My first Tamora Pierce fanfiction! Its just a small fic on Sarra's troubles and how her life is going. I think its quite a nice little ficlet. Well, please R&R!

Saya1450

A Look Into the Mind of Sarralyn Salmalín
By Saya1450

Corus, Tortall
December 6, 478 H.E.
By Sarralyn Salmalín
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be the son or daughter of a legend, a hero? Many girls and women look up to Alanna the Lioness and Keladry of Mindelin as signs that woman can fight and be what they want to be. But have any of those women ever wondered what it would be like to be their daughters? Or how about King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, famed for revolutionizing Tortall? To be a royal child would be unbearably hard. I don't know how the princes and princesses can do it. Almost everybody believes that being the child of a hero is all fun and games. Believe me, I can tell you from personal experience that it's not.

Having lived all my life with people just seeing me for my parents and not for myself, I had eventually given up telling my new acquaintances my last name. I was sick and tired of people always exclaiming "You're the Black Robe and Wild Mage's daughter!" every time I introduced myself. I just wanted to be known for who I was, Sarralyn Salmalín.

Another problem I had was that everyone wanted to be friends with me only for my status. I had never actually had any real human friends in all my sixteen years. My only friends were the animals I conversed with regularly. They were true loyal friends who always stuck by my side no matter what. They were the ones I counted on.

Rikash, my 14-year-old brother who I swear acts just like the creature he was named after, a Stormwing, never had problems with that. His outgoing and friendly nature naturally attracted everyone to him. My more quiet personality was not that great for drawing people to me, like my fiery brother did.

People were also wary of me for my Wild Magic, which was as strong as (maybe even stronger than) my mothers. Rikash only possessed a very strong variation of the Sight. People with the Sight can easily fit into society, at least much better than I and my Wild Magic ever could.

My mother, Veralidaine Sarrasri Salmalín, the Wild Mage of Tortall (I'm next in line for that position), had told and retold the strange yet amusing tale of my birth over and over again to Rikash and me. Apparently I would shape-shift constantly in the womb, causing my mother to shift the bottom half of her body along with me, which completely wiped her out. When I was finally born I still wouldn't cease to shape-shift so it was impossible to guess my gender let along pick a name.

Later, at my christening, my grandparents; The Green Lady, goddess of women and children, or Sarra (my mother's mother and my name sake) and Weiryn, god of the hunt, arrived just as they had promised, to see their first grandchild christened. My grandmother commanded me to pick a shape and stick with it. I promptly obliged. How could I refuse the orders of a goddess, even a minor one, thought I was a quarter goddess myself?

By the age of six I had taught myself how to converse fluently with animals and did so with total ease. This was the one stage in my Wild Magic that didn't cause disruption. Then, only a short time after my eighth birthday I figured out by myself how to enter the minds of animals and promptly began to cause mischief all over the palace.

Once, with the permission of the mouse I inhabited first, I sent it up the wide skirts of one of the particularly fussy court ladies that I really didn't like. By the gods did she scream!

And that was the end of my mischief making days. My mother caught me and handed me over to my father, Numair Salmalín, the greatest Black Robe mage in all Tortall and possibly the world, who took away my pony, Sky, one of my mothers original ponies Cloud's offspring, for the week. She then promptly set me up for lessons with her and my father for learning to control my Wild Magic. But I got a great laugh over it and so did Rikash who didn't particularly enjoy the court lady's posh ways either.

So I learned all the wonders and sorrows of my ability, rejoicing with my mother whenever we changed into birds and soared up into the heavens, and weeping in sorrow when one of my animal friends died. That was the one problem with Wild Magic. When one animal died, you always felt as if a part of you died with it. And I would loose my animal friends often for animal's lives were considerably shorter than humans were. My only companion that I had known all my life was my faithful dog, Crow, named because of his pointy black nose that strongly resembled a crow's beak. But even he was getting old now and couldn't jump and run and play in the fields like we had when I was younger.

Now that I was older I couldn't be out in the fields all the time, running with the animals like I used to. I was basically a young lady in body, but I didn't feel at all grown up in the spirit. I still wished to do all the things children did, run, climb trees and all manner of things like that. Most girls my age were flirting with the young men of the palace, talking daintily with each other and just sitting doing nothing which all seemed quite boring to me. My mother was the only one who sympathized with me in this area.

My mother informed me that this was exactly as she had felt when she was my age though she did have a lover by this time, a certain Black Robe mage who also happened to be her teacher and my father. And I hadn't even begun to flirt. It simply bored me and made me sick to watch all the other silly young women do it, draping themselves all over the one they were flirting with, so why should I?

But I was growing up and changing, my mother said, and she was right. I supposed my state of mind would change on the views it had now to the mind of an intelligent young women ready for the world soon enough.

But now Rikash is hollering for me; something about Kitten, my mother's baby dragon, up on the mantle among all the breakables and refusing to come down. So I guess I'll have to end here.

You know, it felt really good to just write out all that, all my thoughts and feelings, my joys and sorrows, mostly my sorrows. Its good to see then written out on the parchment where I can see them and begin to organize the jumble of thoughts that fill my brain.

Well, all I can really say is that my life, the life of the daughter of two hero's, is not perfect at all like most people are led to believe. Yes, I do have exquisite clothing to wear and more than enough food to sustain me, yet it is my social life that is one major flop. But now that I really think about it I don't think I would want to be anybody else. For I am who I am and nothing can change that. I am the daughter of hero's, grandchild of the gods, Wild Mage; but most of all I am me: Sarralyn Salmalín.

Sarra

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Please R&R!