Dyakida disliked working with metal for obvious reasons – the heat and pounding required to work metal had the uncomfortable potential to hurt her hands, as well as being generally uncomfortable. She needed her hands to 'see' her world and perform her craft, and thus they were more precious than any tool she owned. She preferred to work with crystal, which was more abundant besides and came in a myriad of colors. Never mind that she didn't know the colors unless someone told her. Fortunately, she had assistants and friends who could help her with metal.
Her current project used their metalworking skills amply. Dyakida tested the new hilts with custom metal inlays, hefting them in her hands – yes, she determined, this was the right weight. She traced the metal inlays with a delicate finger – they were shimmering silver, she had been told, like moonlight. The metal felt slightly cratered, like it was crystal itself, beaten into the shape of vines... no, of marble, that stone she had heard was smooth and lined with veins of color.
She'd felt it once, had someone trace her hands over the patterns there so that she would understand, but she had felt no difference between where there was dark and where there was light.
Still, she liked the idea of a stone that was two-in-one. Mixed together. Beautiful and strong.
She went to the blade portions on her desk and began to work them to fit. Blades were a common choice for young Alkidike seeking to become Blades, for the obvious reason that the class was named for the weapons. They would need their Blades, their warriors, their Amazons and Sacred Hearts more than ever, with the new threat that had been revealed at the festival.
The festival; where her sister's pride and passion nearly undid them yet again.
Votzhem was known to Dyakida she'd given him his first blades. They were a good weapon for a sacred heart – easier to manage than a bow, with its majicked and easily mishandled arrows, and easier to enchant than a spear, with it's greater surface area. She'd thought he would be a hero then, and now... well, she still thought so, that he could be, but how could he be a hero of his tribe if his tribe wouldn't heed him?
Hybrids seemed to understand the world in a different way than a pureblooded Sister, and Dyakida saw this as good. Surely, their Great Mother saw it that way too, otherwise she would not bring them into the world and the adversity they were destined to face simply for being inspired by someone not of the tribe. Surely, Aisha understood this... why else would she give them Sisters who had such obvious marks of their 'otherness?' Why, indeed, would she give them Brothers at all? There had to be some grand design, and that meant that they needed to be listened to, respected and... and...
She bit her lip as she tried to focus on her craft.
This was what she felt about hybrids, but was she thinking with her brain? After all, she was not unbiased.
So, what if she was wrong? What if her Sisters were right to dismiss the hybrid for his part-blood and male-ness? But no, that couldn't be right, because he'd spoken of ideas that would lead them away from ruin and the destruction they had suffered years before, with the breaking of their Sisterhood and the rise of the Extremists. Reason was clearly the right path, and yet pride was their identity, what made them Alkidike.
Were Reason and Pride simply two blades in a set, forever opposed, yet necessary to the other? Dyakida set the new blades in their sheathes, securing them carefully before testing them gingerly for their weight.
Better
She set them aside and wiped her hands with a damp cloth, and prayed for a middle path.
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