"Grant Me Your Grace" - The Tale of Shazhia's rite

Shazhia waded out of the water, the warm autumn sun quickly drying her bare skin. She paused, looking around her, unsure where next to go. When she had joined the group of Arathorians that afternoon, she had certainly expected nothing like the rite in which she was now involved. It was somewhat strange, more than a little barbaric, and she had never before experienced anything quite like it. In fact, the Arathorians themselves weren't exactly what she had expected, either.

As she stood, pondering her situation and trying to decide what next to do, she looked out over the shimmering water in front of her to a pair of trumpeter swans. Sleek and graceful, she sighed softly at their beauty, but stepped out of their sight, half-hidden behind a tree. The cob stretched out his huge wings as if warding away some unseen danger from his mate, ripples spreading out from where the tips of his wings touched the water.

Shaking her head very slightly, Shazhia turned away from the water. A swan would have been a noble animal for her rite, but did not quite seem fitting. She had to move on.

*
She walked slowly and cautiously through the trees, her bare feet making next to no sound on the grassy floor, but still she jumped a little at every sound, strongly hoping that she wouldn't run across anyone out for a stroll in Elwynn Forest. That would be a rather unpleasant surprise. It was such an odd feeling, wandering around naked in territory that was only vaguely familiar to her, with little idea of where to go.

The forest stretched on, and she continued to wander, growing slowly more comfortable with her surroundings and her own unusual circumstances. The nights were beginning to grow cool now that summer had faded away, though, and as the shadows grew longer from the trees around her, she began to think of some sort of shelter for the night. It had been a while since she had spent the night alone in the woods, and in the past she usually had a decent amount of gear, or a home to sneak back into when the night grew too dark.

She quickened her pace now that she had something specific in mind, looking for some dense foliage to protect from wind and keep off any night showers that might occur. Still, she felt almost entirely unprepared. When she had started off, she had felt a sense of determination and excitement, but now that she faced the task, it was daunting. She stopped for a while to think, leaning one shoulder against the smooth bark of an aspen tree. Was this road really the one she wanted to travel? Did she truly want to do this rite? She had worked hard under Chaplain Galenos’ attentive training, and had been enthusiastic to learn from the Arathorian regiment, signing herself on as a mercenary under their orders. This rite, from the short time ago that she had learned about it, had been her choice. Was it the right one? Other than discomfort and vague doubts, she had no reason to think it wasn’t.

Her thoughts turned to the statement that all the humans of the Eastern Kingdoms were once Arathorian. Hodain had said they were the first people to settle the land, and had spread to other places and tamed the land. Perhaps that was true, and it seemed like a good reason to be proud of the Arathorian nation, despite its current troubles. From what she had seen, they were a worthy group of men and women.

Pushing herself upright again, Shazhia brushed her fingertips across the gnarled bark of the aspen and smiled faintly. She could deal with the discomfort, and she had no doubt she would become stronger in various ways from this odd experience.

*
Night fell more quickly than Shazhia had expected. The days were getting shorter and the nights cooler, which didn’t seem to affect the forest animals at all. When the sun set, she could hear many rustlings, hootings, and the lonely howls of wolves which sounded in the distance. She huddled down closer into the small indent she had made in the ground, covering herself as best she could with dead leaves and grass.

The night dragged on at a snail’s pace. Fascination and fear mixed with the growing frustration she felt at her inability to sleep, though she knew it was needed. She had three days in which to complete the rite, and she was no closer to the solution than she was at the beginning.

After hours of lying restless and cold, Shazhia pushed herself into a sitting position, staring up at the bright moon above her. She let out a slow sigh, almost thinking she could see her breath in the night air, but when she let out another breath, could see nothing. She rested her chin on her updrawn knees, looking through the trees around her, able to see a fair distance despite the darkness.

A sharp snap of a branch sounded very close to her, and she froze, tense and silent. A soft crunch of leaves approached, and a doe stepped into view, following the faint path that she had noticed earlier in the day. The graceful animal grazed the grass around the woman’s small cluster of trees, seeming calm and unconcerned at the movement and noises of the other forest animals. Moments passed - Shazhia had no idea how long - and the doe lifted her head, her large ears rigid as she listened for sounds of danger.

The young woman stopped breathing, watching the doe as she listened to the soft thumping of her heart. She began to move one hand to her chest as if to quiet the beating, but stilled again as the deer turned in her direction, ears twitching. Neither of them moved for a long while as they stared intently at each other. Finally, the doe bounded lightly off, swiftly lost from sight in the faint glow from the moon. Shazhia let out a long, slow breath and relaxed her tense body, resting her forehead on one palm.
Eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

*
As the sun peeked over the hills, Shazhia lifted her head from her folded arms with a faint groan. “Ooh, that was pleasant,” she murmured with a heavy tone of sarcasm, moving slowly to stretch her stiff, cold limbs. “All those things I take for granted - food, bed... clothes.” She yawned, brushing her fingers through her hair to tidy it, and then shook her head with a half-hearted laugh, seeing little point to it. Twisting it back into a rough braid, she rolled her shoulders to loosen them, and then turned thoughtfully, carefully looking at the place where the doe had stood a few hours before.

After a few moments of quiet thought, Shazhia got to her feet quickly, and began to search around for resources that could be made into weapons and a trap. Her actions were decisive; she moved quietly and steadily, with purpose.

The majority of the day was spent in thought and preparation, but she also took some time to admire the peaceful forest around her. She munched contentedly on ripe, pink and yellow crabapples, following the animal-made path that wound its way among the trees, leading directly to her hiding place of the night before. She closed her eyes, turning to face the warm sun as a smile crept onto her face. The world looked so very different when the normal anxieties of life were taken away, replaced with the basic needs of survival. She found that beauty was very easily found in the depths of the forest, in a more raw form - sunsets over the mountains, beams of light slanting through the limbs of the trees, the unceasing call of chickadees and swallows, as they swooped from branch to branch.

