5 Of Human and Demon I (1/2)
It has turned out fortunate for me today that destiny appointed the little town of Urkuo to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two half of the kingdom the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means should be employed.
Perhaps that was destiny and all, for are we not mere pawns in the game of fate and destiny?
The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.
And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task. But in another regard also it points to a lesson that is applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole kingdom and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of history. At the time, though I did not realize the importance of my birthplace, for if I had known, my world would never have gone down in flame as it did.
My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously, an Earth Mage in the task of building the town housing and surrounding development. My mother looked after the household and lovingly devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not retained very much in my memory; because after a few years my father had to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Gausa, therefore actually inthe originating Kingdom itself.
It was at this period that I first began to have ideals of my own. I spent a good deal of time scampering about in the open, on the long road from school, and mixing up with some of the roughest of the boys, which caused my mother many anxious moments. All this tended to make me something quite the reverse of a stay-at-home. I gave scarcely any serious thought to the question of choosing a vocation in life; but I was certainly quite out of sympathy with the kind of career which my father had followed. I think that an inborn talent for speaking now began to develop and take shape during the more or less strenuous arguments which I used to have with my comrades. I had become a juvenile ringleader who learned well and easily at school but was rather difficult to manage.
In my freetime I practised singing in the choir of the monastery church at Urkuo, and thus it happened that I was placed in a very favourable position to be emotionally impressed again and again by the magnificent splendour of ecclesiastical ceremonial.
What could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days? At least, that was my idea for a while. But the juvenile disputes I had with my father did not lead him to appreciate his son's oratorical gifts in such a way as to see in them a favourable promise for such a career, and so he naturally could not understand the ideas I had in my head at that time.
This contradiction in my character made him feel somewhat anxious.
Life is Harsh, it is cruel and it is most unkind. In my ideal of a peaceful world, to have happiness is to have other put in place, but no it should never be weak human, because weak human are cruel and mad with greed when they are put atop a pedestal. No.....they would never be able to shoulder the burden of keeping the world at peace.
Browsing through my father's books, I chanced to come across some publications that dealt with military subjects. One of these publications was a popular history of the Demonic Continent.
These became my favourite reading. In a little while that great and heroic conflict began to take first place in my mind. And from that time onwards I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or military affairs.
But this story of the Demonic-Human War had a special significance for me on other grounds also. For the first time, and as yet only in quite a vague way, the question began to present itself: Is there a difference - and if there be, what is it -
between the Human who fought that war and the other? Are we not all the same inhabitants that live in this world? Do we not all belong together?
That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my small brain. And from the replies that were given to the questions which I asked very tentatively, I was forced to accept the fact, though with a secret envy, that not all intelligent living creature had the good luck to belong to a single community. This was something that I could not understand.