quickly learned why that was the case, Remi knew best and she promised to teach me more the longer I went to the gym with her. Over the past few weeks, I had been able to make rapid progress with my strength and was now lifting logs that were much larger than the ones I started with, and instead of only 10 pushups I could now with only medium difficulty do around 20. And the same with all of the other exercises. For legs we would do exercises called squats, calf raises and a few more that I hadn’t fully memorized, Remi had everything down to a T so I never had to worry. The food was always amazing and I had made a new friend, the boy who had sometimes served me food had said hello one day and just started showing up after that. I didn’t know what to think about him, he was polite and had done nothing wrong but he never did anything right, he had no ambition he talked about mundane things that I didn’t care about like some small feud here in the city, while I was a little interested at how he figured out these things that was the limit of my curiosity. So while we sometimes talked during breakfast and dinner I never stayed to talk to him. Although it was kind of nice to have someone around for my meals even if he barely counted.
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As I walked into the wagon yard I waved to Markus over the last few weeks we had become much closer, and while you couldn’t call it friends we were much more friendly than before and also much closer than most of the boys. At this point I knew what job I had to do, I walked over to a pile of boxes and different parts and got started repairing everything in my little pile. How they were stockpiling this many broken boxes and how no one here knew or could fix the boxes until I came along was not lost on me. After the few hours it always took me to complete the wagons I went and took one of the books stashed in the store room and sat down outside of the door. These were the same books that Markus had offered me the first day and I was finally able to slowly start deciphering them. It was slow going of course where more often than not I would be sounding the words out loud for almost a minute before I could figure out what they were, but every time that I solved which word was which there was always an intense feeling of satisfaction and the thought that I was slowly but concretely improving. Of course, some words were impossible for me to figure out, When I had trouble I would take my book and walk over waiting for Markus to have a minute where I could ask him for help with reading. He always would make time to show me the word and help explain the way that it was spelled. I appreciated that and I can’t thank him enough. While I still came early and finished my job earlier, even earlier because it seemed that they might be running out of work for me, I still wasn’t finishing early enough that I could lounge about. I had just over thirty minutes now to practice reading and then I had to run of to see Remi, hearing the clock that would be right about now. Traversing the corridors had become second nature and I didn’t have to stop at any forks in the hall. I had the routes completely memorized. When I got there I greeted Remi with a smile. She was one of my only friends here. I know that sounds a little sad, But think about it, the only other person that I could talk to was Luke and while he was okay, I had started getting tired of his constant whining about how easy my job must be or about how hard his was. Remi on the other hand was interesting to talk to, one day we had struck up a conversation about how she needed a certain type of herb for helping with soreness but, it was taking too long to get here. After that, we were able to have very interesting conversations all the time and we ended up becoming very good friends. I would sometimes talk about my day, and my work, but often I would ask about her work and all of the herbs hanging around her office. When I get there she looks excited, Uugh that must mean that it’s leg day. When I first started working out I was unsure why we didn’t just exercise legs on a push day, but I soon learned that it was because training legs was the hardest part of all the exercises that I did. It’s not that I disliked it, no it was the opposite I could tell a difference with how High I could jump, and how easy it was to run faster among other things, and I loved the benefits. It just sucked when I had to do the actual exercise part. With a sigh, I walked in.
“Hey don’t look so dejected it’s only legs. Cmon.”
“I don’t know how you can look forward to it so much I mean we could just as easily do a push day. Yeah, why don’t we do that?” Even though I was suggesting changing workouts I didn’t mean it, I was mostly just making banter.
“Yeah and then we can switch out the push day later this week with another leg day. We could do two in a row!”
“No, I was just joking,”
“No I really think that you're on to something, legs can wait till when we can do it consecutively, better yet let's also switch out pull day to legs to so then we can do three in a row.”
Shit that would be terrible, something like that might make me stop coming to work out “You know I was thinking about legs all week, I’ve been looking forward to it all day, it would be a real shame if we missed it today.”
“Alright if you really want to we can do legs,” she said with an evil smirk
“Yeah I would love to.” while you couldn’t tell just by looking at me I was feeling a growing weight in my stomach, I knew that because of my little fit about legs Remi was going to make me really regret it later, at training and tomorrow at work, when I would have to be on my sore legs all day.