*
When the shadows lengthened again, Shazhia crouched on her toes, running through her plan for the fifth time. She held a steady cord made out of reeds between her fingers, and buried it in under the loose dirt and dead leaves at her feet. Some of the plan’s success depended on luck, but she hoped that the practical preparation and thought that went into it would greatly outweigh the unpredictable factors.

After making the final adjustments to her trap, Shazhia hid herself again in her spot from the night before. When she began her planning, she quickly found some good thick mud that she kept spread over her skin, in hopes that it would at least partially mask her scent. The last thing she wanted was to keep away the beautiful doe.

She sat with her back against a tree, a sharp, jagged rock she had found and sharpened by the scar of a rockslide held loosely in one hand. Her body was tense, waiting, but her eyes were frequently closed and her lips moved in silent thoughts and prayers. The sun fell behind the mountains and it quickly grew dark. She lifted her head slowly, eyes now open and alert as she waited for her graceful prey.

Hours passed, the temperature dropped, yet Shazhia found she had no trouble keeping alert. The critical moments of her rite, Light... and Ancestors willing, were nearing. She began to shiver in excitement, fear, and cold, but forced her body to be still. Three reed-cords lay at her side, and she reached down very carefully to pick them up, doing her best to be silent. Her traps were crudely made, but perhaps they would hold out.

Eventually she began to fear that the doe would not come, that she had simply wandered randomly up the little path that meandered through the woods, and would never come again. Just as she began to drop her arm to the ground to let go of the rough ropes, she suddenly heard the soft crunch of leaves as something made its way toward her. The sound was quiet enough to be something agile and fairly small, so her heart began to hammer in her chest.

The traps were hidden under a thin layer of dirt and grass, and were meant to impale the prey with a spear once it fell, bound by the noose the hunter held, into a hidden pit. Shazhia had seen it done before as she had hunted a few times with her grandfather and brothers, but had never placed the trap herself, nor been without proper ropes and at least a knife, and in this case she had only a roughly sharpened stick and no pit into which to lure the animal. However, it was pointless to dwell on the details over which she had very little control.

After a few moments of waiting, listening to the soft arrival of the animal, Shazhia saw with gratitude and relief that the doe had come. The first of her concerns was no longer an issue. The graceful deer continued to wander slowly, grazing on patches of grass under the trees. She seemed restless, however, and did not settle on any one place for long. She often stepped near the traps, and Shazhia tensed even more, but for a while the doe’s movement continued to be erratic.

Clenching her teeth hard to keep from making noise in her frustration, Shazhia gripped the stone hard in one hand, holding the reed-cords in her other. The doe paused in her grazing and lifted her head at the close hooting of an owl, but soon went back to it. She stepped forward slowly, seeming to have finally settled down a little. Another step, a few more mouthfulls of the dry autumn grass, one more step...

The doe lifted her head swiftly, her ears tense as she heard the rustle of dry leaves. Shazhia took in a breath and held it, and then shot up into a standing position, pulling the cords taut as she did so. Her quick movement immediately set off the animal, but on of the nooses held, pulling rapidly tight around the doe even as she tried to bound off away from danger. A muted thump and the crack of the sharpened stick sounded as she hit the forest floor, hind legs held tight by the roughly-made rope.

Wounded by the length of wood, she still struggled relentlessly, blood staining the dark ground beneath her. The reeds snapped, though, and she stumbled to her hooves. Shazhia raced forward, jagged stone upheld in her hand, but the doe escaped with a clumsy bound. Letting out a faint, wordless cry in her dismay, Shazhia ran behind, branches whipping at her bare skin, catching in her hair, but she did not stop.

It was not difficult to follow the doe - the rough spear had pierced her lungs deeply, and she had lost her beautiful agility. She attempted to bound over a fallen tree, but crashed to the ground as her front legs collided with the still-solid wood. She lay on the grassy floor, eyes wide in terror and pain, the sounds she made wrenching at Shazhia’s heart as the young woman approached.

Walking forward warily, greatly slowing her pace, she let out a long sigh. When she was a couple paces away from the doe, she paused, but then covered the rest of the way in a quick step. The doe thrashed around, and Shazhia tried keep her distance from the hooves. With what little fire the animal still had in her, though, she kicked and squirmed as the woman got closer, trying and failing to get back to her feet. One of the kicks caught Shazhia off guard, lashing out to catch her full in the side, hoof meeting skin with a crack. Thrown backwards, the wind knocked out of her, she lay stunned for a moment, but then with a groan rolled painfully onto her knees. The deer’s struggles had gotten weaker, and Shazhia pushed herself up, moving over to kneel very carefully on the animal’s neck, having no desire to repeat the experience of being kicked. Whispering a very quick prayer, she brought the sharpened rock down in a fast, heavy stroke. Warm blood sprayed over her as she cut deep, a killing blow, and the doe’s struggles faded rapidly away.

Shazhia knelt still for a while, one arm across her cracked ribs and torn skin, and her other hand resting softly on the sleek pelt next to her, with her eyes closed and her lips again moving in prayer. After a moment, she reached up to touch two fingers to her forehead, to rest over her heart, and then reverently drop to touch the bloody neck beneath her. “Beautiful doe,” she whispered, “grant me your grace and your gentle heart. I do not take your life needlessly, but I grow in strength of spirit, mind, and body. May your own spirit travel to soft green meadows where no danger will ever come...

“Thank you.”

As I said before, I absolutely love it! WRITE MORE.




NOW.

<3

Agreed with the above post. As I told you before. It's amazing, I was drawn into the character from top to bottom. Loved it.