"Kaza!!" a shrill voice shrieked in her ear. Kaza screeched and bounced out of bed.

"Wha-?"

"It's your birthday, stupid!" yelled Nahzeem. "Get your butt out of bed now!"

"I am out of bed! Get out of my room and go get the hairbrush!"

Once Kaza had dressed and brushed her hair, she went into the kitchen, where she was instantly assaulted by several shrieking persons.
The persons in question were Diona, Inasi, and Seri, all three about a year younger than Kaza herself.

"Ye gods!" Kaza yelled, pulling her friends off her. "What goes on in this town? It's only my birthday, for Tu-ei's sake!"

Diona giggled and said "It's your eighteenth birthday, Kaza! What did you expect?"

"Not to be attacked by my friends, that much I know!"

Seri and Inasi laughed.

"Come on, Kaza. We're really here to get you ready for the ceremony, and you know what that means!" said Inasi.

Kaza's eyes lit up. "Do we get to go picking dresses?" she hated wearing dresses, but she loved picking them out, even if she had to wear them later.

"Nope! Come on, we got all the things we'll need!" Seri explained.
Seri pulled Kaza's arm. "Okay! Okay! I'm coming!" cried Kaza as she pulled out of Seri's grip.

They ate breakfast, then the other girls prepared Kaza for the ceremony.

"Hold still!" snapped Inasi, her mouth full of pins as she tried to fix a piece of Kaza's dress.

"Do I really need to wear this stupid dress?" complained Kaza.

"Yes, you do! Your mother said so, and anyway, I thought you liked dresses." replied Seri, who was fixing Kaza's hair.

"I like picking dresses, not wearing them!" Kaza said, wriggling again in her pale blue dress and Inasi repeated "hold still!" and pulled the final pin out of her mouth and stuck it in the dress.

"Finally! You're done pinning this thing!" cried Kaza with immense relief.

Diona smirked and said "Well, we're not quite done with everything else yet. We still have to make sure that the dress will stay that way and your hair will look nice and everything goes on straight. In other words, don't relax yet. In fact, try not to relax for the next forty-eight hours."

Kaza moaned and hung her head, which promptly jerked back up as Seri tugged on her hair.

---

"There! All done!" announced Inasi, proudly viewing her handy-work. "You look absolutely amazing. Turn around so I can make sure your dress isn't rumpled."

Kaza turned all the way around to let Inasi look her over. "I feel awful in this dress and these dumb shoes," she said, gesturing to both her dress and high heeled shoes. "But if you consider me presentable I can die happy." she laughed.

"And Diona and I are done with your hair," proclaimed Seri.

"It looks wonderful!" added Diona, adjusting a comb slightly then stepping back and looking at their work.

Kaza giggled and said "At least you managed to do something with it."

"Girls, the ceremony starts in an hour," Kaza's mother called from the kitchen. "You had best get to Tilgen's Square now. Kaza, your father and sister and I will be there in a bit." The girls hurried Kaza out of her house and out into the roads of the water village.

***
Eseth screeched as her mother dumped a whole bucket of water on her.

"Come on, we have to get you ready for your Birthing Ceremony, Eseth." she said, her voice calm as ever as she watched her daughter splutter on her bed.

"I know, but you didn't have to dump water on me!" Eseth replied "I hate water!"

"Then why were you friends with that Kaza girl? She is a Hydromancer, is she not?" asked her mother curtly.

"Yes, but-" Eseth tried to explain, but her mother cut her off by snapping "We've no time for chit-chat Eseth! We must be off to your birthing ceremony very soon and you still need to pin on your dress and fix your hair." Then she made her usual stately exit, swooping out of Eseth's bedroom like some huge, elegant hawk.

Eseth sighed and thought of Kaza. She hoped her birthday wasn't going like this. Then she thought of herself. She hated dresses. She hated anything to do with dresses, plus it always hurt when her mother did up her hair.

Just then Ashji entered the bedroom.

