The lands of Ménflark by Acy Ash (fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

The night was cold and clear. The pale white moon shone over the empty windy tundra of Ménflark and gave the freezing wasteland a sparse and depressing look. The ground was stony with hidden holes covered by yellowish stained grass. It was known that people got lost in this land without leaving a trace behind them.

There were only a few safe roads in Ménflark; old and made of broken stone, because nobody who lived in the tundra cared about maintaining of these ways.

Life in this bleak landscape was simple and difficult at the same time: Simple, because your only wish was to survive - difficult, because inexperience killed you faster than you would realise. People from the city said a wicked curse had ruined the entire surroundings of Ménflark to isolate them from other kingdoms.

Rud always laughed when he heard travelers saying such nonsense. He was born in this cold dangerous tundra and he had lived more than thirty years here. Even if the land seemed to be unhabitable, he had always found what he needed to survive.

Rud dwelt in a mudcolored tent made of oiled rendeer fur. He drank water from dewy wellsprings, ate herbs, roots and the meat and milk of the rendeers. He slept in a three-layed wollen sleeping bag o a pillowy mossy mattress covered by rendeer furs to keep the creeping chillness of the subsoil out.

Rud was tall, black-haired and had a muscular built. His shoulders were broad, his legs long, his body was covered with wollen, baggy and filthy clothes. A warm hat hid his thick, matted, shoulder-length hair.

In cold days when the air was so freezing that you feared to exhale the warmth of your body, he was lucky to be cloaked in a long and warm two-layed coat made of wolf fur. It was the same fur the old man Morik had worn for years. When he died, Rud got his coat, his tent and his rendeers.

Morik was like a father to him. As an orphan Rud's childhood was hard, way harder than it was now. Back then he had nothing, but the rags on his body. He had lived with rats, moulding bread and rainwater. He still wore the scarfs of his orphanlife: Two toes lost by frostbite, a cut on his left upper arm from a struggle with knifes and his deformed nose; broken for stealing some fresh bread.

Morik found him on a grey and rainy day huddled in a corner between two stone houses. The old man always had a good heart, so he took Rud with him in the tundra. He showed him what to eat, what to drink, how to make fire, how to set up a tent, how to care for rendeers, how to slauther them and to garb their fells. All this was long gone now, but whenever he remebered Morik, he felt like he met him yesterday for the first time.

Rud spat into the grass and looked at the landscape. Most nights there was cold and heavy rain which droved him back into the tent, hoping to enlight a fire. The rare clear nights were precious and beautiful in his eyes.

 This is just the beginning of a story. English is not my mother language, but I want to learn it and I learn better when I write the language

Please correct me, if I wrote something wrong. Thank you very much :)

Images: 9gag
Editing: Cait Lane
Publication Date: 01-04-2015

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