With a snort, Remi started walking out the door in the direction of the gym. Once we got there I took off my thicker wool tunic, as the weeks passed the temperature had gone down dramatically with winter approaching, this year it seemed especially bad and I had been forced to use my thick winter tunic much soon than anticipated although it being cold came with the small benefit of me not sweating at all when we would work out, allowing me to reuse my robes more often before needing to wash them.
Going out we did our leg exercises, one thing that I liked was the squats, I was able to use the bigger logs when doing it which made me feel much stronger. I also liked calf raises for the same reason. I try to not grit my teeth as I clench my fists and squeeze my eyes shut trying with everything I have to stand up straight. Expelling one huge breath I stand up, as I do I let the log slide off my back. That was the last set I was, done. I took a breath, and then another, I stood there in silence for a little while gathering my breath.
“Nice job, good effort although I still think we can find your limit.” We had spent a lot of time talking about how much effort people put into things, I had learned that people usually only put about 70% effort into things, and subconsciously stopped there, we were trying to get that number somewhere closer to 90% then I could start growing much faster. And It had worked, after a week or two I had gotten a better handle on where my limits were and I was always trying to push them, sometimes I would be surprised, when I thought that I didn’t have any left in me to give I would still be able to eke out another rep or two. This had helped give me a grasp on things. Although we both still thought that I had more to give.
Finally, I started moving and immediately almost fell over, my legs were like jelly, shaking and barely keeping me standing, I hobbled over to the fountain. With a sigh, I bent down and drank some water. Then I walked slowly back to where Remi was waiting she was sitting on a bench having finished before me, she was also hobbling and, very slowly stood up, she reached for my shoulder and we helped each other get standing right, and then came the very slow walk back to her office. When we got there she stopped me. Hey Dante, I have something for you, with all of the talking we had, you seemed to be pretty interested in the herbs that I use, you can have this, I used it before you to learn part of what I know about plants, and I thought you might like it.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
I reverently reached out to take the book. We had never had any books at my old home, they were much too expensive, the thought that I would have my own one was amazing!
“Thank you so much, Remi! I really love it!”
“Mhm just make sure to take good care of it.”
“Of course.”
“Now go get to dinner You’ll miss it if you dont”
“Thank you” With one last thanks I leave and walk down to have dinner. Today is a stew, you can never go wrong with some stew.
“Hey Dante, extra like always?”
“Yes please Luke, how are you doing?”
“I’m alright”
Taking my bowl of stew carefully it was full to the top I grabbed my two slices of bread and walked over and got my drink. Then sat down, I slowly started eating enjoying the thick meaty taste of stew and the warm buttery taste of bread that never got old. I carefully set the book next to me on the bench and made sure that it wouldn’t fall.
After the line of students had all gone through and gotten their food Luke came over with a big grin and a tray of food as well.
“Hey how are you doing, you look exhausted.”
“Yeah, I’m a little tired. How about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re sure”
I leaned into my bowl more and focused on eating. We had a very small amount of conversation until I had finished and left. Walking down the halls, I arrived at my reading and writing class. I was excited I had all the more reason to want to learn to read now that I had a new book that I wanted to learn. Looking around no one else was near as enthusiastic as me. After a few weeks where there was not a lot of progress in class they had all grown bored and very few people were still in class. I would say from about the thirty that were here at the start of the year only about fifteen had kept going up to this point. And none of them were anywhere close to where I was reading-wise. They only practice when they’re in class while I love practicing and the thought of being able to read well keeps me excited about class and willing to practice outside of class. Mr. Hislop walks in and the class starts, once he gets the class going he comes over to talk to me,
“at this point Dante, you really just need to practice, I think that I’ll have you do something a little different, for the first half of class I’ll give you something to read, and then once the class is halfway over you will spend the rest of the time writing about what you read. This way you can practice both. For now, I’ll give you this book.” He passes me a thin book with a short title on the front. Putting my finger below it I slowly start deciphering it while moving my finger to match my pace.
“The History of the Confident Church, Bridged Edition.”
“Sir, what does Bridged Edition mean?”
“Oh, it means that it has been shortened, Hopefully, that will make it understandable. Later when you have a better grasp on reading then you can read the whole unabridged version”
With a nod, I look back down at the book in my hands and flip open the first page.
I opened the book and Immediately had to ask him a question, to my embarrassment.
Raising my hand, “Sir what is this word?”
