Chapter 17

Xander went through the pockets of the first man.

In the first pocket, Xander found something strange. It was shaped like a horseshoe, but it was smaller. It was big enough for Xander to fit it in his palm. The two ends of the band were touching. The material that it was made with was also a bit strange, it was a dark metal that Xander didn't recognize.

Figuring that either Sam or Laina could help him identify it, Xander put it into his pocket.

The second pocket contained a folded piece of paper. The paper was clearly lower quality than the paper that Xander used back on Earth. Xander unfolded the paper, being careful not to rip it. When he finally saw what was on the paper, he was a bit disappointed.

There were drawing on the paper, lots of them. They were all in black ink and the person that drew them was definitely not artistic. Arrows were pointing left, down, up, and right, pictures of houses, fires, coins, and more. They fit the entirety of the paper, which was roughly square with the side around a foot long.

After a few more seconds of looking, Xander still couldn't make anything out of the drawings. All of the drawings were in lines, so Xander thought that they might mean something.

Xander got up and went to where Sam was. Sam had already fallen asleep when Xander was away. Stratus was nowhere to be seen.

Xander tapped Sam's shoulder to wake him up and Sam was instantly awake.

"What?" said Sam with his eyes still close. If he didn't hear anything worthwhile, he would go back to sleep. He didn't even want to go back to the village because he felt so tired.

"I found something. It seems like a letter, but I can't make out what it's saying. There are just weird drawings everywhere. I think they are supposed to be words but I can't really make out which words." said Xander. When he noticed Sam opened his eyes, he held the paper out, towards Sam. "Where's Stratus?"

Sam looked around and couldn't see it anywhere. When he was falling asleep, Stratus was still with him. "I don't know. He was here before, but I guess he went for a walk," said Sam.

Sam got off of the ground and took the paper from Xander. Figuring out a coded letter sounded interesting. Sure, Laina probably knew what it was and probably knew how to read it, but that didn't sound fun.

Sam looked at the paper for a few seconds. It was too dark for him to see the paper clearly.

"Can you bring the torch, that the dude dropped?" asked Sam. It was still going and Xander grabbed it and gave it to Sam. Sam held it up close to the paper to see it better.

The paper looked complex. Sam looked at all the arrows, shapes, and pictures. He was trying to find a pattern. He tried to find the verbs or a drawing that could be a verb. After finding the first few verbs, it was clear that they all had a similarity, they all had an arrow above them. There were a lot more curved arrows that pointed right than left, up, and down.

If Sam had to guess, then the arrows were the tenses. The right was the future tense while the left was the past tense. The down arrow could be present. Sam didn't really know what to do with the up arrow. After that Sam went back to the beginning and started to translate.

There were several pictures that several meanings and a lot that Sam couldn't even guess the meaning on.

While Sam was translating, the men from the village started to head back. They grabbed the horse and the belongings of the second man. They asked if Sam and Xander were coming with them, but Xander said that they would stay a little longer.

After they left, Stratus came back as well. There was a bit of blood on its legs, so it was obvious where it went. Xander made sure that it wasn't hurt.

Roughly half an hour later, Sam finally could understand what it was saying. There were a few pictures that Sam had no clue about, but he got most of them. The torch had gone out so he couldn't keep going.

When Xander saw Sam start walking away, he asked, "Do you know what it's saying?"

"More or less. It seems like we stopped something big. I just want Laina to see it before I can come to a conclusion though. She should know how to read if she doesn't then there must be someone in the village that can read." said Sam. He looked around and tried to find something.

"What are you looking for?" asked Xander. He couldn't think of anything that they left here. They were both still holding their shovel and scythe and Xander already had the sword.

"They took only one horse. The other is still around here somewhere," said Sam. He tried to remember the direction that the horse was headed to in the fight and Sam went in that direction. Xander and Stratus follow him.

After a few seconds of walking, Xander took the lead. He still remembered the direction that the horse took a lot better than Sam, so he told Sam to follow him.

Afterward, it was Strauts that was leading them. It smelled the location of the horse and went towards it.

They walked for a few more minutes. The horse probably started to run and didn't stop after a while. When they finally saw the horse, it was chewing on a bush. It didn't have a reaction when it heard Sam and Xander.

Sam and Xander looked towards each other. One of them had to go near the horse and bring it back to the village. The question was which one.

