You can’t blame her for being taken in by my opposite. I suppose, it only stands as a testament to how brilliant I shine… My shadow must gleam a touch, too.
The fool of fools. How can you blame her for following every fresh face that comes calling? I’ve had unfaithful fans like her before… such a waste of time.
I’ll never again wonder about her kind of folk. She may have hooves but she is no beast. Oh, no. Afterall, even a common mare is more loyal than this. Shame...
What a true and innocent child. Seeing her at the end of my sword, he couldn’t help but intervene. He fixes the broken, you see. It’s only natural he would help.
What a brat he turned into. Fickle and naive. Every sweet compliment he paid me is now soured and ugly in my memory. How could he help her over me???
What a selfish, greedy little thing. My only chance taken away... How could he betray me??? She was mine... in that moment. I had her. I won’t forgive this.
First-from-the-Quiver "Quiver"
Surely he knows what it means to survive… how the will to live moves us when pinned down. If anyone could help me get a second chance, it's this one’s bow.
Everything I have yearned for, worked for, every dream and every wish, every memory and every moment of my future is now at risk with her still breathing.
The legend of Qata’a Khuvithun, a blade so sharp that it could not be wielded, is still told to our kits. Qata’a first cut the life from the blacksmith, and took it for its own.
First-from-the-Quiver "Quiver"
Among the Qasirat Ul-Thaar, the Ulqul-Shekaraan or “life debt” is offered much more easily than you may see from other cultures and peoples. We are not so precious with the sharing of lives.
Neither water nor blood was enough, so it set out into the world to be quenched. Imnirah, the greatmother of Ul-Thaar, escaped its edge but her and all her descendants were forever shorn and of small stature.
In Chult, a weary Ulmudun Zhanat met a strongman who had heard of his deeds. “You may be quick of foot and wit, but my strength is greater still!” But Ulmudun Zhanat had no spirit left, as he had been grieving for many weeks the loss of his father.
In the desert lay a sea of glass, which had only ever known the cloudless sky as its reflection. In his travels, Ulmudun Zhanat was first to cross upon it, and this new reflection of his, in the glass, became jealous of his freedom.
But Qata’a could not move fast enough to cut Ulmudun Zhanat, and in the effort split itself in two, vanishing forever. We tell the story to remember that an evil act may have an outcome that undoes it.
First-from-the-Quiver "Quiver"
This life debt is not a pledge to suffer on another’s behalf as payment for a deed. It is more like a joining, to honor a unique kindness.
Ulmudun Zhanat told the strongman, “You can lift all things except one.” The strongman went about lifting everything in sight to prove him wrong: trees, boulders, and even Kakatal’s Tooth.
First-from-the-Quiver "Quiver"
Though given readily, Ulqul-Shekaraan is rarely broken. This receiver is considered somewhere between friend and sibling. Communities are built upon these gratitudes. Why would we not give them freely?
“But you cannot lift my heart, for my baba is dead and gone,” wept Ulmudun Zhanat. And the strongman recalled the loss of his own father, and too wept, and thought on this lesson.
The reflection challenged Ulmudun Zhanat, to usurp his place in the world, but in every feat they were perfectly matched.
Ulmudun Zhanat called down the rain, flooding over the desert, tricking the reflection in the glass into fighting its own new reflection in the water forever. Ulmudun Zhanat continued on his journey.
