four long years iabis father lasted in this fashion , in obsessed isolation , and his only interaction with the villagers and not all of them ; he seemed to prefer speaking to children was through his occasional mutterings , which concerned a group of heroes he called the people of the blinding stone and who , according to his repetitive rambling , would one day arrive to dispel once and for all the dangers of an endless , sunless winter and of another , this time fatal , famine , that still loomed from time to time .