Author's Notes: This is the result of a plot bunny which hopped into my brain late one night, while writing Boreas, and would not go away. Because I needed a break from Rebecca & co, I decided to give it a chance. This is the result. It will be going up more slowly, because I am rather fewer chapters ahead than I would like to be (and am diverting my attention between this and the next stage of Windwalker), but I will try to update regularly.

For those of you who have read this far into the Windwalker saga, many thanks for sticking with me, even as I rambled on, and I hope that this proves just as enjoyable a ride.

For those of you who have not read my other fics, two things: I hope that you enjoy this nonetheless, and I hope that, if you like this, you will take the time to give Windwalker (both parts) a fair shake. ;)

If you have read Windwalker: Boreas, the main character in this fic will probably be familiar to you. If you haven't read Boreas but have played SoU, you will recognize her home. If you haven't done either, that's fine - there'll just be more surprises in store for you. :D

As always, the characters who belong to Bioware remain Bioware's property - I'm just playing with them. Don't worry, I promise to clean them off afterwards.

Nadiya, however, is emphatically - even violently - mine.

With that said, let's go on with the show...

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1.

When I was only a child, my little brother Fayid stole my favorite doll and burned it in the cooking fire.

Her name was Hibah, which meant 'gift'. Our father had given her to me for my fourth nameday, soon before he died. I liked Hibah because her painted face bore what I imagined to be a mysterious smile, as if she knew a very great secret which she would share only with me.

When I found out what Fayid had done to her, I hit him with a stick.

It was not a very big stick, and I did not hit him half as hard as I could have, but still our mother was unhappy with me.

She fussed over Fayid's bruises and then called me into her tent. "Why must you behave so shamefully?" she demanded of me, wringing her hands. "Your father would not allow his daughter to comport herself in such a way."

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the ground-carpet in our mother's tent. It was red and gold and frayed at the edges. "Our father would not allow his brothers to steal his things," I answered sullenly.

"They are your brothers," she said sternly. "You must respect them."

"Why? Fayid does not respect me. He laughed at me!" I rubbed my eyes angrily. "He burned Hibah, and he laughed!"

Our mother's bracelets jangled as she lifted her hands to cover her face. "Oh, Nadiya, Nadiya. What am I to do with you?" she sighed, sinking into her chair. It was the only one I had ever seen, a prized thing befitting the wife of a sheikh, because wood was so rare in the desert and pieces so large could only be found in trade with outlanders. "Why will you never listen to reason?"

This made me even angrier. "Why will you never listen to me?" I cried. "Fayid had no right!"

Her words were quelling. "He had every right," she said. "Now, go apologize to your brother, or you will be confined to this tent until you realize the error of your ways."

I endured for a full two tendays before I finally gave our mother and Fayid my apology and she released me from my confinement.

I told her that I regretted what I had done, and that was true - I regretted that I had not beaten Fayid harder. That way, at least, I would have had the satisfaction of knowing that he had been punished for his actions, just as I had been.

He never was. Nor did he apologize, because he has the manners of a goat. All of my brothers do.

Our mother remarried not long after, to our father's younger brother, Hammad. I called Hammad 'uncle', because he was our uncle. He was not our father. Our father was dead, and Hammad always made strange quips that I did not understand, and he looked at me with a quizzical half-smile, as if something about me amused him. I would not be laughed at, even by the man who had inherited everything that had been his brother's, and was now our father and sheikh. I did not smile back.

We all grew older, my brothers and I. My brothers grew taller, but I did not grow very much at all, unless it was to grow wider. I did not look like my mother, who was tall and beautiful and as slender as a reed, even after bearing seven children. My brothers teased me about that, sometimes, and so, when our mother and Hammad were not looking, I kicked my brothers in the shins and pulled their hair until they cried.

Sometimes they told our mother what I had done, and I was punished accordingly. Sometimes, though, when I blackened their eyes or left them limping, they tightened their lips and said nothing. What could they say – that their sister, a mere, pudgy scrap of a girl, had beaten them black and blue?