Looking up he asks me “How do you spell it?”
“T-h-o-u-s-a-n-d “
“That would be a thousand like the number”
I wasn’t sure what that number was but that was alright I assumed that since I had never heard of it before that it was one of those really large numbers. With that, I began reading
Thousands of years ago there was chaos, the world was beset by magic, but not the magic that you know of now. No this was chaotic magic that would rip and tear, clawing open portals into other worlds. Worlds to hell with terrible demons and to worlds with weird evil monsters and intelligent creatures. They would appear out of nowhere and then terrorize everything around them. Then out of one of the portals came Confident, he came from heaven. He was our savior. He came through and helped push back the monsters, humans were on the back leg always having to run away, with very few warriors that could stand their ground against a portal, but with the appearance of Confident we were able to rally he made an army to fight against the evil hordes. However, with the appearance of light there is also darkness and when Confident came out of a portal so did another. From the pits of Tartarus came the witch, Coraline while Confident was rallying so was Coraline, and in the end after years of skirmishes, things finally came to a head. In one holy final battle Confident was able to slay Coraline but in return was heavily wounded and had to return to heaven to heal. However after the battle things changed, with the release of so much magic it stabilized the world so that no more portals would open up. Now the magic that is all around you is from Confident and –
Dong Dong Dong dong… the ten bell. Oops, I had forgotten to take the time to write. Looking up I saw everyone leaving and then I made eye contact with Mr. Hislop.
“It’s okay, I saw you were enjoying the story, and let you keep reading you can spend all of the next class writing instead.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Returning my book to his desk I left and went to go shower and get some rest. While I wanted to read the book Remi had gifted me it was already ten I needed to go do the laundry and shower. I had been waiting to wash my tunics and now that it was a few days later my clothes had finally gotten to the point where it no longer was an option to wait to wash them. Going back to my room I grabbed all of my different tunics and went to where the showers were. Instead of going in I took a door on the left and went into a room with different basins and different washcloths and things to help brush and scrape clothing and help keep it clean. Reaching into my pocket I took out my block of soap, still big but much noticeably smaller. I had no idea how the soap lasted this long but I was still left with a sizable chunk after so long. Going over to a corner where there was a small stove I lifted one of the metal basins and put it on the stovetop while taking the fire starter that was in the stove and using it to start the fire, letting the water heat up I started frothing up the soap that was in the basin. Once the water was hot and full of bubbles I closed the stove and let the fire die while also taking the basin off and setting it on the floor I grab a washboard and start running my clothes against it. When I had first gotten here I had no clue how much you needed to scrub your clothes for them to be clean so there was some embarrassment as the clothes that I wore around smelled terrible, but once I got the hang of it, washing wasn’t too bad. You just had to remember to leave yourself clothes to wear while the rest of them were drying. Which I had done, I had left one of my three pairs of clothes unworn and would cycle between two tunics until washday when I would wear my third clean pair. Washing all of my clothes took about 30 minutes where I had to repeatedly rewarm up the water and also empty it out and get clean water. Once I was done I put on my clean clothes and walked over to the shower where I then took off all my clothes and put them in the locker.
I went through the door on the left and completed my business and then I went to shower. I enjoyed the showers, I always wanted to sit and relax in the bath but it was too late and I needed to go to bed so I skipped it and just quickly took a shower. As I walked out I looked at a mirror on the wall. I hadn’t noticed until now but I was looking a little bigger. I might have been Making it up but I was looking a lot more muscular. Looking around no one was here in the showers with me. Taking a step back to fit entirely into the mirror then I moved my arms up and flexed. I was sure that I was bigger A pleased smile painted my face. My arms and legs were looking much thicker than usual. Then I heard the door open and jumped out of my skin.
“What are you doing?” It was Luke
“NOTHING” My face is burning.
I can see him starting to laugh“ Were you checking yourself out?”
“No, I was just trying to leave.”
I quickly push past him and put on my clothes leaving in a hurry. When I get to bed I try hard not to think about it. Twisting and turning both in embarrassment and delight. Thinking back I was much more muscular than I was when I got here. But I don’t know if that information was worth the price. Honestly, I was too tired to think about it for long. Drifting off to sleep wasn’t an issue I was exhausted from all of the work that I had done today I drifted off thinking about the future and how much things would improve by the end of this year.