Stay here, you stupid tree sheep!

Arvan tried to prevent the many-footed creature, overgrown with wool, from entering the outer branches with a stern thought. Even in the giant trees of the forests around Long Lake, these branches were often so thin that they could not support even tree sheep. Especially not tree sheep that were as fat as this specimen.

In addition, Arvan had to keep the herd together. That was the task assigned to him by the halfling tribe he lived with - also because he didn't seem to have any real talent for other things.

Arvan was seventeen years old. He had small human feet, but everything else about him was bigger and stronger than the halflings. He was not a skilled climber, his human body was simply not suited for that. However, he was also no good as an iron bender and blacksmith, because in the low caves, which were operated by the halfling tribes for the smelting of metals and which had to be left quickly in case of danger, he only fit when he slid around on his knees.

So his foster father Gomlo, tree master of the tribe of Brado the Fugitive, had decided that Arvan should tend the tree sheep."These creatures are like you, Arvan," he had said."They are sluggish of mind and movement, which comes to the same thing with most creatures. If you're reasonably observant, you can keep the flock together without having to climb too much, and that in turn means you won't crash as often as before."

That had been three years ago - and contrary to expectations, Arvan had proven talented, at least for this simple task. The many-legged tree sheep obeyed him. The size of these creatures varied between a large halfling's foot and a wild boar, depending on diet and breeding. With their clasping claws they found a hold on any tree bark, and they ate mosses, beetles, and caterpillars, sometimes slurping the resin.

Day after day, Arvan sat for hours on one of the giant trees that were reserved for the tree sheep, because the halflings from the tribe of Brado the Fugitive did not want them on their living trees, because they left their excrements everywhere. For a long time, these changed the resin of the giant trees, from which the halflings had been extracting the tree sap for a long time, a magical essence whose recipe was a secret of their people.

The trees of the tree sheep flocks were therefore at a safe distance from the residential trees of the halflings.

Arvan mostly just sat there, indulging his thoughts and dreaming of one day moving out into the big wide world and seeing all the things he had only heard about in stories. The wonders of Carabor, the largest city in the world with its ten thousand ships, for example. Or Aladar, the capital of the mighty kingdom of Beiderland, where there were supposedly huge buildings with golden domes whose splendor and brilliance dazzled the eyes. Or the shores of the Far Elven Kingdom, a land full of magic, but also wisdom, which was so isolated that hardly any halfling or human had ever reached it.

One day, Arvan thought,I will see all this with my own eyes.

In the end, though, he wasn't sure if it wasn't better to just take some more of the halflings' magical tree sap, sit on a herd tree, and just dream about these things. That was certainly less dangerous than making such trips himself - especially if you were as clumsy as Arvan.

Sometimes, when his head was completely empty from thinking so