It was a clear and sunny day today.
Sunlight shone down upon the big Actis volcano.
At the foot of this volcano stood a village, situated in between a volcano on one side and a forest on the other.
This was Ashen village, it had a population of around 300 people and thrived here at the foot of this volcano by hunting and gathering in the forest next to it.
They used the extremely fertile volcanic soil to farm and thus were thriving as a small to medium sized village.
"Ugh, I have to help with farming again, I can't wait for tomorrow." A boy who was walking towards the crop farm was in a foul mood.
His light brown hair the color of wet sand almost reached his shoulders while his eyes had a deep gray hue to them. This appearance was not natural around this region.
"Good morning Kes, I can't believe we are finally starting at the academy tomorrow."
A boy with short gray hair the color of ash and brown eyes greeted him, this appearance was way more normal here.
"Oh it's you, good morning Nash." Kes replied
"You don't seem very enthusiastic today, Kes. I know you are looking forward to the academy too." Nash kept talking enthusiastically as he closed the distance between him and Kes.
"I am looking forward to the academy, very much so. But I did not sleep very well last night, so I'm a little too tired to spend all day working on the farm today." Kes replied listlessly.
They continued talking about the academy while they walked towards the farm.
The farm was located at the foot of the volcano a little outside of the village, the farm was located there because of the fertile volcanic soil. The village could not be built here in case of a volcanic eruption. At this location the village would not be destroyed by the magma but the farm would be, it was not a loss they would like to have but it would be a lot better than the whole village getting burned down.
The farm was not their only food source but it was their main way of making money, the insanely fertile volcanic soil yielded a lot of crops each year, these crops could be sold at the caravan that passed through the village a couple of times a year.
The crops could be traded at this caravan for other goods or could be sold for money that they could use to buy other things in future caravans.
Since Ashen village was a small village they basically had no need for money of their own, one was expected to be self-sufficient by farming at the volcano or by hunting in the forest so they rarely bought anything with outsiders money.
This was only possible because the volcanic soil made the ground so fertile, the forest was bountiful and filled with wild beasts and because they only had a population of around 300 villagers.
The reason for this low population was simple, even though Ashen village was basically situated at a perfect spot for a village, most people moved from villages to the bigger cities in search of jobs or because they wanted to live in a more luxurious environment.
A lot of people couldn't stand the hunter gatherer lifestyle anymore and decided to look for more fun in their lives.
Kes was the same, he didn't have a lot of attachment to the village and was planning on going to the city to find a more fun job when he grew up.
This was mostly because his mother, a woman named Nora, was an outsider in the village, she was accepted of course but she wasn't born here. She came from the Zoecia desert in the north and had always told him fun stories about the wide world.
She used to be a scholar who researched village life in different parts of the world, eventually visiting Ashen village on Actis volcano, the reason she decided to stay here was simple: she had fallen in love.
The man she fell for was named Yosen, he was a simple hunter in the village but he was more of the intellectual type researching traps and methods to better grow crops which made him get along well with her since she was a scholar also interested in his research.
After confirming their feelings for each other Nora decided to give up her job as a scholar and settle down with Yosen in the village.
Together they had a child and named him Kes, this is why he has a strange hair and eye color for the volcanic region. They are a mix of characteristics of villagers from the Ashen village and traits commonly seen in people of the Zoecia desert.
He was bullied a little bit for this as a child, since he was different after all and children liked to pick on things that are different from them, but it never got excessive. His parents, especially his mother still seemed to feel quite bad about this.
But Kes didn't blame them for this, he didn't really care about a couple of insults. He liked his hair color and he liked being a little different from the other villagers. He thought it would be boring if he was the same as everyone.
What he didn't like was farm work. But it was required for everyone above the age of 4 to start helping there. He couldn't really do anything about it or he would have nothing to eat in the evening.
After a while of walking Kes and Nash arrived at the farm.
