Inside the Haja family’s house.

Razeff and Hemilia were currently sitting inside their kitchen, patiently waiting for their son to come back. They heard a knock from the door and thought that it might be Haja, who had forgotten his keys to the house because he was in a hurry to leave and quickly stood up to open the door. On the opposite side of the door, there was not the little boy, whom they expected, but an old man in a leather west, colored in red with purple accessories. He wore neatly combed white hair and a short beard on his face. It was the old merchant, Raylon.

Hemilia, who came to her senses first, looked at his tense face and quickly guided him inside the house.

<<By the look on your face, I assume you roughly know what happened. Come inside so we can talk a little. My father still had a few things to say to you, so I have a letter to deliver to you.>>

Without making much of a fuss, Sir Raylon silently followed the two of them into the kitchen. There they debriefed him on what had happened and Hemilia gave him a letter, which she had been instructed to write and deliver to him a week ago.

____

Dear Raylon,

If you are reading this, I am afraid that my time has already come before we could have had one last conversation with each other. I have noticed the warnings my body gave me and today, I might have not woken up, had it not been for my family keeping me awake one more day.

I know that I have been a bad friend to you and I am sorry for that. Every time I had a problem with something, I would come running to you for help and you would always help me, no matter what. Even now I am going to ask a shameless favor of you and I am embarrassed to my core about that.

You see, underneath the mattress of my bed, within the wooden construction there is a locker embedded into the wood. The combination is my wife’s birthday. Inside there is a portion of the money I have from my work as a woodcrafter, here and in the capital as well as a portion of the money, I got from selling the house, we talked about last time.

I want to ask you a favor: Please, take this money and in exchange give my grandson a proper education. If the amount is still not enough, make the rest a loan for the future of little Haja.

I guarantee you, that the money you invest into him is going to make you a rich man.

I know that you will grant me this favor, and I am thankful to you, even after death.

Aside from the money, I have prepared some goodies for your well-beings, they are___

[…]

One last thing. I know that you have lived for a long time, equal to my own, but I ask that you do not come and visit me any time soon. Please live on, as long as you can.

With Regards

your brother in spirit, Hamish

____

Water, made from tears, fell down on the letter.

They were the tears from a man, who was determined to honor the wishes of his late friend.

…

Inside the household of the tailor couple, Haja sits, crying while being comforted by the couple. Since he had undergone a huge amount of stress at once and there was no authority or person of trust inside his own home, he went to the tailor couple next door to get a grip on the situation.

Suddenly, he was told, that his grandfather has already made plans for his own future and that he has been working on making it a reality.

It wasn’t even the fact, that he didn’t like being a merchant. He just had a lot of questions swirling around his head:

<Did grandpa tell me stories about merchants, because he wanted to manipulate me into this?>

<Do I really want to go away from my parents? I don’t want to lose another one...>

<Did doing all this make grandpa Hamish’s life shorter?>

Needless to say, most of his thought processes were very irrational and emotionally charged.

Normally, Haja is able to rationally think and discern the situation in front of him, but this incident showed the people around him another facet to him: He is still a small child and cannot handle pressure at all. At this time, Haja felt caged inside a box made of indecisiveness and confusion. He truly had a panic attack.

In that sense he was correct in going to the tailor couple, a couple of experienced people, who were able to pinpoint his worries and support him through this turmoil inside him.

First they wrapped a warm blanket around Haja. The wife sat down next to him and cheered him on from the side. She listened to Haja narrating everything that happened and why he was in his current state and after finishing listening to him she started to tell him a story.

<<First, little Haja, I want to tell you something about us old people.>>, she said while giving him a light hug.

<<When I was the age of your mother, I had an aunt, that came from Ifael, a city in the west of Ayrilia.

That aunt had a similar story to your grandfather. She fell in love with another man and together they ventured out into the outskirts and landed in another village, close to Chansa. Once they settled there, they lived a happy life, got themselves a house and even had two kids.>>

From time to time, while telling the story, she checked, whether Haja was still listening to her.

