Path of the Whisper Woman

Things settled into a routine, as they tended to do whenever I was in the same place for longer than a week. I kept up my training with Ingrasia and Ziek, though it felt like those lessons could veer into pointlessness at any moment, at least as far as they were aware. The others still thought I could become one of the Chosen, and the Chosen weren't known for getting sent beyond the mountains or needing their fighting skills often, if at all. The same was true if I became the Beloved's companion, but I didn't let that stop me.

I trained because I wanted to have options. I knew the pain of having my main skill set cut away, unusable, and I wanted to prevent that hopelessness from setting in again. Once was more than enough. So I did what I could to raise my competencies with sling, spear, knife, and fist; endured the repetitive boredom that went into raising my endurance; practiced my Ground Speech so that the sounds stopped feeling foreign on my tongue; and continued to press at the limits of my boons.

Dark Sight couldn't be improved in and of itself, but I set about making sure I noticed as much in the dark, when I didn't have color to help me, as in the light. I practiced shadow walking and taking others with me, though the variety of people I took was sorely lacking. With the old cohort split up, Prevna and Juniper nowhere near the Seedling Palace, and my general lack of friendliness I didn't have a large group to pick from. Mostly it was Ingrasia's group that helped out when they could, though they also still had their own obligations. When they couldn't, I turned to someone who couldn't say no.

Well, Deamar did, but I didn't listen. It was great practice for dragging along someone unwilling and seemingly determined to get lost in the shadow paths. If he wasn't acting like a rock, then he was acting like a possessed, slippery snake. At least until I told him about the ghost spot that still tugged at my awareness whenever I walked the shadows. After that he did his best to evade me but I always caught him. Once I got him in the shadow paths he switched to his best impression of a constricting vine rather than the snake. I was sure we provided more amusement than I cared to admit for the others in the training area and perhaps it was cruel, but he wasn't doing much good otherwise. He ate and slept and tried to find ways to escape the Seedling Palace. I knew the fire starters had their ways to get down to the ground other than always bugging a whisper woman for a trip through the shadow paths, but evidently no one was keen on helping him. Nor did it seem like he had much of a plan beyond getting to the ground. If he got that far, I figured I could deal with it then. In the meantime, he was my fire starter and I didn't mind making him squirm, especially for a method of travel he'd have to get used to if he ever became a true fire starter.

Testing my resistance to the elements was difficult as well since the Seedling Palace was kept consistently at the same comfortable, cool temperature. I could use the shadow paths to go elsewhere, but knowing the weather there was another matter entirely. I could head off to random places to see if there was a storm to test my resistance against but I didn't go. I'd rather spend my time on something more reliable and, as a Sapling, I wasn't supposed to go disappear to anywhere I wanted. Not without prior permission or an assignment that required the travel, so I could be located if needed. Perhaps once my wind whispers reached their target all of the time, I'd have more freedom since I could communicate from afar, but for now I still had to practice.

Mostly, I talked with Prevna. We kept each other updated on our training, she teased me about all the rumors circulating that somehow still reached her group in the middle of nowhere, and I grumbled. She seemed pleased that I told her some of the things that bothered me, but I still kept it short. I knew better than to waste all our time complaining even if it was difficult to think of something positive to turn the conversation to at times. Once I asked her if she had a favorite tree. She laughed at the inanity of the question before obliging me and describing a tree that her band would pass multiple times during their travels. When she shot the question back at me I told her it was the tree where she hugged me before we left in our separate groups to find the Rookery. I smiled when she got quiet after that. I liked it when I surprised her enough to make her lose her words since she always had something to say.

Sometimes I also reached out to Juniper or she sent a whisper to me. Our conversations were shorter, more tentative. We kept the conversation to our training and the delta. She wasn't looking forward to having to fulfill her new obligations to the Rookery, but Cascade and her were happy to spend more time in the delta while they could.

The rest of my wind whispers were mainly logistical. I was a little surprised that Esie didn't reach out after I walked out of the meeting, either to meddle further or at least give an update for someone else to contact if the Lady of Calm Waters had a request, but she kept her silence and I didn't break it.