I did not see why they should be so ashamed. I am the daughter of a sheikh, just as they are his sons. Like them, I am a descendant of the great al-Rashid, who stole the power of the phaerimm and used it to send the great lich-king Kel-Garas howling, like the dog he was, back to his tomb.

My blood is the blood of a warrior's, just like our father's, and his father's, and so on for all the generations of our tribe.

If only my brothers would admit it.

But they are goats. Every single one of them.

I am Nadiya bint-Musud. And I have far too many brothers.

As for sisters, however, I have only one.

Zebah.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Less than a year after our mother married our uncle Hammad, my sister, Zebah, was born.

She was small, like me, but she grew to be gentle and sweet and soft, which was not like me at all.

I loved her so much that it hurt, because my mother loved her, too, for all the ways in which Zebah was not like me. But that was not Zebah's fault, and it was not within me to hate her for it. I loved her like I loved no other living thing.

When Zebah was still very small, I found her sitting in our tent, playing with a ball of light that floated above the palm of her hand.

She looked up at me and laughed. "Look, sister!" she squealed, and spun the ball of light to me. It shone like a rainbow, and its colors splashed the tent's walls like water. "Look what I have done!"

I stared around me, horrified. "Oh, no," I whispered. "Oh, no, no, no-"

My sister's joy faded, a little. "What is it, Nadiya?" she asked.

Shock let loose its grip on me, and I ran to her, falling to my knees on the frayed ground-carpet and folding my hands over hers. "Put it out, Zebah," I begged. "Please, pet, put it out, before someone sees-"

The ball of light flickered and vanished. Tears rose in my sister's eyes. "I am sorry, Nadiya," she said contritely. "What is wrong? Why are you so upset? Oh, do not be angry with me, Nadiya, please-"

I took a deep breath and touched her hair. "I am not angry," I said. Tears burned behind my eyes, but I could not let them fall, because I was the strong one, and Zebah was the gentle one. "But you must never do such a thing, ever again. Promise me, Zebah," I said, cupping my hand against her cheek to keep her eyes on mine. "Promise me."

She nodded, mutely, but there was a question in her eyes. "W-why?" she asked tentatively. "Did I do something wrong?"

"You-" I did not know how to answer her, because she had done something wrong. She had done magic, which was an evil thing. Everyone always said so. But she was Zebah. There was no evil in her. If there was evil in either of us, it was in me, because I could never seem to do as I was told, and sometimes I just grew so angry, a thing which I was certain Zebah could never be.

I sank down beside my sister and buried my face in her hair. "What you did, Zebah…it will make them call you a witch, if they see it," I mumbled, my throat burning. And a witch or a sorcerer, among the Bedine, was a risk to the entire tribe. Who knew what curses their magic might bring, or to what evils they might turn to in their lust for power? They would be cast out, for the good of the tribe, and left to fend for themselves in the Anauroch.

My sister, I thought. She was the gentle one. She would never survive. My arms tightened around her. "Please, Zebah, promise me that you will never do that again."

Her face fell. "I promise," she said reluctantly, and lowered her eyes. "But it was very pretty, Nadiya," she murmured, with a mulish pout that was, for just a moment, very much like me.

I squeezed her shoulders. "Yes," I agreed reluctantly. "It was. But it was also very dangerous." Then I held her hands and stayed with her, in the tent, until our mother returned.

The next morning, I finished my chores as quickly as I could. I took the ripest of figs from the trees which grew by our oasis and spread them on a bed of palm leaves, so that they would dry in the sun. Then I pulled the heavy jugs of water from the oasis and hung them, still dripping, from the center pole of our tent. I rolled up the ground-carpets, carried them from our tent, slung them over ropes of woven sandgrass, and beat them free of dust and sand, one at a time. It was dull work, but then I pictured the face of our ancient enemy, Kel-Garas, in the weaving of each carpet. I imagined that my beating-branch was a gleaming scimitar, and that I was the sheikh's most trusted warrior, sent to fight against the great lich. Then the work went by much faster, and the dust rose like a cloud.

