Slight, autumn vale winds tore across the open pastures of Greymoon, ragged purple mountain peaks laced with new snow stood heavy on the horizon, the pastures flat and green before the great woods that creep darkly to her toes.
Shadowless figures chased across the training courtyard, a stone cement slab rose from the ground by long wooden pillars sliced lengthways down the centre, scarcely a foot from the grass.
The opponents fought without armour, their pale tunics loose around their wiry frame as they danced the dance of the Maheedra, pressing no flesh with their broken sticks and rods of metal, and not so much as the swish of hair in the windless morning would betray their presence; no sound of a footfall or panting breath.
He saw them all, with pale blue eyes, a water insect trailed its surface, shimmering ripples across the still dark waters, he saw the giant catfish too, and water spiders beneath their bowers, and what he saw he painted, with water he drew from the pool, all shades seeming to meld into one.
He could smell the aroma of sweet sweat as they fought
The silk would hear the swishing of lethargic thighs, but there was silence, and the master at arms did not move his eyes from the pool, from his watery canvas, his wrist dabbing in colours, and drawing loosely to fill the white.
Her name was Tal, he could see her know, lying in the shade of a Redwen oak, her little head bleeding through the ears.
He remembered her eyes, like old grey ice, staring and not seeing, as they picked her up and bore her on horseback to the North. She had been six then, though he could never be sure. He remembered those eyes before the shock of golden tresses, the shadows caught deep in her unseeing irises. She would never again see, and when she did speak, she would know more manoeuvres of the dance than she did words, or so it seemed, for, in truth, she rarely spoke at all.
I can reach it, she spoke, and blinked, raindrops collecting on her full lashes.
Master Elias had taught her to observe through each of her senses, that in order to be one of the Maheedra, she must recognise each of them being equally as important as the one she had lost.
The silk can hear? Are they wearing magic pants or something? (Well this is fantasy so I suppose hearing pants are possible . Actually that'd probably make a good comedy... hmm..)