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When I wasn't training or testing my boons, I was in the Third Ear listening to prayers and gleaning what useful information I could get from them. I went often enough that I started to recognize some of the apprentices in charge of collecting the information tablets on site. Most of the time there'd be no one there when I went off to drop off my tablet in one of the baskets hanging throughout the Third Ear, but coincidence had me meeting some of them. Thankfully, they didn't dare to bother me in a place like the Third Ear but I knew they recognized me based on how stiff their posture got and how wide their eyes went when they saw me. Not that I could fault them for the shock. If I had been a normal new recruit to Hundred Eyes, collecting the tablets likely would have been one of my duties as well.

Part of me wished I could've had that normal training rather than my notoriety skipping me past all of it and straight into some limbo arrangement. Now I was treated more similarly to a senior Sapling despite having less knowledge and familiarity with Hundred Eyes' methods and procedures than most in the sect. I learned what I could from Ingrasia and the rest, but they were all busy and had their own specialties. They kept their commitments to me, but I didn't always know what questions to ask and they didn't always know what I wasn't asking.

Nor did it help that most of the common techniques, from what I gathered, involved blending in the background and being a forgettable face. Neither of which I was particularly good at. If I was never seen in the first place, that was one thing, but getting close and then forgotten was another. People tended to notice me, even if they had then pretended not to before the whole nickname debacle. First my healer's beads drew attention and then the dots on my chin. Before I could scare people off with glares and being generally abrasive—which felt like more than I could accomplish today, even if it wasn't helpful for gathering information.

As much as my new routine provided me relief from the rumors and stares, I didn't like the feeling that I was avoiding my problems. But no matter how much I glared, I couldn't stop the rumors or change who my assigned fire starter was. Prevna assured me my glare was still fearsome—not that she could see it—but I took some solace in her support. I knew they weren't problems I could fix by scaring someone into submission, just like my mentor ban wasn't something I could change on my own, but my lack of progress grated on me.

I had my routine, yes. My lessons and skill improvements, but as each day wore into the next it became more and more clear to me that I didn't have a goal. Something to focus my efforts and give me that sense of progress. Everyone else had their ideas of who I should be. Chosen, spy, troublemaker, the Little Love.

I knew I wanted respect. Once I had a goal to become one of the Chosen just to prove I could, but that dream had crumbled as soon as the Beloved said otherwise. The only way to go against her declaration would put me at the wish maker's mercy and even then a wish to become one of the Chosen might not come true. The Beloved said I would face challenges before I could become her confidante. But it was difficult to feel motivated by some nebulous difficulty for a position I still wasn't sure I wanted to strive for.

I needed something more concrete. Something actionable and immediate and that I decided on my own. Not another situation someone else dragged me into. Something beyond training. The trouble came with deciding what that was. I was used to working within a role—healer's apprentice, seedling—or rebelling against it. This time I ran into the same problem I had with glaring everyone into submission: there was no clear opposition to rebel against. Becoming one of the Chosen, like so many people assumed I would, was something most whisper women strived for. I had strived for it. Rebelling against the rumors was a fool's errand and more likely to add more fuel to the fire than make the change I wanted and have everyone forget about me.

Besides, those things were still rooted in how everyone else saw me. Things they had decided for me. I needed something for myself. Something I could work on no matter where I was, no matter what position I had, something that was mine.

My mind turned first to plants as it always did. To create some master scroll of all the plants I knew and their uses and where to find them, but I had already made the decision to step back from that first obsession. So then my mind turned to the other subject that had largely taken up my childhood: myths and legends. The stories I had learned to supposedly help me become a top whisper woman. The stories I still perked up to hear whenever a new one came to my attention.

I could focus on collecting more. Perhaps just for my entertainment, perhaps as a source of information others overlooked. I could also tell the ones I knew. I didn't relish the thought of standing in front of a crowd and taking on a Grandmother's role in that regard, but some petty part of me thought it'd be fine to balance the scales for speaking half-truths and trouble into the air. The rumormongers could say what they liked and I could do the same.

I smiled to myself. Perhaps I could start that night at the evening meal. Tell the tale of one of my adventures from my own lips…or perhaps spread the tale of Grislander and all the wishes that made the beast. Remind the idiots what happened when they spoke something they shouldn't into being.