"Eseth! Oh Eseth! Your birthing ceremony is today!" She squealed.

"That's right, Ashji. Calm down. I've already been reminded by a bucket of cold water." Eseth laughed bitterly while Ashji giggled.

After that, Ashji retreated to the kitchen so Eseth could take a bath. No sooner had she stepped out of the bathroom, Ashji pounced on her, bearing dress, shoes, makeup and hairthings.

"Ashji!" yelled Eseth "I don't want to do it right away!"

"Too bad!" giggled Ashji while she pulled Eseth to her bedroom. "Your Birthing Ceremony starts soon!"

Ashji sat Eseth down in front of her vanity(Eseth honestly didn't know why she kept the wretched thing in her room), and started tugging at her hair with a thick brush.

"Ouch! I thought you knew how to do this!" cried Eseth.

"I do know how, but we don't have a lot of time, and if you sat still it wouldn't hurt so much!"

Ashji was pulling some of Eseth's red-orange hair up into a bun, pulling the rest into an elaborate confection of ribbons, pins, and masses of red hair. To Eseth(who still wouldn't sit still) it seemed like she was trying to yank all of her hair out.

Next time-If I have any hair left after this time, she thought sulkily-she was going to do her own hair, that was for sure. She yelped loudly as she felt a particularly sharp pin jab at her skull.

"I never said it wasn't going to hurt." Ashji said, jabbing yet another pin into Eseth's hair. Eseth yelped again, wondering exactly why she had asked Ashji of all people to do her hair. What had she thinking? This felt exactly as if her mother had done it, only a hundred times worse.

But then, she remembered, at least Ashji puts up with me. Mother never does.

Ashji placed a final pin into her hair, and said "All finished!"

"Finally!" Eseth exclaimed "You're done yanking all my hair out!"

"Well, if I had yanked all of your hair out, you probably would have passed out by now. Your hair looks wonderful, by the way." Ashji replied reasonably.

"But how am I going to get this dress on?" inquired Eseth.

"Well, all you do is step into the dress. Then I play with it, you know, adding things, fixing the hem, stuff like that." replied Ashji.

Eseth moaned.
***
Kaza stumbled along the road to Tilgen's Square, coming very near to tripping over her dress.

"Kaza!" snapped Inasi "Do you know what we went through to pin your dress on? If you ruined it by stumbling into the mud we would probably kill you."

"Inasi, I know. I'm not going to ruin this thing anytime soon, because it would mean that I'd have to go through pinning it over me again." she replied, shuddering. "If you helped me along in these stupid shoes, maybe we'd be there faster."
Inasi giggled, her good mood restored, and she and Seri grasped Kaza by the elbows and helped her through the street. It did go faster after that, and before long they were in Tilgen's Square.

"Soo..what do we do now?" asked Kaza, looking around.

"Um..I don't know," said Seri "Maybe we should just..wait around for a bit."

"Have either of you been to a Ceremony?" Kaza said to Diona and Inasi. They shook their heads.

"Well, we'll just have to wait around, I suppose." said Inasi. "Oh, look, here comes someone." Inasi waved to him, and he walked over.

"Are you the girl who's going to have the birthing ceremony today?" he asked Inasi.

Inasi laughed nervously and said "No, that's Kaza here."

"Yeah, me right here," said Kaza "Would happen to know what I'm supposed to do? And if you don't mind me asking, who are you?"

The stranger smiled and said "My name is Janen. I'm in charge of the ceremony. All you have to do now is wait a bit for us to set up." he smiled warmly at them.
"By the way, congratulations. Your eighteenth birthday is very important, you know."

"Thank you." replied Kaza, smiling politely "Um-where should we wait?"

"Your friends can wait there." Janen pointed to several chairs set up by the fountain. "That's where the family and friends are. You can wait up there," he said, and pointed to a stone ledge raised about two feet off the ground "That's where the ceremony will take place."

Kaza had to resist rolling her eyes at the obviousness of it all, and said "Thanks. Hey, Seri, Inasi? Help me up to that stage thing. I told you these shoes were a bad idea."

