Nothing mattered anymore, so Sheilah walked away from her home.
She’d eaten outside because it was convenient to eat her meal outside while she worked on her weapon. She knew what it looked like, was aware of the social implications, but she didn’t care anymore.
It probably hurt her father’s feelings to be seen like that, but since nothing mattered, she dismissed it from her mind.
She wasn’t certain what did matter, so she let her mind wander as she wandered the Redstone.
She wasn’t certain how long it would take for the wingbones to cure properly, but she was certain that once they’d cured, she could try using the bow she’d crafted. How strong would it be? Could she kill a dragonling with it? A dragon?
Ever since that night, that night her sister had died, that night that her ancestors had appeared and none of them had even looked at her, Her families’ weapons felt strange in her hands, as if they refused to be used by her.
Her knife was something that had been made from a broken chunk of dragon tooth that had been chipped away when her great-great-grandfather Adlan had made his sword. It was later fashioned into a knife that anyone could use.
“Are you fighting with your family? With Davian?” She was asked when she approached the forge. Today it was her turn to work at the forge.
She stared vacantly at the smith for a while, not comprehending, and then turned back to the bellows she was supposed to be working and got to work.
It would take time to explain that she was working outside and it was more convenient to eat outside while she worked.
She would have to explain to the smith what it was she was working on, perhaps even show it to him. There was no point in it, so she swallowed her words and worked the bellows.
The smith shrugged and went back to work.
*****
Down at the lake, there was a boar that was known for its ferocity and stubbornness. It was known to many as ‘Longtusk’, but Davian referred to it as ‘Boarzilla’ for reasons he kept to himself.
It was much larger and heavier than the boars that the Clans had tamed, and everyone had learned to keep a healthy distance from it, lest they incur its wrath.
Clan legend said that no one had ever been able to successfully hunt it, and from her vantage, she could see broken-off arrowheads and spearpoints embedded in its tough, leathery hide. It took absolutely zero shit from anybody, and had killed several people who had tried.
Sheilah eyed the monstrous beast from her perch atop a stony outcrop for a while, and satisfied, took from her pouch a coiled bit of thin, twisted strip of dragon wing webbing and tried to string her new dragonbone bow.
Stringing her bow took every ounce of strength she had, and she was only able to do so because the bowstave the bones were lashed to was flexible enough to allow it. Once the sinew was affixed to the long, thin, and somewhat flexible wingbones for a bowstring, she lay an arrow across her new bow and discovered that she’d need to make newer, longer arrows for it.
She tested the draw, and discovered that it had a much stronger pull than she was used to.
She tested herself; drawing and relaxing the bow over and over again, getting used to its pull. Eventually she sighed, frustrated. She wasn’t nearly strong enough to draw the bow on her own. She tucked her feet into the grip of the bow, nocked an arrow, gripped the bowstring in her hands and then sat back, which drew the bow as far as the short arrow would allow.
She lined up her shot, and when ‘Boarzilla’ came into her sights, she released the bowstring and watched as the arrow sailed across the intervening space.
The arrow smashed through Boarzilla’s head, shot through the other side, and disintegrated in a spray of shattered wood, blood, and fletchings.
She rose to her feet, shouldered her bow, and eyed the collapsed wild pig with a numb surprise, watching it as it bled out down near the lake.
“It wasn’t nearly as fearsome as everyone made it out to be.” She muttered, unaware she’d spoken aloud.
*****
She went down the slope to check her kill, mind turning inwards, already reliving the moment when the gnoll forced itself on top of Caidi, burying her under its massive weight.
When she got down to the hulk of the body, she grimaced. The boar was unbelievably massive. It would be nearly impossible to get it home on her own.
She cut its throat and let the blood run as she considered how to get it back home, then tied its feet with a bit of rope and gave it a tug. It moved surprisingly easily for something of its weight. Was it lighter than it appeared?
She tucked one of its hindlegs over her shoulder and stood experimentally. It was unbearably heavy, and there was no way she was going to be able to carry it herself.
“Need some help?” Fialla asked solicitously, appearing next to Sheilah as if she’d been hiding in Sheilah’s shadow.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
‘Sheilah’s Shadow’ they called her because of the way she’d constantly chased after Sheilah, practically since birth.
Fialla struggled with her portion, and the two of them dragged the gigantic boar of legend away from the lake and back to the Terrace of the Dragon.
“What... is that?” Mayrin asked, her face in a cool, disapproving grimace as Fialla and Sheilah dismantled it.
“You should have seen it! “ Fialla exclaimed. “Sheilah took out Longtusk with a single shot from her bow!”
“Your father will need to hear of this.” Mayrin muttered, and then sighed. “We didn’t have any plans to do any boar-slaughtering... though I suppose an exception can be made for such a beast.”
She drew her own dragontooth blade and bent to work, indifferently pushing up her sleeves to prevent blood from getting on them.
