I want you to imagine just for a moment. The knights lining up as the dragon attacks the castle. Each of them side by side, armor gleaming silver and gold in the blinding sun. They draw their swords with a resounding shing and then they charge forward at the creature yelling the battle cry "For the North!"

Well that's what I want to be, it's what I've always wanted to be. They say that the Royal Knights of the Northern Kingdom are the best in all the land. The elite.

I wish I could tell you what it was specifically that got me interested in them but to be honest with you I love everything about them. I love the idea of waking up each day and donning the armor. My armor, and my sword and my shield. I'd wear it and patrol the city, make sure its citizens were safe, and then when called for I'd join my brothers and sisters in arms, and we would fight whatever menace was attacking the peace of this land.

That's my dream.

The only problem with my dream, as everyone is so kind to remind me, is that it's five hundred leagues away. Yeah, long fayring way, isn't it?

It was just my luck to be born on the wrong side of the fayring continent! It's not just the distance though. It's the bandits, and the monsters, and the rivers, and the mountains, and the storms and the everything else in the world that wants to stand in my way.

I hate to be this way, but I wish I wasn't born a farmer's daughter. I'd never tell Dad that, I love my dad but... I can't help but long for something we don't have. By the gods I feel guilty about it too, and I've tried to stop feeling that way, but I just... I just can't.

My family has always worked really hard for everything that we have, and it's not much, not really. I'm not complaining about my lot in life because we certainly aren't the poorest in town, but not the richest either.

We make it, that's what we do, we get by and that seems to be fine for Mom, Dad, and my sister. I'm sure they wish things were better, that they had a house on the beach, and that they'd fix the broken cobblestone in the road. If the crops were doing better, we wouldn't have to struggle as much.

I wonder sometimes If I should just run away, If I should just go, write the folks a note and leave the village because If I could make the trip, if I could make it to the North Kingdom, and If I could become a knight, I could return home with bags of gold. We'd never have to farm again.

I don't know, it's just a bunch of thoughts. Just a bunch of dreams.

The problem is those dreams are tempting. I can feel them pulling at me, tempting more than any sin I could face.

All of a sudden, I'm hearing my dad's voice, and that pulls me out of my visions of grandeur. Fayr, I forgot to feed the horses, he's going to kill me.

"Abigale," Dad calls out, sounding just as irritated as I knew he would be. I run to him. "Feed the horses, now. It's about to rain."

"Yes sir," I say sheepishly. I can see that he's been working hard all day. I can hear it in his voice, his tired voice. He brushes the sweat from his brow and begins making his way towards our little house.

It' a simple home. Single story, brick foundation, wooden walls and a thatch roof. It isn't much but it's always been enough for us to sleep in and be protected from the cold and rain when it comes.

Speaking of the rain, I run to the stables. I hadn't noticed the oncoming gray clouds, but I see them now. I need to get those animals fed or I could end up trapped in the barn for a little while.

I go to each of the stalls grabbing chunks of hay for each horse, and for the goats.

"Here you go Fennel," I say to our brown mare speckled with white. He neighs thankfully, and I grab another scoop of hay, just because he was nice. The goats on the other hand, they're a bunch of grumpy things so I decide to only give them the necessary amount to get by.

Outside I hear the thunder begin to rumble, and the first raindrops begin to fall from the sky as I scurry to finish my chore, but no sooner am I done than the rain comes pouring down.

The rain is so heavy our little house looks like nothing more than a dark silhouette. The rain clouds begin to move over our farm and darken the skies even more.

I don't feel like running out and getting soaking wet at the moment, so I go to a small shelf in the barn and grab a lantern. I light it up and hang it from a metal hook.

I don't mind being trapped in the barn to be honest. I pull up a bale of hay and sit on it, peering out into the downpour. Sitting and listening to the rain is a good way to think. I'm sure if I was at the house right now my sister would be begging me to play some game or give her attention. But here I have the freedom to sit and let my mind wander.

I wonder what it's like, wearing armor in the rain? I bet it's noisy when the drops hit the metal. Do you get as wet as you normally do if you're wearing armor, or is it some protection? I don't know.

I make a mental note to remember to ask a guard that the next time I'm in the village. I know the armor he has isn't quite like the North's armor, but still.

I sit there for a minute, letting the rain lull me into a trance before suddenly waking up. With a grin on my face I hop off of the hay bale and skip back to where I had gotten the lantern.

Below the shelf is a small chest, and inside I know Dad keeps a large knife. He doesn't want me to play with, has expressly told me not to, but... I glance back at the shape of our house through the rain.

I can barely see the lights coming through the window, so there's no way he could know what I was doing. I reach down and open the chest, carefully going through its contents before finding what I'm looking for.

I pull out Dad's knife and walk back to the light of my lantern. It was sharp, and a little rusty with a simple wooden handle. Nothing fancy, nothing that a Northern Knight would ever use, but If I was going to be a Knight one day I would have to practice.

I try a few different grips on the knife, trying to figure out which one works best. Then I strike a pose. I try a swipe with the knife, but my dress gets in the way. Stupid thing, whoever made it clearly wasn’t thinking that I’d want to practice sword fighting. I stretch my legs out and grumble to myself as the dress gets in the way once more. Glancing back towards the house I make sure that no ones around, then pull my dress up. I get it all folded up behind me and use some twine from the hay bale to tie around and keep it up.

The air was cool on my legs, and I took another nervous look around. If mom saw me with so much of my legs exposed, she’d have a fit and call me a Southern tribal woman.

“Haha!” I cry out triumphantly as I jump forward and swing the knife, pretending to slay a Bakiri soldier, or an attacking bandit. “For the North!” I lunge forward and yelp as my feet slip on the hay at my feet.

“Fayr… Fayr, fayr, fayr.” I curse as I look up and see the stream of red running down my forearm. That’s great, just great. The cut isn’t bad, but it still hurts like an Eastern breaking.

Outside the sky lights up and lightning tears across the sky, and thunder erupts so loud my ears ring. The storm is getting worse, maybe I do need to go to the house...

Fennel decides to neigh and stomp his hoof in response to the weather. Well, at least he’s not worried. Then I see him begin to pace back and forth in his stall.

“Hey, hey,” I say standing up and going to him. My cut hand still hurts, but I let go of it and reach up to pet his head. “It’s just a storm Fennel, it’s okay.”

“He’s not afraid of the storm, girl.” Comes a voice and I freeze.

There he is, a man, soaking wet and standing just inside the barn. He isn’t just a man though, he’s a soldier. I can see it in his face, and in how he stands despite the blood caked onto his armor. His face is cut, and his white tunic beneath the metal plating was stained red.

“Who… who are you??”I ask, my mouth turning dry.

“I’m-" He starts to answer but is interrupted by hacking coughs, blood splattering the barn floor. He stumbles forward and I hesitate in helping. I don’t know who this man is. Why is he here? Who did that to him?

Then he falls to one knee and I can’t help it. I rush forward, kneeling beside him, my eyes scanning his body.

It’s now that I notice the heavy pin holding his torn cloak over his shoulders. I reach out with a shaking hand and smear the blood off the pin with my thumb.

“Name’s Hastings.” He finally says, his voice sounding ragged and broken. His face pale, “First battalion Ranger from the Northern Kingdom.”

Holy fayr.