The next day was better in a lot of ways, and worse in others. While his father was still out working the family craft, his mother went to join him to avoid their extended family that came every morning. They were still a few hours out, so Aven took a small tear of bread for breakfast before heading to the back of their tent, golem in tow.


    As a fletching family, they always had spare wood, arrowheads and feathers in stock. As Aven pushed aside the tent flap, he stepped out into a small yard separated from those around him with various lengths of wooden board and crafting tables. He first went to a pile of long and thin boards to his left, about his height and thick as his palm, dragging the topmost piece towards until it clattered to the ground. Aven tried once to lift it up, but after raising it barely to his knee he realized he would need some help.


    “Oh.” Aven stopped what he was doing and dropped the plank, turning around to the perfectly capable golem behind him. “I forgot that I have you. Carry this to the nearest table?”


    Aven’s golem simply looked on, unfazed by his master’s questions. And while Aven wasn’t surprised at the lack of reaction, it did dispirit him. Unlike the creation of a golem, which was relayed to a Nepol child since birth, actual instruction of the creation was left unsaid. They created beings whose sole purpose was to follow commands, and so any study of that field was left until an apprentice could create their own golem.


    Slumping his shoulders, Aven knew the reason he had yet to learn it was his inability to create a golem. While his peers had finished sculpting their third or fourth golems for specialized purposes, and had moved on to study the way constructs interpreted commands, he was still struggling with getting his first golem to move a simple plank of wood.


    “Even if I am a failure,” he repeated, the words of his mother ringing in the back of his head as he clenched his fists and faced his golem, “I have nowhere else to go back to. I at least have one golem, so the least I can do is get it to listen. From the little Creator Fernon instructed us on the subject, for immediately after activation, I know that the orders must be concise and specific. Let us try this again.”


    “Golem. Pick up the plank of wood to my left and carry it to the table on your right.”


    The construct remained still. A summer breeze blew threw the village with the golem remaining motionless, and Aven bit his lip in frustration.


    “Fine, I will shorten it. Golem, pick up the plank of wood to my left.”


    At this the golem finally moved, reaching down with one gray stone arm and easily lifting the more than forty pound board. Once it was in hand, the golem turned to face Aven and whacked him in the face with the plank.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    “Ouch!” Aven held a hand up to his now red cheek, but couldn’t stop the small smile that formed. “Again, ouch, but that is at least progress. Now,” he began, moving a fair distance away to ensure he was not hit again, “walk to the table on your right.”


    Through a series of short and specific orders, Aven managed to teach his golem how to move wooden beams. While magical constructs followed orders, they weren’t entirely without thought. If a Creator ran their golem through enough tasks, the magical servant would eventually learn to recognize the entirety of orders. That is how golems could operate without continual oversight, like the train of luggage totting constructs from before, but every Creator worth their salt would check in on their creations’ progress to ensure that they were acting accordingly.


    Now with a positive supply of wood at his beck and call, Aven got to work cutting the pieces down to size. A board as wide as both of his hands needed to be split vertically into more than ten smaller, square shafts. Taking a stick of charcoal and running his palm against the side of the board as a brace, Aven drew several straight lines down the entire length. Once he had a number of mostly parallel lines, he unscrewed the table clamp on the side of the work bench before slotting the board in horizontally. The clamp was threaded, a groove running down the spiral shaft connecting the table to the wooden block, and it held the board in place through tension after Aven screwed it shut. Testing the board to ensure wobble was minimal, he grabbed a saw hanging from a rack and went to cutting the board.


    A half hour of sweaty, tiring work passed when Aven pushed and pulled the metal blades through the wood, but he now had a pile of thin, square shafts. Leaning all but one to the side of the workstation, Aven once again clamped the piece of wood before retrieving a plane and setting to work smoothing out the shaft. A plane was a two-handed tool with a blade of metal angled downward on the bottom that a woodworker pushed across wood to shave the topmost layer. Aven was attempting to smooth out the corners of the shaft, changing its profile from a square to circle, while also whittling it down to the appropriate size for an arrow. A little over another half hour later, Aven was left with a pile of wood shavings at his feet and thirteen useable arrow shafts.


    “Well, that could have gone better,” he admitted as he picked up three arrow shafts. He had either cut too deep with the plane or hit an imperfection in the wood, and now they were only good for firewood. “Father is not a fan of wasted wood, but mother was complaining about kindling the other day.” Aven saw that his golem, as usual, had remained motionless. But this time, he was thankful for the lack of a reaction. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” Aven said with a smile.


    By the time the sun had reached its peak, Aven had finished with four boards worth of arrow shafts and had contributed to his mother’s kindling greatly. He did admit that his golem had made the work go quicker, as he no longer had to walk to and from the workbench once he was completed with a task. However, with his work done for the day, he hurriedly grabbed a lunch of dried fruit and yesterdays bread. He wanted to make sure he was gone before his parents returned, but remembered that he would be scolded if he took his golem with him. Leaving it at home, he spent the rest of the day listening to Creator stories and an evening course with Creator Fernon. It was so late in the day when he returned that he did not spare a glance at his golem and went straight to bed. If he had, he may have seen its repeating its actions from earlier in the day, as well as a few that it only could have learned from him.