I decided to let the boy sleep a little longer. It would be better to travel after dark now anyway. Settling into a semi more comfortable position against the bank of a long dead stream I continued to rest. I let my mind wander back to the past again, when I had lost my family and the innocence of my youth.
All I had left of my past was my name, Roric Fortigar, the son of Lorn and Ni'isha Fortigar. My brother's name had been Faron. While we had lived peacefully enough in the Hills of Ernor the world around us was not so settled. The world outside was cruel and merciless and grew more so with every day that passed.
I had been naïve to the ways of the world, until one day when it made its harsh intrusion in a way that changed my life forever.
My parent's raised my brother and I differently than the hill people around us, who had in large part adopted the Zoarinian way of life. Unlike our neighbor's kids, we were taught the old ways. We learned of the Great Creator, who had made all that we saw around us. We learned how man had fallen and how he had been redeemed and much more.
As boys we didn't really understand the concept of a fallen sinful world, and what it meant that all things would be made right some day. At the time I hadn't been convinced that there was all that much wrong with the outside world. From what I had seen in the fall of each year, when we had taken our goods to market, the greater outside world had looked rather exciting, especially when compared to our humble little home in the hills. Our parent's adherence to the old ways caused us to be looked down upon by those around us.
The central culture of the world as we knew it was the Zoarinian Empire to the south, with its many great cities by the sea. They went about their lives far differently than my parents did. Surely so many people couldn't have gotten it so wrong in life to be worthy of the scorn directed at them by my parents? Maybe the Zoarinians had a good reason for abandoning the old ways my parents still adhered to.
At the time I had begun to wonder if my parents weren't the ones that needed to change. How naïve I had been then I thought now as I looked back on that period of my life.
The Zoarinian culture was presented as a free society, where one could do as one so pleased, as long as it had the approval of the ruling elite, who rarely denied self expression to take place in whatever form it took just so long as it didn't obstruct them from making a profit from it. Excesses were encouraged and the old ways of honor and self control were discarded as useless virtues that shouldn't apply to life anymore, as they were outdated. Dissenting voices were very few to this new self styled destiny of life, as it had something for everyone to like about it. In fact the only dissenters I knew of were my parents and it had brought unwelcome attention to both them and my brother and I. I hated it most, when because of my parent's beliefs I was pressed by others of my own age to defend those same beliefs that I wasn't sure that I believed in, but out of loyalty to my parents had to defend.