She wiped at her tears, and looked down at the place where the sickle
had fallen. She walked down the slope and stood over the ungainly
reaper's scythe, fighting back the demons of the unknown. Finally,
quelling her terrors somehow, she knitted her brow as she stooped to
kneel down beside the scythe. Then, with exceeding care, she touched
her finger lightly to the feather's edge of the blade in all of it's
wicked keenness. Sniffling and wiping ineffectually at her face with
the back of her forearm, she examined the sharp scythe, and considered
how pitiful and inept a fighter she must portray to any animal.
Was she not but a girl, scarcely one-forth the size of a good fighting
man and as nothing to one of the human giants? Could she make as ready
use of whatever came to hand, or of her own muscles if necessary, to
settle an argument as brave Habrunt might do? Thinking unhappily on all
of this, she felt disconsolate to such a degree as never before in her
short life. Turning from the heavy scythe, she decided to go and seek
relief in the shade of the trees overhanging the dank and shadowy banks
of the wide, peaceful stream.
The gurgling of the water over heavy stones partially blocking a
narrows downstream was a pleasant sound to her ears.
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