Thrilling Tales Hub

A Sha-noa Tale

Bonchar’est shimmered in the morning light, a city woven into the cliffs like thread through sacred stone. From the heights of Nikal Dongon to the basin where markets bloomed, the whole city pulsed with preparation. Dust from the canyon trails turned golden in the sun. Flags of crimson and indigo fluttered between carved rooftops. Every wall—every stairwell, every gate—seemed alive with motion and memory.

The scent of roasting maize and clay-fried sagebread drifted on the wind. Drummers warmed their hides near the plaza steps, and children—faces painted with ash swirls and berry dye—raced between vendors, chasing the first notes of Sha-lusha’na.

This was not merely a festival. It was the festival: the Luxuriance, the ritual feast where the year bowed to the earth’s abundance before giving way to winter. And high above, tucked in terraces wrapped in sun-climbing vines, the elders prepared for the Spirit Blossoming of the Matron’s only daughter. But Mala knew little of that.

She was here to sell chile bundles.

Her mother’s hands had wrapped each one carefully—strips of sun-dried plum layered with crushed smoke-chile and pinches of dusted sage, tied with reed-thread. It was her job now to sell them. She was ten. Old enough.

She made her way through the morning bustle, the strap of her reed basket digging into her shoulder, her sandals caked with yesterday’s clay. She passed mural walls depicting the harvest cycle: a great hand offering fire to the earth, a sun-shaped fruit opening like a mouth.

The square was already teeming. Traders sang their wares in lilting Sha-vani. Dancers warmed their feet with soft spirals in the dust. Corsair riders, cloaked in feathered sashes, stood beside their sky-steeds at the plaza edge, their silence more commanding than any cry. And in the center stood the towering Sha-kaya’tsa—the harvest effigy of leaves, gourds, and woven firegrass, waiting to be lit at sunset.

Mala found a patch of stone near the eastern wall, shaded beneath a banner of ochre and bone-white. She laid her basket down, crossed her legs, and waited.

Nothing happened.

A merchant girl beside her flashed dyed silks and shouted to passersby. A clay vendor thumped his water jugs like drums. Mala, smaller and quieter, kept still. The bundles were good. They would sell. Wouldn’t they?

A pair of boys stopped, sniffed, then ran off with a snort.

She flushed. “It’s sage, not rot,” she mumbled to the wall.

“You speak to stones often?” a voice asked.

Mala blinked. A girl stood over her—taller, red-haired, maybe twelve or thirteen. Her robe was a deep amber, stitched at the collar with sunbursts and mountain threads. Her copper hair shimmered like coals beneath dust.

“I speak when no one else does,” Mala replied, cautious.

The older girl crouched. “These are plum-chile sage wraps, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“From the Ember path, I’d guess. Your family tends those gardens?”

Mala blinked again. “Yes.”

The girl smiled and held out a silver bead. “Then I’ll take two.”

She left the bead without waiting for change and turned to go, pausing only once to glance at the Sha-kaya’tsa. Her eyes lingered not in awe, but in something like… burden.

Mala stared after her. It took a long moment before she realized her hands were trembling.

Later, when the effigy was set aflame and ash scattered upward like stars, Mala stood among the crowd and saw her again—this time flanked by guards and councilors, a procession forming behind her.

Matron Seraphina stood beside her, regal in storm-colored silk, the copper of her eyes matching the girl’s hair.

A whisper passed through the crowd like a breath:
Sota Emberdawn.

The heir.

Mala looked down at her basket. Two bundles gone. A single silver bead curled in her palm.

She would tell no one.

But she would remember.