(A/N: Thank you guys for the reviews, due to the more positive aura of the reviews, I have decided to post this next chapter. It is when Arya finds the egg, which in the actual book would be Eragon. But he's on his way to Gil'ead right now. SOOO….! I think he's a bit too tied up to be getting an egg just yet. Hehe… get it? Tied up? Haha! Anyway, enough of my ramblings! Here is my next chapter!)
A lumbering castle cast its shadow across the land. Battlements, and towers rise from the enormous walls. A massive gate stretched hundreds of feet high and thousands across. The castle itself sitting on a dull grey field, was so far from any life that not a single living man, woman, or child had ever gone to it. A comfortable silence settled on all that stopped to stare at the colossal structure.
Arya stretched her slender hand to grasp at the smoky cloud, from which the castle had been constructed. Small and wispy, but in her mind huge and substantial. Her fingers closed around the warm, empty, air and she felt strangely saddened by the lack of substance to the smoke. She always felt silly in thinking it so sad, and the smoke was not truly solid anyway. Wishful thinking, she remembered her uncle calling it. She was often prone to it in the shadows of the Spine.
A young girl of average build, Arya was not a stranger to these mountains. Her hands were covered in a network of thin scars, many from the work she did around her uncle's farm. Others came from her frequent forays into the mountain forests that grew around Carvahall. Arya was fond of hunting in the forest, using skills honed from years of practice.
Most would have told Arya to give up the idea of hunting, her being a woman and all that, but her uncle, Garrow, let her. His only condition was that she would hunt for the family, not just for sport. Arya glanced behind her, at her hunting supplies. A simple and worn yew bow sat unstrung in a simple buckskin tube, among her homemade arrows and bowstring. On her belt, sitting in a sheath, was a hunting knife. Boredom filled her head with a leaden weight. She stirred from her resting place, tamped out the fire, grabbed and strung her bow, and headed after the trail of her quarry.
The deer had led her deep into the Spine, further than she had ever been before, and the climate was harsh, freezing during the night, but only slightly cool during the daylight hours. Arya always hunted at night, it was when prey was least suspicious. With her bow in her hands, she tracked the deer in the twilight. Her target was a doe with a twisted leg, and she was surprised that the poor creature was still alive. In a small clearing further ahead, she smiled and knocked an arrow.
Lining up the arrow, she sucked her breath in quietly. Her sight lined with the left flank of the doe and she slightly relaxed her fingers on her bowstring. Suddenly a crashing sound exploded to Arya's right side.
The herd bolted at the explosion and Arya took her arrow, adjusting her aim, she fired at the doe. The slender maple arrow struck the doe in the ribcage, causing it to stumble, emitting a pained sound. Arya ignored the explosion still, and loosed a second arrow, planting this one right between the deer's ribs and piercing vital organs. The deer stopped moving and the final gasps of breath shuddered out of its body. It was only now that Arya investigated the explosion. Keeping an arrow knocked, ready for trouble or danger.
About twenty yards from the clearing where the dead doe now sat, was a patch of forest, burned and destroyed. The tree's needles had been blown off, and they rained down around Arya, filling her nostrils with the scent of burning pine. At the center of this small clearing, was a single stone of the most beautiful green coloration, Arya's bowstring remained taut and the arrow remained trained on the green stone.
The stone seemed to be unnaturally made, concluded Arya, whether by magic or alchemy mattered little. Arya had learned from the stories and fables to treat magic with caution. Allowing it and those who wield it distance.
Several minutes passed before Arya eased the tension off her bowstring, the arrow instead switching to her hand. Using the arrow Arya prodded the stone and stiffened, when nothing happened, she reached out and ran her hand over the stones surface. Astonished at its smoothness, she moved to pick it up and found that upon closer inspection the stone was not purely green. Veins of milky white crisscrossed the surface in no particular pattern. The stone appeared heavier than it was, Arya smiled at her luck. The meat from the doe, and whatever she could afford after trading the stone, would get her family through a significant part of the winter.
Arya slipped the stone into her pouch and returned to the deer. Skinning and cleaning the animal took very little effort on her part, as she had done it dozens of times. She secured the meat into a sort of bundle, and slipped it into the pack on her back. Slowed down by the welcome weight of the meat, and the stone, Arya made her way back to her camp. From there, she made her way back home.
(A/N continued: I know some of you want me to go through the whole book, while I have to admit that it would be cool, but I think that would be rather close to plagiarism. So I think I am going to write it alternating from Arya's and Eragon's POV. What do you guys think? Oh and P.S.: You guys who think I'll be changing everything to keep it switched, I wont be, but I did receive an interesting concept from one of my readers. That Arya's mother, Islanzadi, will be the former rider. I don't know if I will be, but it's interesting.)