Once that was done, I snuck away from our mother before she could think of something else for me to do, and I hid in the branches of an ironwood tree near the edge of the oasis, so that I could watch my eldest brother, Ali.

He was practicing his swordplay with Hammad, both of them shirtless in the quickly warming air. The ringing of their steel was a familiar song, one which I had heard every morning for as long as I could remember. There were men gathered around the two of them in a loose semicircle, watching and joking and calling out advice to the sparring men. I would have liked to be among them, but I did not dare. Our mother's punishment would be the least of the shame I would have to bear, if I presumed to sit with the warriors.

So I hugged my knees to my chest and watched from afar. I could not look away. It was so graceful, the way they fought. If not for the sharp shiver of steel in the sunlight, you might have thought that they were dancing.

I noticed that I was not the only person watching. Ali was many years older than I was, and when he shed his robe and shirt to practice the sword, many of the younger – and even some of the older – women of our tribe found some urgent need to draw water, or to harvest fruit from the fig and pomegranate trees by the oasis, or to sit and pretend to weave baskets. I knew that they were pretending, because the baskets departed no larger or closer to completion than they had arrived.

I sniffed, and turned my head away. They were goats, as well. Ali may have been our future sheikh, but he was my brother, and I, for once, agreed with our mother. Those women had no shame.

Without thinking, I pulled a leaf from a nearby branch and began to tear it into tiny pieces, my eyes still on my brother and uncle. They were both sweating, though Hammad seemed fresher. He was also a head shorter and much stronger and stockier than Ali, who was as lean as a leopard. He proved it, too, when he left a thin red welt across Ali's chest in retaliation for a poor counter.

You swung too far down, and too hard, I scolded my brother silently. The move had left all but the tip of Hammad's sword free, but had left Ali's mired down by his side. He is too strong. You need to hit closer to the hilt, or he will recover too quickly.

Absently, I tore another leaf from the tree. Then, all at once, my blood went cold, and my hand went to my mouth in horrified dismay. The leaf fluttered earthwards, seeming to scold me for my thoughtlessness.

This tree is sacred. All of them were, in our oasis. Trees grew so rarely in the Anauroch that ones such as these were held to be blessed by the spirits, and were never to be touched unless to harvest their fruit, and then only after sprinkling the roots with water from the oasis, to make up for what would be taken. Spirits forgive me. What have I done? Oh, I was stupid, stupid, stupid!

I reached for my belt knife, fumbling it in my haste. Biting my lip, I opened my palm, and set the tip of my knife beneath my thumb. Stupid, I thought, and, squeezing my eyes shut, pressed down quickly and sharply.

Then, just as quickly, I twisted around on my branch and laid my bleeding palm against the trunk of the tree, my eyes tearing with the pain. I wanted to whimper more than I wanted to speak, but the gods and spirits of Mother Desert were known to be vengeful, and the words had to be said out loud if the spirits were to accept them. I am a descendant of al-Rashid, and it is only a little cut, I reminded myself sternly, and spoke. "Spirits of this place, take my blood as repayment for my act," I whispered. "I beg your forgiveness, and accept your anger as my due."

There, I thought in satisfaction. Then, because I did not want to risk angering the gods twice in one day, I wiped the blade of my dagger on my robes, sheathed it, and climbed down from the tree, wincing at the sting from my cut hand.

Once down, I shook my robes out so that they covered my legs again. If our mother found out that I had not only desecrated a sacred tree but had been seen exposing my skin to the world at large, I would never hear the end of it.

Someone cleared his throat, making me freeze in mid-crouch like a startled doe.

Ali smiled at me. "What a strange fruit to have fallen from an ironwood tree," my brother remarked, gently teasing. "What have you been doing all morning, little sister?"