“You should know that wild boar will be tougher and harder to eat than the ones we have in pens in the valley, so it will take longer to cook.” She explained crisply.
Sheilah continued cutting apart the giant boar silently.
*****
The death of Boarzilla- Her father called it Boarzilla for so long to his family that they couldn’t help but call it anything else- caused something of a stir in the tribe, and so an impromptu feast was planned, portions divided and handed out to the other families that made up the tribe.
Sheilah kept trying to leave, but Ladria kept a firm grip on her, and made certain she remained throughout the whole thing, something Sheilah resented.
After dinner her parents sat her down next to one of the large earthenware jugs they used to store their water, gave her a bucket and a handful of rags.
“You’re starting to stink. Wash yourself.” They commanded, and so she did. She could hear the conversation they held over her head as if she wasn’t even there, and wondered what it meant.
“So was it really an adult dragon?” Ladria asked Davian. “How did it get so far into the Redstone?”
“Nearly full-grown, I think. Great-grandfather Adlan would know better; he was something of an expert.” Her father replied.
“So, she...” Mayrin cut in worriedly.
“It’s too early to tell. We should keep an eye on her for the time being.”
“...and ‘Boarzilla’?” Ladria asked.
“I dunno.” He replied simply. “Just testing out her new bow?” He offered with a laugh. “It’s fantastic, by the way. Incredibly strong pull.”
“The tooth?” Ladria asked as Sheilah splashed water over her head.
“I’ll take care of it. Just keep an eye on her in case the worst happens.” He decided.
Supervision. She didn’t much like that. Children were rarely supervised once they started hunting dragonlings. It was part of the transition into becoming an adult. By the time you learned to hunt a dragonling, you knew how to do your chores, how to arrange your own schedule so that you could take care of your responsibilities and balance them against your hunts.
In the early mornings, there were chores. In the late morning, you took a turn at helping around the camp. Afterwords, you were free to hunt until the early evening, at which point there was clan or tribe storytelling, the melee, dinner, there was some time that the family talked about things that needed to be said, and then everyone went to bed before it started freezing.
Supervision meant that she was no longer capable of being responsible for herself.
*****
If she’d lost the independence that everyone else had, then she’d there really was no meaning to anything.
Nothing truly mattered anymore.
She awoke the next day in the early morning, before anyone else. She dressed quickly, quietly, while everyone else in the tent was still wrapped in their sleep, huddled in their beds against the cold.
Being sent from your parent’s bed was itself an unspoken rite of passage. ‘You are old enough to face the cold of the Redstone nights on your own.’ How long before even that was taken from her?
She left the tent and looked up at the stars for a moment, breathing in the crisp, dry air. She exhaled fog, picked up her gear, shouldered her bow, took a quiver of arrows, and walked away from the camp.
Twenty minutes later, she’d walked away from her tribe. Several hours after that, she’d left the Dragon’s Terrace and the Clan.
*****
The Redstone was vast, housing a number of separate Clans, each with their own territories, each clan composed of any number of individual tribes. The further one headed north, the more sparse and empty the land became, and the more deadly the land. All sorts of things came from the Ashlands to the north, but they weren’t the only things that could kill.
*****
Dragons, dragonlings, and hatchlings all liked high places. Barring high places, they took any place with a vantage, a place where they could bask in the sun and look down upon everything. Dragons were at the pinnacle, the apex of everything, and just as their position was determined at the top, so was the places that they liked to haunt.
There were plenty of cliffs and buttes that could house a dragonling, and Sheilah herself sat on a tiny cliff ledge that was covered in dragonling sign, furrows cut out of the rock by their claws.
She herself was busy leaving her own sign, carving her clan sigil into the side of the tiny perch she was on with a fingernail when a dragonling crawled out of a niche in the rocks and greeted the world with a roar that echoed and reverberated against the cliffs. It was followed by a puff of flame, and then the dragonling began looking for food.
In this area, ‘food’ was likely to be goat.
Sheilah herself had eaten part of the goat that she’d staked out on the ground below in the hopes it would attract a dragonling.
Dragonlings weren’t scavengers, but the kill was fresh, it would draw their attention.
She slowly and carefully nocked an arrow to her bow as the dragonling drew closer so that she could get a clear shot. You had to be unfailingly precise when you used a bow against a dragonling- you had about one good shot against them before they turned their fury upon you.
“Patience makes a great hunter.” She muttered quietly to herself, unaware that she’d spoken aloud. “Sometimes the best hunts happen when you do nothing at all except wait for them to come to you.”
The dragonling moved over the ground with a sinuous, snake-like slither, its wings taut against its body.
This one was the size of either a very large wolf or a very small donkey. “A size I’m most familiar with.” She whispered to herself as the dragonling chased away other predators and scavengers with two long jets of flame.
A little closer and the dragonling would be within range.