Arun Yang
                                                                                   My adventure in Talamone castle
     "Henry, Caroline, come breakfast’s ready."
     As my mother called, both my sister and I steadily walked along across the courtyard into the dinning hall.  For we were not very hungry, but if we didn’t come, my mother thought we were showing disrespect.  As we walked into the dinning hall, I could smell a delectable scent of chicken.  While I was eating this, I felt badly for the children in my class, because their fathers did not make enough money for them to eat on a consistent basis.  But we didn’t have that problem because Bruce, our father, was the General of the Army that was the second most powerful army in Sicily.  Because of this he was paid a great deal for his efforts.  My father stood proud and tall, for he was five foot and ten inches, he was a very respected member of the community.  He was strong, smart, and very gentlemanly.  I admired him very much. For when I grew up I wanted to be just like him.
     As the day went on, Caroline and I decided to open the new game that Helen, our mother, had gotten us.  It was brand new, and the silver from the game board shinned as if it had been washed a hundred times.  As we were playing in the yard, we heard this loud noise and chanting.  Suddenly our father came running into the house and said,
    "Helen, the neighboring barbarians are raiding our village"
     My mom went into a state of shock, as she said in shock
    "What are we going to do Bruce?"
     "Well we must go to the nearby castle.  Helen start packing up our things, and we'll ride the horses to the castle.  The king and I have prepared a meeting.      I'll be back at 6, get everything prepared so we can leave at 7.
     My sister was baffled by all of this.  But I understood what had happened, for I was small but I was wise.  She was very confused on what this meant.  So she rushed to our mother and asked her,
     "What's wrong mother?
      She hesitated, it seemed as if she trying to think of a delicate way of saying it.
     "Darling, she said, the barbarians from the village next to us, is attacking us.  So we must go to the near by castle and stay there, and then Daddy and his soldiers must fight him off."
     My sister, the poor thing, broke down on the floor and started crying, she said
      "Why mommy why?  I don't want to go to somewhere else! I like it right here!
     The tears from her eyes fell down as if the world had ended.  My sister was very sensitive about these kinds of subjects.  My mom replied to this by going over to her and confronting her saying things like its ok.
     Finally it was 6, and all of us had been packing our things.  As our father walked in, he looked very serious and sad, and said
    "Helen, it’s worse then we had previously thought, the barbarians have joined with the strongest army in Sicily!  Helen we might loose this war."
     "No Bruce, don’t think like that!  If you believe you can Bruce, then you are more likely to succeed."
     Soon after this we started to walk toward the castle.  The road we walked on had a rocky clay surface.  We walked about 30 minutes but we finally ended up at the castle.  It was called the talamone castle, it was right on the waters edge and was beautiful.  But when we got in the castle it was completely different from what I imagined it to be.  I thought that there would be marble floors, ceilings, and stairs, but instead there were stone floors, ceilings, and stairs.  But the good thing about it was, that all my friends from school were there.  We were playing in the courtyard, when we heard this loud noise.  It sounded like the angry mobs my father had to deal with.  But it wasn’t an angry mob; it was the barbarians my father was talking about.  There were hundreds of them were running up with torches, spears, and all these other weapons.  It was scary, and everyone was in the state of shock, even grown men were on the floor crying.  My father was giving orders to everyone, and even he was a little nervous.  It was very late at night, they were telling all the women and children to go to sleep.  After we got up in the morning, we I had seen that about 20 of the men had been on the floor lying dead.  It appeared as though they were hit with arrows.
     Over a couple of days the same thing had happened, we had lost about 25% of our men, but they had lost about half, which made the numbers pretty even. There were dead men everywhere, and it was a very scare sight.  Most of our food supply had run out, and most of us were getting sick.  The facilities were getting dirty.  But our father had been thinking up a plan where we would attack once, and try to kill them off.  It became the time for his army to attack, and so everyone got tense.  Finally his army lashed out and attacked, the other army was baffled, and not ready for the attack.  As I watched my father kill of people, it was inspiring, because I knew he was strong and brave, but I never knew he was such a good fighter.  In the end, our army had won!  We had this big celebration, and so we returned home.  When I got home I thought write a story about my adventures, so I started with our mother calling us to breakfast.