Laila, Spock's Granny (Book 1: Vulcan Gladiatoress and Klingon Slave)

Hard Training

After the two Klingons had left, Nethis mused: "Well, seems we have to wait for more building materials. Our master is low on money. It also means, we have to emphasize on organizing our own food." Unfortunately, he was right with his assessment. Useless to add more than: "Hmmm", and a disgruntled face!

Odron came back in the afternoon again and dropped off the equipment Achot had ordered him to get. The oncoming week, I provided Nethis with basic training. I also spent considerable time to find a good running trail, but all roads and trails were kind of dead end. Friday however, I discovered a dear trail. Running on the road towards the creek, then turn left at the perimeter of the forest, walk along the edge of the meadow and one hit the dear trail. The dear trail ran through the forest for about 3-4km until it came out of the forest bordering another meadow again. One had to follow the edge of that meadow westward and after 1km it hit a farm road, which connected the farm with a number of meadows and fields. That farm road led back to the farm after about 5km. In lack of anything better, it had to suffice as a running trail. I guessed it was maybe 10km long. I loved running anyway, it always gave me the sensation of freedom, but with the new running shoes it was twice as nice.

The sleeping bags made the nights a lot more comfortable and I saw the envy in the eyes of the farm slaves, all lacking such luxury.

That night, before I fell asleep, an idea popped up in my Vulcan brain and urged me to bother Nethis: "Nethis!"

Already sleepy, he replied: "Yes, 'ethl tits!"

"You know, my mom used to bake our own bread. It is not utterly difficult. My thought was, that instead of the farmer buying bread, we could bake our own. The money the farmer spends on bread, he would just have to spend on flour and salt. It would probably give us 1,5-2 times the amount of bread. What we would need is an oven. Do you think you could build one?"

"An oven? I never built an oven before." After some seconds he continued: "What I would need is mortar. We might be able to collect broken bricks on a construction site."

Next day we talked to the farmer and he was willing to try it. A sack of mortar was but a little investment. As Nethis had said, the foreman of one of the bigger construction sites, allowed us to take the broken bricks, which we uploaded into the farmer's aircraft. Using an old bucket, I mixed the mortar with a wooden plank and my bare hands. Nethis first built a foundation out of stones from the creek. The farm slaves had to drag them here and they complained heavily about the exhausting work. On the foundation, he built the actual oven. In lack of a trowel, Nethis had to use his bare hands to apply the mortar. Building the oven took us two days and on the third it was time to try it out. The days before, I had already started to make sourdough, which was ready now. The first batch of breads, was not really a success. They were eatable, but the taste and the form left a lot of room for improvement. The farm slaves were not utterly happy after all the hard work they had to pump into the oven project. Never mind, that Nethis and I had invested a lot more time in it. However, after two weeks, I had the hang of it and the bread was not only looking nice and tasting well, it also provided us with about double the amount of bread than before. Still, the only one thanking me for it was my own stomach. Bastards. My Klingon Mutant demanded revenge. As I was the master of the flour, I made bigger breads for myself and Nethis. As my mother taught me: If you get a gift, say thank you. Say thank you even if you wanted something else, lest you never want to get anything from that person again. If you give a gift and no thank you is coming back to you, never give that person a gift again, because your presents are obviously not welcome.

A week, after master Odron had left us, Achot started to train us. On a Monday morning, was our first lesson with him. With a solemn undertone he bestowed us with his expert wisdom: "One of the most important matters is, that you have the endurance to push through the whole entire length of a fight. There are many gladiators, who focus on weapons technique and strength only and forget about endurance. Then they physically fall apart, when they cannot overthrow their opponent in one of the first rounds. So --- small, soft Vulcan fledgling, how is it with your endurance?"