Nash suddenly started sprinting away. "I need to go a little further to reach our farm so I will see you when farm work is over."
The farm was divided in multiple different plots, one for every family, the bigger the family the bigger the farming plot was.
This way everyone was dependent on their own farm work and they couldn't just slack off and pretend to do farm work while the rest of the villagers worked hard for the food on their table.
Kes entered his field and looked at the crops, it was a large potato field and the yield this year was looking quite good.
It was the start of summer so it was harvest season. He and his parents had been working hard this week but today his father wasn't here, he was out hunting. Luckily most of the potatoes had already been harvested. Today was the last day of harvesting for a reason, because tomorrow the academy would start.
For that reason his mother had stayed behind today as well, she was one of the people teaching the children at the academy. She had good academic skills and knew the most about the outside world from her time as a scholar. She needed to spend the day preparing for tomorrow and did not have time to work in the fields today.
This meant Kes had to finish up all the work alone today and he really was not looking forward to it.
"Let's just get this over with. One more day until this harvest season is over and the academy finally starts." Kes gritted his teeth and got to work.
Six hours later he finally finished harvesting all the potatoes.
"Finally, I can finally go home." Kes had an elated look on his face as he grabbed his basket full of potatoes and headed on his way home.
He knew he still had to make several trips because he had multiple baskets to carry but he would ask his parents to help him, he figured his dad was done hunting by now.
After about twenty minutes of heavy lifting he arrived at his house where he saw his father and two other people, a male and a female, standing in front of his house.
Kes knew who these people were, they were Viola and Cantor the parents of Nash.
Viola was known as the strongest woman in the village. She was one of the only females on the hunting team but still managed to hold her own against most of the men.
She was invaluable on the hunting team scoring great contributions and hunting a lot of prey while on trips into the forest. This made her very popular and she ended up having quite a lot of male pursuers. But in the end she chose to get together with Cantor.
This was natural; they were pretty much the perfect match.
Cantor was the strongest male villager on the hunting team after all. He was the leader of the hunters and did most of the fighting when encountering wild beasts in the forest.
For this reason most people had expected them to end up together, and in the end they really did.
But because both of them were extremely capable high expectations were on their child Nash for the future.
He always seemed to laugh these expectations off saying he was nothing special, but Kes knew he secretly liked getting praised like this and was working hard to become strong in the future.
Kes walked in closer and listened in on their conversation.
"The traps you create really seem to work, I always wrote you off as a silly time waster but today we had quite the big catch because of them." Cantor praised Yosen
Cantor and Yosen knew each other well, they had been friends since they were young and Cantor always had been more of the brawny type while Yosen was more of an intellectual studying how to make good traps.
Yosen knew his traps were quite primitive compared to the stuff made in the big cities, he had heard this from Nora, but they were at least as effective he had more experience hunting then them after all.
"The traps still aren't quite as effective as your raw strength, but I will continue to improve them." Yosen replied
Cantor started laughing. "Haha, It's your strength combined with your brain that make you a good hunter Yosen. You shouldn't write yourself off. I see Kes has arrived, maybe you should help him carry the potatoes."
Yosen nodded. "Will do, I need him to be healthy for the first day of the academy tomorrow."
Cantor and Viola waved as they started walking away. "See you tomorrow. Oh and Kes don't forget to be nice to Nash tomorrow I know where to find you if you don't." Cantor joked.
"Ugh." Kes shuddered. "Let's go dad, we have quite a few baskets to carry."
Yosen nodded. "It should only be one more trip with me helping you out."
"I get it, you are oh so strong. Now can we please get going." Kes replied sarcastically as he started moving towards the farming fields again.
Yosen chuckled. "It won't take much longer for you to get that kind of strength too you know, only one more day until the academy starts"
"Yes, I cannot wait to start learning to become more proficient at Flow at the academy tomorrow." Kes replied enthusiastically as his steps started speeding up.