After an intense eye staring contest, Sam sighed and said, "Fine, but only because I owe you one for eating the berries."

Sam started to walk closer to the horse. It was peacefully eating for now but Sam didn't know how it would react if he went too close to it. Would it run away or send him flying with a kick? There was no change in the horse as Sam got closer and closer. Sam got a little bit more confidence from this and touched the horse on its side. No reaction. Sam sighed in relief, he started to feel his heart calm down.

Sam decided against getting on the horse. He didn't know how the horse would react and he didn't exactly know how to. There was a saddle on the horse, but Sam didn't see a leg rest hanging that he could use to climb up.

Sam took the reigns of the horse and gently pulled on the horse. The horse stopped eating and followed Sam's hand. Sam turned around and said to Xander, "Let's go back now."

With Xander in the lead, the group made it back to the village in no time. Status kept smelling, licking, rubbing, the horse while the walked. It looked like it wanted to be friends with the horse. The horse ignored it and kept walking.

When they finally reached the village, the fire had been put out and most of the people went back to their homes to sleep. Some had stayed up, worried about the thieves, but when they saw the group of six men enter the village, their worries were gone.

Laina was still up, standing outside her house. She looked around trying to find Sam and Xander. She wasn't too worried since the six men had told her they were safe.

She opened the door to her house and was about to step in when she saw Stratus walk into the house. She turned around and saw Sam and Xander walking towards her. She kept the door open and Xander walked in.

Sam paused just outside the door

"What do I do with this?" asked Sam holding up the rains. There wasn't anything that he could tie it to, to keep the horse from walking away.

Laina had a confused look on her face because she couldn't understand Sam's question. A few seconds later she asked, "What do you mean?"

"The horse. Where do I put it?" Sam elaborated a little bit more. The question was straight forwards and Sam didn't understand why Laina was having trouble understanding.

"The horse?" asked Laina. She was just making sure. "Bring it in with you, obviously. Where else is it going to sleep."

Sam sighed and brought the horse with him into the house. There was plenty of space for it, but that was not the problem. Sam couldn't really believe that he would have to sleep next to a horse. It seemed like it was normal for people to keep animals inside their homes. No matter what they were.

Sam thought back to the medieval ages on Earth, where people shared homes with cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens. It seemed like this was basically the same thing except instead of cattle, it's horses.

Now that Sam was thinking about it, Sam realized that he hadn't seen a single farm animal in the village. The horses were the first animal that he had seen outside of the forest.

Sam told himself that he would think about it in the morning. It was still the middle of the night and Sam was missing out on precious hours of sleep. He also told himself to give Laina the letter in the morning.

Laina closed the door after the horse entered. She locked the door and gave the horse some food for it to eat. Sam noticed that it was the same barrel of food that Laina was taking from for their meals.

'At least it's not the same bowl,' Sam thought to himself. He watched as Laina put the bowl of food directly in front of the horse. She didn't cook it on fire this time.

The horse went towards the bowl as soon as Laina put it on the ground and started to eat. It seemed like the horse was used to eating the same food.

Sam got on the bed and closed his eyes. Xander had already fallen asleep.

A few minutes passed by and Sam still was feeling like he would fall asleep anytime soon. He could hear the sound of the horse eating in the background and Stratus tiring to play with the horse.

Sam changed his position so that he could cover his hands with his hand and pillow. It didn't help.

Eventually, Sam gave up on sleeping and got up. There were still several hours before the sun was up and he wanted to do something other than just lay there.

Laina was sleeping and he didn't want to wake her up, so showing her the letter was not an option. He could mess around with Stratus but he couldn't do it for the whole night. It would be very suspicious for him to be walking around the village.

The only thing left for Sam was to go to Origin. He could find something to do there, whether it was talking to other people or just reading. Xander and Laina might get worried if they noticed him missing but Sam assumed that Xander would eventually realize that he was in Origin.

Sam stayed in the same position as he was and started to think about Origin. He cleared his mind of everything other than things that were Origin related. He thought about the fall and the pain that he felt. He thought about the city and the specific buildings. He then thought about the library and the books in it.

Five minutes later, Sam disappeared. There were small distractions that Sam kept thinking about that slowed him down. It was still a huge improvement compared to last time, which took him around an hour, but that was mostly because of his injury making it hard for him to focus.