On the way back to my mother's house, I saw my old friend Kestrel. Kestrel was taller than me by about a foot. It really annoyed me. "Hey, Celai, how are you doing?" he asked me. "Oh, I'm good, how are you Kestrel?" I replied and asked him. "I'm going to join the King's archery team!" he proudly said. "Good for you." I said and then asked him, "Hey, are you going to be going back and forth out of the castle?" "Yeah, why?" he replied. "Will, you keep an eye on Anais for me, please? It'll only be for this week." I begged him. "Okay, okay, I'll do it." he said chuckling. "Thank you!" I said and then hugged him. "Alright, bye, Celai." he said walking off. "Bye!" I called. The ran back to my mother's house where she was waiting for me.

As I walked into the house, she met me by the door. "Okay, go grab you bow. I've got your quiver." she told me. She liked to take me hunting. She wanted me to be an archer. If I was half as good as her, I would succeed without trouble. I could pull the string back with eased practice, especially since I had spent the last week trying to make a goblet for my father. That had required a lot of strength to haul the silver over to the fire so that you could melt it into the shape of the cup. When my mother and I had found a deer with an eight extensions off of each of his antler's, my mother told me to shoot it. I aimed for the heart, and, like I expected, it got shot in its forehead. I may be able to kill the deer easily, but my aim was off. We brought the deer back, but on the way my mother saw a young rabbit and shot it directly in the heart, killing it immediately. We brought both of them back to the house. My step-father saw us coming and got his knife ready. "Bring them over here." he told us when we got close enough to hear him. When we set them down, I ran to my room so that I wouldn't have to watch them skin it.

I looked at my room, relieved that it didn't look different. As I sat on my soft, white feather bed, I thought about something my mom had once told me when some kids in town had made fun if me. Take the tears and the pain and turn them into flames. Flames that ignite your heart and tell you that it's fine, that now you know what to do next time. Tell you that you can make things better if you try. Tell you that now that you can overcome the pain, you're stronger than you were before. Believe it or not, it actually worked. Whenever I think about that experience, I take the pain I felt then, and turn it into strength. I walked over to the shelf where I kept my treasures. On it was my bag of coins and my first bow and arrow set. On my shelf in my father's house, I have my first battle axe, but my mother doesn't like me using a battle ax, even though I am much better using it than a bow. I looked out of the window and saw that my parents were finished woth the animal and I went back outside.

"Hey, I'm going to take a walk in the woods." I told my mom. "Okay, be back before the sun comes down." she told me. She had long ago given up on trying to make me stay and watch them skining the animals. I whistled and called my hound dog, Unoteog. My mother named him that because she only let me have him because I am supposed to use him for hunting. Unoteog means mace killer, which is definitely not at all like him. He is lazy and well fed. Well, well fed when I'm over there. When I'm not, he gets fed like a normal pet would. As soon as he came over to me, I headed of towards the woods.