Trianima

Prologue

When I was four I didn't find it weird that my parents and grandparents were all practiced in multiple forms of archery. I didn't find it weird that they started teaching me at such a young age and I was expected to master everything they ever showed me. It started with simple targets a short distance from myself then a year later the distance was more than double. My parents were never happy with me simply hitting one ring from the center, they would yell at me about how I needed to be better. It wasn't until I was in school and people would be going to others houses to play and I simply wasn't allowed. My parents were strict expecting my knowledge to come easy and without teaching.

My grandmother was the caring influence I needed, teaching me far more than my archery focused parents. Manners and politics, although I never quite understood those lessons. My theory is my obsession with tea developed from her and the classic tea parties and ceremonies I learned to run. My love of the different cultures around to world allowing for it to be simple to learn what I wished to know.

So really my childhood consisted of lessons in my basic and some more advanced subjects and plenty of archery lessons. Grandmother also taught me myths, through bedtime stories I learned of three powerful weapons once used in wars, forged and forgotten by time to but a few. These weapons were told to be sentient and take the shape of an animal at will, a way to hide until the wielder of their choice appeared. A bow that emits an aura like ice, inside the spirit of an eagle, a rapier that pierced even the strongest of defenses hides behind the visage of a snake. Finally, a fan that could split in two, twin shields to defend against the wielders enemy hiding behind the visage of a peacock, pretty but dangerous.

The stories went into detail on each weapon, showing weakness in each option. Once my grandmother asked me which I would choose, I had replied with an instinct I had felt having not known how this would end, all three have their own thoughts would they not be the one to choose. I was only eight and this conversation would come back to haunt me in later years, but for then I dreamed of the myths and legends she would tell me. I committed each and every tale to memory and the stories comforted me when my grandmother died a year later leaving me with her necklace of a silver bow and silver sword crossed over a golden fan.

After that it was harder, a tutor was hired to keep ahead of my studies and the time for leisure was gone. More training with the bow and traditional styles was pushed, only days before my tenth birthday my parents sent me with my tutor to Japan. I was to compete in an under fourteen kyudo* competition, I competed on my tenth birthday and was announced as the winner. The stir caused was high, I was the youngest competitor and had never competed in another competition. My debut was in a division higher than I should have been, I didn't compete again until I was eleven. In a completely different style of archery and this time in the under sixteen I took home the gold once more and people wondered if I had transferred from kyudo. Every year I competed, each time different until I turned fifteen. This was when I realised I was different, my family was different, and that I did not have a normal life because normal was not having the expectations so high.

However, the real story starts now at my age of sixteen. I suppose I should introduce myself I am Mavis Aquila Pavo Sequesta when I woke up in a bed of feathers. Why aren't I normal?

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Kyudo - Traditional Japanese archery style (very formal and proper)

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