SHEPHERD'S LOT
The rooster ran out of the coop, jumped onto the pole, and puffing its chest out, cried out to the twilight heavens with all its might. Then, it looked down at the sleeping village, looked up, and cried out again just as the group was leaving its gates towards the Ung’ Mountains, where the sun nearly woke. At the front was their leader, an elder dressed in an ornamental robe and a golden, sculptural staff in his right hand supporting him when his shorter right peg failed him. Trailing him were five pre-adolescent children, who were all too eager to see ‘it’. “How does he know of it?” one girl, Shua whispered to her friend Kip. “He said he had taken many people there,” Kip replied. “Did he always dress like that?” another girl, Nanda, asked Shua as they giggled. “Maybe he’s a priest? You know those of the…” “The Old Order,” the elder said, tapping his staff on the ground and turning to address them. “No, I am not one. I am, or was, just a traveler who happened across it.”