Journey 5 - Waiting

Destiny

After almost a century, here I am heading for new adventures.
Pulled by the horses, aided by the stream, as I was saying, we hit the road. There the goats load us up and we set off into the unknown.
After more than three hours of riding, up the hill with the bridles and down the valley with the props - the poor horses were only foams - we reach the bank of the Bistrița, at the entrance to the gorge.
I forgot to tell you that the station chief accompanied us all the way. I don't know why, we didn't want to go anywhere. But he had his orders. He kept grumbling about getting his good boots dirty.
Here, at the water's edge, further downstream from the Zugreni herd, we all settled down, there were many of us, a few hundred of us, until the fall, to get away from the dampness of the forest that fed us.
That's why we had plenty of time to sit around telling stories, dreaming about where we were going to end up and what was going to happen to us.
Some could already see themselves made draniță, covering people's houses or, with a bit of luck, even a holy church. Or, why not, you could even see planks, lockers and beams making up a house for a householder. There was even a bit of a quarrel between our people and those who came by water from beyond Cârlibaba, because they didn't want to be draniță but wanted to be shingle. In the end they were calmed down by an older man who explained to them that it was either draniță or shingle, still a devil, and to pacify them he told them that they would all become shingle.
Others also saw themselves transformed into tables, chairs, cupboards and beds with woolen mattresses and down cushions under which they put the proud basil to dream of their beloved.
There were a few who aspired to become a cucumber bowl with sour cucumbers, only good to eat after a chindie, or donuts in which, in the evening, the housewife milked the cow surrounded by little children who were eagerly waiting for the warm and sweet milk. And they also hoped to get cafes with cold spring water to quench their thirst in the fierce summer noon, or little boxes of sweet and sour must to prick your tongue in the fall. A small number of the more greedy ones hoped to reach the whore's stall to get their fill of creamy cream and thick, fatty butter.
Further away, under the mountainside, near the Colbu brook, there was a group of people who would have loved to have found books that would contain the wisdom of the world or notebooks for the little ones to read and write their lips.
Others were not so high-minded. They simply wanted to become oyster-fences to fence off the courtyards or to separate the courtyard from the town's terraces.
And, as there is no forest without dryness, I mean us trees not you people, some of us will end up, like it or not, just sawdust.
From time to time, my friend the feaster would come by, accompanied by an old man with a white beard and a white mane of hair sticking out from under his helmet. I found out later that the old man was old man Covaliu, the staroste of the raftsmen. He'd knock us around, turn one of us upside down, and they'd leave.
One day, it was not yet noon, when the feaster came again, accompanied this time by a few soldiers and two goats. They turned us, turned us, and chose three of us taller and slimmer. They were to become masts in the courtyard of the military units, masts on which the Romanian flag would fly.
What will fate have in store for me? I would have liked to be a mast, but I'm too strong-willed for that. Anyway, whatever the good Lord wants!

Water