Soft green grass enveloped the girl in a warm embrace. The sun’s rays gently washed over her body, slowly but surely expelling the last vestiges of cold from her core. The distant roar of rolling waves reached her ears and slowly began coaxing the girl from her rest.
Half awake, she stretched her arms across the ground and absently fiddled with the blades of grass surrounding her. It was a sensation that was soothing, yet oddly novel to the girl. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt the warmth of the sun on her skin. She took a deep breath and settled back into her resting position.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this relaxed in my whole life.
“Pachka, you can’t sleep forever, you know,” a tender voice chided. That’s what you think, the girl retorted in her head. The game was on. Never one to back down from a challenge, Pachka turned away from the voice and shut her eyes, taking care not to move too suddenly. She knew her own weaknesses better than anyone, and her inability to stifle a smirk would spell certain defeat.
She heard the crunching of grass as her opponent danced nearer. The gray behind her eyelids grew a few shades darker as the challenger leaned down in front of Pachka’s face.
“Oh dear! It seems my Pachka has gone and died!” The words came to her ears from a sweet voice in a tone altogether too cheery for the message they carried. Pachka knew it was only a matter of time before her weakness reared its head, especially since she couldn’t see what the voice’s owner was doing.
Her imagination was running wild with the myriad possible melodramatic gesticulations that her opponent could be acting out to supplement the performance. “And just when all of her little urchin friends were about to go into town! Oh, what am I to tell them?”
At this Pachka’s eyes involuntarily shot open. She instantly regretted the action and silently cursed her lack of willpower. Only a brief second of stewing passed before a finger cheekily prodded the middle of her forehead, erasing the girl’s petty anger with herself.
“Thank goodness she’s alive!” chuckled the victor. She was tall and thin, with pale skin, long hair whiter than snow, and deep red eyes. She wore a plain blue dress and—uniquely among the people whom Pachka knew—a dark veil over her head. Though in her early twenties, the adults of Norolensk considered her quite young and undeserving of the common respect afforded other members of the community. The children of the village—Pachka most of all—considered her quite old and therefore revered her as a font of ancient wisdom.
Pachka giggled as she looked up at the woman behind the veil. “How did you know where to find me, Ulre?” she asked. Ulre frowned in mock disappointment as she stood up from her crouched position. “I would have hoped my Pachka would have figured out that I know everything by now.”
She then clasped her hands behind her back and turned away, heading back to the road leading into the village. “Hurry now. The other urchins are growing very impatient, and you have a job to do!” she called back to the girl still sitting on the grass.
Pachka sprang up at these words and ran towards the road, pausing only briefly to admire the indentation left in the grass by her supine figure. It wasn’t long before she caught up with her older sister. The two were not in fact related, but an even younger Pachka had unilaterally declared the relationship many years ago, and Ulre good-naturedly accepted the title.
Clumsily imitating the mannerisms of the elder girl, Pachka asked in a voice that tried (but failed) to mask her eagerness with coolness, “Are you coming with us today?” Ulre smiled softly and shifted her gaze to the sky above. “I would if I could, but someone has to clean the Temple today.”
After reflecting for a moment (but not long enough for Pachka to become visibly disappointed) she added wistfully, playfully, “I just hope my Pachka doesn’t get into too much trouble in Smyrnogorsk.” The younger girl rose to the challenge with a smug grin. “If only we could have warned her in time…” she replied, mimicking Ulre’s tone. Ulre chuckled, and the two followed the scent of seawater carried on the summer breeze to their hometown.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The trip back into Norolensk didn’t take the pair very long. After all, it was only a few hundred paces to the bend in the road, and from there it was only a few hundred meters to the outskirts of the village. The Temple of Walvod sat just within the bounds of what most people would consider to be the village proper, set atop a small hill overlooking the black cliffs which separated land from sea. The building itself wasn’t overly impressive by most standards, but it was quite the sight to behold when compared to its surroundings. The bleak cliff faces to one side and simplistic wooden architecture to the other made the gray stone columns and bright religious frescoes of the open-air construction stand out.
The pair said their farewells as Ulre went to attend to her duties and Pachka to hers. The others were likely gathering near the path leading out of Norolensk on the other side of town. Pachka figured she could make it there in the next five minutes or so, sooner if she hurried.
As she made her way to the main road, Pachka marveled at the amount of people out and about. Norolensk was not normally so crowded, but the ritual and festivities of the next day had already attracted many visitors. The village had been the site of the knighting ritual that took place on the morning of the summer solstice every year for as long as anyone could remember.
What began as a private, somber ceremony in days of yore had evolved over time into an extravagant day-long festival beginning at the Temple at sunrise with the formal conferring of knighthood on the squires and ending with the assignment of the newly knighted youths to their Orders at nightfall. Most of the day, though, was dedicated to song, dance, and drink in their honor.
Even so, there were many more people present for the occasion this year than Pachka had ever seen before. Partly, she thought, this was because a native of Norolensk—her brother, Kuz—was among those being celebrated this year, inspiring the locals to put a little bit more effort into the festival. In reality, it was entirely due to the fact that Crown Princess Zjera would be attending, and the village elders were determined to impress her.
Pachka turned the final corner and saw the other children preparing for their journey. In keeping with tradition, they would march to Smyrnogorsk so they could accompany the knights-to-be on the final leg of their journey to the Temple of Walvod for their night-long prayer vigil before the ritual. Also in keeping with tradition, Pachka was the last of the children to arrive.
“You’d better be grateful for our patience,” spat a boy about her age. “Shut up, Lorton,” Pachka snapped back, throwing up a rude gesture. The two had never quite gotten along, and both of them took any opportunity they could to reprimand the other.
“Is it really too much to ask for you to get along until the end of the festival tomorrow?” Rhoniyev, a boy a couple of years their elder, had always been the diplomatic sort. Although the treaties he mediated between Pachka and Lorton seldom lasted more than a few hours, he seemed to enjoy his role well enough. Given the occasion, though, even Rhoniyev seemed a little tense.
The two quarrelers reluctantly grumbled their acquiescence (for the time being) in light of the occasion, and Rhoniyev smiled at the now fully assembled group. “Well, now there’s seven of us and seven of them. It’s nice when things work out like that,” Rhoniyev declared. “I reckon it’s time we set out.”
With that, the squires’ escorts started along the road to Smyrnogorsk. It wouldn’t take long, two hours at most, before they stood before the gates of the town and could finally lay their eyes on this new class of warriors.
The others eagerly began to chatter amongst themselves, wondering what they would look like. Maybe there was a tall and brawny man with long red hair and built like an ox, who only carried a shield into combat. Tolte, a young mousy girl, rattled on about a knight she saw in her dreams, a black-haired woman wearing a blindfold who could somehow tell exactly where her enemies’ blades were positioned and counter them perfectly.
Pachka paid no attention to the speculations of her peers. It didn’t matter how impressive or unique any of the other six squires were. This year, the gods had chosen which one she would attend on the road back to Norolensk for her, and to her mind, they couldn’t have chosen better.
Like as not, he wouldn’t be the tallest, or the strongest, or the most skilled of the bunch. But Kuz always had a knack for turning desperate situations to his advantage, a valuable quality in any warrior—and Pachka could hardly wait to see her brother for the first time in five years.