<<Their kid grew up happily and became a young adult. Eventually he was able to support them, who had raised him and had now gotten old as a sign of his respect. But time is a cruel thing. It gives strength and vitality to someone...>>, she patted Haja’s head while saying that.

<<And at some point, it will take that vitality away, again.>>

She laid down her hands in front of Haja’s eyes. They were a pair of old and thin hands, slightly pale, slightly shaking. Haja became sad at her words.

<The tailors are also very old, already. The same thing, that happened to grandpa, will happen to them.>

His head heated up and he felt a churning at his stomach but he was interrupted.

<<We aren’t at an age, where a little boy like you needs to worry about us>>

the husband came in, took a warm drink, which he had prepared, put it in front of Haja and continued.

<<My wife didn’t tell you her story, to make you feel bad. Be a little patient, will you?>>

Unlike his choice of words, he used a soft tone of voice, which made Haja relax a bit.

The wife smiled and continued with her story:

<<Thanks, dear. Anyways, I didn’t mean that you should be sad for the people you see as old right now, little Haja. You see, it is hard to believe, but my old hands used to look just like yours look right now.

What I want to tell you, little Haja, is that everyone will eventually reach this point and die. It is not a bad thing that someone dies. What I think is the most important is that you should let that person have a happy ending.>>

<<A happy ending?>>

Unknowingly, he stopped crying while asking this question and drinking the warm drink that the tailor-husband had given him.

<<Yes, a happy ending. I heard a folks tale, where a person that dies while truly happy, will have something nice happen to them, after they died.

Sadly, my aunt didn’t have a happy ending, when she got to that point.>> At that point the tailor-wife made a sad face. Haja reflexively grabbed her hand to encourage her. It showed an immediate effect and she continued, now with a soft smile:

<<Yes, she lived a happy life until the old age. She outlived even her own husband. But the sad thing is, that she even outlived her own son. Her eldest son was a hunter, who hunted the dune wolves in order to keep them from multiplying into too high a number. One day, he got assaulted by one and died from the flesh wounds and the blood loss. I remember my aunts sad face, when she told me about that. I was told, that she only lived one year longer than her eldest son, but the memory of parting from this world before him had plagued her for a long time.>>

The woman said this in one go, without stopping, without changing her expression, seemingly saying it for the sake of having told him a story for Haja to learn from.

She redirected her gaze from looking at the ceiling to looking into the eyes of a serious Haja.

Then she said with a soft voice:

<<For old people like her and me and even like your grandfather the most precious thing they own is not their money or their life but their legacy; it is their children and grandchildren. We want our future generation to be happy, we feel bad, every time we burden them for helping us and we feel eternally thankful that they were born. Little Haja, I know, that this is how your grandfather felt about you, so I hope you understand that him wanting the best for you is a natural thing that happens with everyone in life.>>

With that, she ended her story and left Haja some time to think. Haja took a brief amount of time to reflect on what he had heard and set on a weak smile in an attempt to change his way of thinking.

It was fine to grief for and miss his grandfather. What he needed to do now was come to a decision on his own on what to accept from him and how to live his life in the future.

Haja briefly continued to chat with the two of them before leaving them and making the trip back to his home. He deliberately dragged out his walk in order to come to a decision. He figured, that Sir Raylon would have gone to his house to check on his parents, since Haja knew, that Sir Raylon and Hamish were long-time friends.

Finally, he arrived inside and saw Sir Raylon. Sir Raylon had a determined look on him and wanted to say something, but before he could, Haja went down on his knees and bowed on the ground, while asking:

<<Sir Raylon, I am very sorry for running away before!

I want to ask you, please take me with you and teach me, how to become a merchant!>>

Everyone was confused by his sudden change of attitude but at the end, Sir Raylon laughed and accepted him as his apprentice.

Together with his parents, the 4 of them ate dinner and decided that in 4 months from now, when Raylon were to come back to this village on his scheduled route, Haja would accompany him and become his long time apprentice.

Haja still didn’t know exactly what to feel but for now he was determined to see this through and become a merchant.