Melica groaned as she woke, her body stiff and aching from the hard wooden bed. She slowly crawled over her siblings, all nude beneath the rough thin sheet before stepping over the lip of the bed and dressing in a rough dress and braskskin boots. Melica yawned with a stretch before tending to the fire in the small house, the only true shield against the chill of winter. She slowly coaxed the embers back to life before increasing the tinder and sticks so that it would burn for the rest of the morning. At signs of movement she glanced up towards the three other beds, belonging in turn to her elder sisters, her parents and her elder brother. She watched briefly as her two female elder sisters picked themselves out of their bed before beginning to dress themselves. Melica returned to the fire and began to set up the cauldron so that a simple breakfast could be cooked. She stretched her muscles as she rose before stepping outside of their small home. In the shallow snow outside were a brace of Lepidin hung from a frame by their rear feet, gravity stretching them out to their full length. Melica lifted the skinning knife off the end of the frame before grabbing one of the small animals hanging nearby and sitting down on a wooden stool next to the offal bucket. With a practiced hand she severed the tendons on its limbs before disembowelling it into the bucket by her feet. She severed the innards before hanging the knife back up and attempted to remove the skin from the flesh.

“Struggling?” a female voice asked from behind her.
Melica looked up to see the younger of her two elder sisters, Arika, standing by her with a hand out to offer assistance. She sighed before handing the mammalian creature to her.

“I can actually do it on occasion, but it is difficult.” The younger sibling admitted before she heard a series of popping noises and a semi slick tearing sound signalled that the creature had been parted with its pelt.
“Here, you should be able to joint it yourself now.” Her sister offered before dropping the skinless creature into her lap. “Don’t worry, it will be the solstice soon and you are already in your fifteenth winter, so you will soon be undergoing your week of seclusion, once that is over, you can join me and Liuva in our bed. At least until any of us is married or chosen for a duty.”

The sisters went quiet for a brief moment before a question scratched its way into Melica’s mind.
“I know I have asked you before, but what is the seclusion like?”
“You have asked before,” her sister replied, picking up a second skinning knife of the stand along with a lapidine creature that she began to work on herself, “and it is the same answer: Unfortunately, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I remember the cleansing ritual, beforehand, walking to the chamber and entering the water of the seclusion cell, but beyond that, nothing until I awoke a week later.”

“But something must have happened.”
“Of course something happened, I received the blessing along with everyone else who attended.”

“But what exactly is the blessing?”
Melica looked into her sister’s glassy emerald eyes, seeing something move within them before Arika turned away.
“Unfortunately I cannot tell you, you have to experience it for yourself.” Arika replied, focusing on the task in her hands. “But as I said, It is not going to be far off for you.”
Arika separated the pelt from its host before looking back at her sister, “You will be fine. Just make sure you are up to date with your primers and then the blessing will be of greater influence with you. You might never know, you could gain a duty from it.”
Quietly the two of them returned to the task in hand, each pulling another of the mammals from the frame and dissecting them ready for cooking, until a large male figure appeared in the snowy treeline, a pole draped across his shoulders and covered with different fowl ready to be plucked.
Arika glanced up from her work to confirm who the figure was “Looks like Father is back.”

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Ermina pulled awkwardly at her clothes, feeling out of place at the role that was expected of her. It was not jut the clothes that seemed off to her: her entire body seemed heavy and alien to how she saw herself. It did not help that she was sweating after running two laps of her parent’s estate, exhausted already despite the warm up she leant on her knees for support before looking at her instructor.
“Alright boy. That should be enough for a warm up now.” Barked the sword master at his charge, “Go and grab your blade and then we will go through basic stances and strikes again.”

Ermina flinched at the word, boy, a word that was not her but unfortunately described the flesh that she wore. She both loathed and loved exercise, the focus of martial and the discipline it gave her usually drowned out the dissonance between her body and self, yet sometimes it made Ermina feel uncomfortable, highlighting her build as she moved through the attacks, counters and dodges of combat. Gripping the hilt of her blade as she lifted it from the rack she grave the sword a couple of test swings before returning to the training field. Already her sweat was beginning to chill in the frost filled air as Ermina approached her master. She looked at him as he gave her a nod to begin,

“Three strike combinations to begin with, keep the sword up, begin.”

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The priestess moved silently through the catacombs of the temple, stopping every few steps to check the individual cells that glowed in partially recessed rows around the large open room. Bar being their custodian she knew not what each of the ancient cells actually did apart from granting everyone the blessing. Glancing into each one her blessing some of the arcane secrets were revealed, yet the knowledge had been lost by previous generations, so all that she could do was ensure that each one was as clean as it could be before moving along to the next. She paused as the sound of heels on the ceramic and metal walkway caused her to turn. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom as the woman approached her in the strange twilight light of the under chamber. The priestess smiled as her guests form became clearer to her.
“Welcome Mistress Markuuara, how can I help you today?”