Inasi and Seri grinned while Diona said "You're going to have to figure out how to walk in high heels sometime, Kaza."

"Well, it won't be now. Help me over!" Inasi and Seri laughed and helped Kaza to the stage. As soon as she was there and had made sure there was nothing on the ground to ruin her dress, she sat down cross-legged on the stage.

Her friends went to sit on the chairs that had been set up for them by Janen. When others arrived to watched to watch the ceremony-her parents and sister, her relatives, other friends-she stood up and stood awkwardly on the stage, waiting for the cermony to begin.

Janen, whom she recognized as the village priest, gave her and encouraging smile before turning to the crowd and saying "We gather here today to witness the coming-of-age of Kaza, daughter of Nirunei and Juzinir. A Hydromancer, she is here to cross over to adulthood."

Kaza felt vaugely uneasy. The priest then took out a flask of holy water blessed by the Hight Priest and Priestess of the goddess and god of water, Tu-ei and Len-min, and poured a few drops over her pale hair. Kaza spotted a make-shift bridge in the center of the stage. The priest offered his hand to her and announced to the crowd "This girl will cross the bridge of youth into the proverbial land of maturity."

Kaza took the priest's rough, worn hand and crossed the bridge. Everyone clapped as if she had passed some secret test of womanhood. She blinked in confusion. Was that all?

"Kaza, Hydromancer, daughter of Nirunei and Juzinir, I pronounce you an adult and a woman! You are now allowed to travel the world as you please, or stay to marry and live in the village." Said the priest, his voice reverberating throughout the square.

Kaza still didn't really understand. Then she realized. Her parents must have set her up in a marriage, and this was merely a formality. Her friends, Diona and Inasi and Seri were smiling as if they knew exactly what was going on, and they probably did.

Janen the priest motioned for her to get off the stage, which she did. Once she was on the ground, she kicked her shoes off and left them where they lay.

Everyone was standing up and stretching. Nahzeem came over to her, a nasty smirk on her face.

"Your ceremony was different from mine. I suppose they want to marry you off. If I was of any value to them, they would have done it to me earlier than now. They probably will, sooner or later. They don't want some pathetic, deadweight daughter to take care of forever."

"But you're not useless deadweight, Nahzeem!" protested Kaza. "I just can't understand why they would want to marry me to someone, and not you. Do you know-?"

"No, I don't. I'm really sorry, Kaza. I just don't think they'll let you go. You're pretty, you're a greay Hydromancer and medicine woman, and to top it all off, a lot of the boys in town like you." Nahzeem said, sounding a bit softer towards her sister. "I guess you'll just have to wait to find out who. I am sorry. I know you wanted to look for that friend of yours."

Kaza looked away, and walked over to her parents, trying to keep calm. Marriage was not the feared beast it was in other places, as many Water Elves(which she was) disliked travel.

But sometimes a parent would use a gifted child's marriage to their own ends.

Her mother and father smiled when they saw her. "Kaza," began her father. "I am so glad this ceremony was successful."

"You knew it would be successful. Nahzeem said that hers was different, and that you want to marry me to someone," she took a breath and threw a scathing look at her mother, who often ignored Nahzeem. "She also said that you think she's deadweight, and that's why you never married her off."

Her parents looked shocked for a moment, then her mother smiled. "I think Nahzeem might simply be jealous of your good fortune. Yes, we are indeed planning to marry you. To a very nice young man, in fact."

Kaza said "Do Inasi and Seri and Diona know?"

"Yes," said her father. "We thought it would be a fun surprise for you."

"But why?" asked Kaza. "Arranged marriages are beastly, and they're against the law in some places!"

"Kaza, we made sure that everything was all right. It's fine." said her mother, looking sternly at her daughter. "You'll be able to meet him today, in fact."

"Who-?"

"Juzinir, go get him, please." Kaza's mother said to her father, who smiled and turned to leave. After a few moments, he came back, walking with a tall boy with oddly tan skin and yellow-green eyes.

