Miss Moony would like to say that she doesn't own Tortall and that she had no help with this story from Miss Wormtail, Miss Padfoot or Miss Prongs.
Featuring an OC who may or may not be a Mary-Sue.
------- I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good -------
Expectations
Maybe it was because her parents were knights, always off on some duty or another, so she'd been raised by the women of the Bazhir tribes, but Zahra bint Zahir didn't immediately know what she wanted to do with her life, like her mother had. In fact, by the age of ten, she still hadn't decided.
All she knew was what she didn't want to do. Fighting, chiefly. Or dressing up in fancy frocks and making small talk with petty ladies until she was snatched up by some buffle-brained lord.
She was to put on her veil in a few short years, she knew. This didn't deter her mother. Keladry ibn Alhaz wanted her only daughter to be a knight, like her, and her two brothers and her foster-brother. Her father only said that she had a duty to her family, and to her tribe.
The women of the tribe did as they were expected. Always. Without fail. Zahra was expected to follow in her mother's footsteps and somehow manage to stay a proper young Bazhir girl at the same time.
And this was the only reason why, when the time came, Zahra bint Zahir found herself being shipped off to Corus with an escort of four armed Bazhir and a dark veil tucked securely in her pack, just in case.