Rise of Amber Shards

Her Earliest Years

Her Childhood~

14~
The rays of the blistering sun slithered through the dark green leaves of the tree above her and danced across her face while she sat in the soft grass beside her mother. She looked almost like an exact replica of her. Velvet black fur with gorgeous amber stripes on her ears and claws. It was as if she was a mirror, except for her eyes, her mother's eyes were a dull tired brown. She had her father's eyes, shockingly ambitious amber, they caught the light wherever she looked and often received compliments about them. She and her mother were watching the young Jattocks of their district receive their wings. They were given them at a certain age or once they had made a clean kill on a hunt. It wasn't sub-adulthood, but they were old enough to roam on their own in their safe kingdom.

She had already received her wings, able to release them from the magical bind within her at will like the rest of them. They were the same colour as her eyes and were made of a dozen thin, transparent crystals. She never saw her mother's wings, she supposed she never had a reason to use them, and whenever she asked to see them she would reply with "Another time". Her fathers were a pair of 3 gigantic intense blue feathers that resembled a peacocks tail, arching from his back as he smiled beside the old and grey muzzled seer gifting the children, in his impressive uniform identifying him as a lord of their district of the kingdom. He had to be there, it was a sacred time. He was tall with fair brown fur and a scar running along the right side of his muzzle, a shredded right ear and a knocked tail, long white spines jutting from either side of the tail which matched the ones that lined either side of his head, starting from above his eyes and running back between his ears and stopping at the back of the neck. They continued watching the children being gifted with their wings and the ones who had already received them playing and clumsily fluttering around with older siblings and parents. She hated it. She couldn't fly like the rest of them, no matter how hard she tried. Her mother explained they perhaps they 'would grow in' and that 'she would be able to 'fly in time', while her father looked on disapprovingly.

Pacing through the forest with a small, poorly made spear in her right hand and a small woven satchel in the left, she headed off towards a shallow brook a few kilometres away from her tidy home on the edge of their district. It was just after the ceremony had finished for the Jattocks coming of age and she desperately needed to get away. She also wanted to go fishing, something she was fairly confident at. Her feet crunching the leaves softly beneath her bare, padded paws was soothing and her sense of smell caught smoke on the wind, which was probably just the farmers burning the fields for the new year of harvest. She continued on, hearing the feral birds singing to the suns warmth and their happiness from feasting on the fat bugs eating the green plants nearby.

She reached the brook and tied the satchel to the waistband of her loin cloth, then waded slowly through the water to the center of an open part of the shallows and waited for passing fish. Her patience rewarded her as she soon had caught a pair of simple trout. She giggled quietly at their flailing as she placed the pair beside her satchel and smacked both of them over the head with the blunt end of her spear, then took a drink from the clear water. She swore she heard a snap of a twig and a deep masculine curse, she was up within seconds facing the source of the sound and listened Intently, her large ears swaying to and fro.

She watched as a pair of brightly coloured, four eared, scaly brutes with swords slithered out from the dense brush. Blue and yellow Foldrynes. Their average height which was 6.5 feet tall, was nothing compared to these 8ft giants she noticed they were also broader than the ones she saw occasionally at the markets and they had hoods resembling cobras on either side of their necks. Their mean appearance assisted by the armour-like scales running from their neck down their chest and belly. She was no match for them, being a year past her gifting and only just grazing below the 5 feet mark. However if there was one thing she could do, it was run and climb. The only thing below the Foldryne's hips was a thick and long snake tail built with muscle, these ones, not only unable to climb, were also not built for speed, but for brawl. She could sense their eagerness to turn the brook's waters behind her red with her blood, so she acted first. Flicking sandy mud at their faces then grabbing her spear and sprinting off, arms pumping and adrenaline leaking into her veins. She could hear the two scaled brutes clumsily making chase after her and shouting out to each other, heavy accents hard to place despite their obvious race. She had to get home, and home was behind her two assailants. She darted to the right and as quickly as her small, childish limbs could, hauled herself up over a thick log and ran, circling back past the Foldryne pair and began to sprint her way back home, eventually losing them and only hearing their frustrated yelling in the distance.