"Enarsir, this is Kaza. Kaza, this is Enarsir." Kaza stared at him for a moment, and wiped all of the makeup on her face off with her sleeve.

"Hello." she said dully. He blinked amazedly at her.

"Um--hi."

"Mother, Father. I think dear Enarsir and I will want to speak alone." she said through gritted teeth. Her mother gazed curiously at her for a minute before taking her husband by the arm and leading him away.
Kaza stared at the crowd of her relatives. She saw her friends, who saw her and waved, giggling. She spotted Nahzeem, sho shrugged. The whole crowd was trickling slowly out of the square, so she and Enarsir were relatively alone.

"You don't really want to marry me, do you?" she asked him, her ice-blue eyes still focused on the crowd.

"Um. I don't know really. I'm just glad that I'm marrying someone, I guess."

"Why?" it wasn't that she didn't like him. Not at all. But she couldn't stand the strange feeling of betrayal that she felt about her parents and her friends.

"Well..."

"I don't want to marry anyone. I want to go away."

"We could-um-leave together, I s'pose." she looked at him, her blue gaze boring into his own. He averted his eyes.

"Really? Would you really do that for me?" she asked. Maybe this wasn't as bad as she thought it was.

"Well, sure. If you wanted to go live in the next town or even in Wavewind, I'd come, I guess."

She almost smiled. "That's not what I meant. I don't really want to live anywhere. I want to travel. Everywhere. Anywhere. Like the nomads of the Nusen jungles.

"What?" he exclaimed, staring at her in sudden shock. "We couldn't do that!" It would dishonor both of our families, maybe even the whole village."

"But why? Why do you care? And it's not like we wouldn't come back." she crossed her arms.

"Kaza, don't you understand? You're a Hydromancer-you can't leave! They need you here!"

"Where is that written? And why would you need to stay here?"

"I don't want to leave. And you know they need Hydromancers here. They don't have many."

"they can do without. It's not like we're in the middle of a drought here."

"But why would you want to leave anyway?"

"I have a friend."

"Everyone has friends, Kaza."

Kaza scowled at what she supposed was him being thick and said "I know that, Enarsir. You know that Fire family that lived here until a year ago? My best friend is their daughter."

"You haven't seen her in a year! She's probably forgotten about you!"

"What?!" she yelled, and, in a sudden rage, she hit him across the face. Not a slap. A punch. That hurt.

"What was that for?" he snapped, clutching his rapidly-purpling face.

"Don't you dare say things like that about Eseth, you Nhidni!" she shreiked. "Understand?"

"But why--" he started, but Kaza never heard the rest. She was halfway across the Square.

***
Eseth jammed a pair of shoes on to her feet. They were the only high heels that she could find that would fit her large feet.

"Sweet Karsh, I hate these shoes!" Eseth moaned, rubbing her toes where the shoes pinched them.

"Eseth, stop complaining," Her mother said, coming into the room and fixing Eseth's hair some. "You don't have to wear them for that long. You look wonderful."

Ashji ran back into the room, carrying a small box.

"I found It!" Ashji exclaimed. She opened the box and began digging through its contents, most of which was jewelry, and pulled out a gold chain with what looked like a flame as a charm.

"Oh, no... What did you find?" Eseth asked, somewhat curious, mostly dreading whatever it was that Ashji had pulled out. Ashji held out the necklace for Eseth.

"Where did you find that?" Eseth's mother asked. " I haven't seen it in a long time."

"Well, I figured that youre jewelry wouldn't work for Eseth, what with her skin and hair and eyes and stuff being a different color and all, so I figured I'd go up to the attic to see what I could find, and dug through all the old junk and stuff up there, which is all really old by the way, and-" Ashji stopped for breath. "-And I found that box. It has a whole lot of really nice stuff in it."

Suddenly Eseth's mother snatched the ornate box out of Ashji's dark hands, obviously having spotted something she didn't want the girls to see. She took the pendant necklace out and thrust it at Eseth. "Here!" She said distractedly. "Wear it if you must, but be careful with it! If you break my jewlery, Eseth, something very bad will happen to you."

Eseth blinked. "Well, uh, okay." she said, making a note to take that box as soon as she could.

"The ceremony's soon, Eseth. You have to head to Noni's Chapel. I'll join you shortly." said Eseth's mother, turning her back to them. Eseth looked at Ashji, who shrugged. "Come on, we have to get going." said Ashji, tugging on Eseth's arm.
---
Noni's Chapel was a pretty building, most often used for coming-of-age ceremonies. It was made of reddish orange clay, like most other buildings in the town, and had the fire goddess Noni's symbol painted in red and yellow on the door.

Eseth was inside, standing on a platform in front of a small audience, including Ashji, her mother, some friends from town and some of Eseth's relatives.

Unlike Kaza, Eseth had no had to wait long for the ceremony to start. It had begun a few minutes after she walked in the door. Now she was on the stage, and Sekoyi the priestess stood next to her. They stood facing each other as Sekoyi spoke.

"-And now, I bind Eseth, daughter of Tyi and Lyrs, to the world and to these lands-"

"What?" Eseth said, her voice carrying above that of the priestess.

"I am to magically bind you to these lands, Eseth. It is what happens if you are bestowed with the Gift of the Dragons, or Pyromancy." replied the priestess calmly, as if this were a perfectly ordinary part of the ceremony.
"No. I'm sorry. You can't keep me here just because I have Pyromance." Eseth snapped. "That's stupid."

"It was your father's last wish that you would be bound to this land, even when he knew that the Pyromancers are bound here anyway."

Eseth snarled. "No." she would not be held anywhere!

"Get away from me!" she yelled, as the priestess reached out a hand, a patronizing smile on her face. Eseth summoned fire to her hands. "Leave me alone! You will not keep me here!"

She kicked off her shoes and extended the fire to the rest of her arms.

She ran. Lighting fire to the interior of the Chapel as she went, she ran out.

Eseth ran all the way home, making the fire leave her hands as soon as she got there, and tore off her dress, pulling her hair out of its elaborate shape. She put on a bright red tunic and dark pants in place of the fancy dress.

Eseth grabbed her leather bookbag from the top of her dresser, and started tossing stuff into it. When she had filled it, she slung it over her shoulder and went into the kitchen. She pulled a knife out of a drawer and held her long hair in one hand as she used the knife to cut it. She let the bright red strands fall to the floor, and, in a fit of fury, threw the knife at the wall.

She then remembered her mother's box. Eseth quickly ran to her mother's room, and found the box on the nightstand. She snatched it up and dashed out of the house. While going out of the door, she absent-mindedly grabbed her boots and bow and arrows, which lay by the door.

Before she had gone twenty paces, she ran into Ashji and her mother.

"Eseth, come back, we don't need this." snapped her mother.

"You knew, you knew about this!" Eseth screeched. "Leave me alone! Both of you!" she summoned the fire to her hands again and ran past them. She didn;t know where she was going, but she wasn't going to stay here.

***

Kaza dashed back to her house, thinking over what Enarsir had said. Well, it wasn't true, simple as that. If they didn't want to let her go, she would run. Someday she would come back, but she couldn't stay here much longer

She ran to her house, and changed her clothes to something more practical. She put her white hair up in a thick braid, and grabbed a bag and stuffed essentials into it, then started putting other things in it. She grabbed her bag of medicines and herbs and several cloaks, donning one of them.

The sun was starting to set and neither her parents nor Nahzeem had come home.

Kaza considered taking one of the town's horses, but she decided against it. She didn't really know how to take care of a horse, and she'd need a lot more food than she had right now to keep the horse with her.

Grabbing a pair of boots and jamming them into her bag, Kaza attempted to lace up her sandals one handed and finally managed to get them on.

Making sure no one could see her, she fled out, into the gathering dark of the forest.

END