She was nervous. She’d never trained for this sort of thing before and the fact that she was trying at all said a lot toward her tenacity or, perhaps more rightly, her stupidity. She was a warrior, true, but not an athlete. At least, she wasn’t an athlete in the classic sense of the term. She saw the targets staring at her from across the field, taunting her with a bullseye much too small for anyone to hit. Shalott had been told she had some measure of finesse by someone. She never saw it but it was nice to believe when faced with a task like this at hand.

There wasn’t much of a breeze in the air. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything to distract her. With her hair back and free movement all that existed was the bow against her thigh, the arrows in the quiver, and the weight of expectation, mostly from herself. Earth had games like this, games that were important to them. She wanted to bring pride to her planet or at the very least say she tried and did her best. It was as honorable to her as winning, she imagined.

The squire lifted the bow. It was heavier than she would have thought, solid wood forming the curve. She drew an arrow and nocked it along the string, shaft resting just above the top of her hand. She knew how to draw a bow but aim, power, and precision were another matter entirely. Someone shouted, a teammate? She crawled inside herself and pushed all other thoughts away.

She drew back the string slowly aiming, or hoping to aim, at the center of the target. Tendrils of her green hair brushed against her neck, tickling, as her eyes narrowed in shrewd judgment. The tail of the arrow touched her cheek, her hand touching her ear. A split second, an indrawn breath, when she let it out she let the arrow fly hurtling toward the target too fast for her to follow but the moment stretched on like a year. She watched it fly, dreading, hoping, giving herself a thousand criticisms in the span of just a few seconds.

There was a solid sound as the arrow drove itself into the waiting target. She opened her eye to peek at where it landed. To her disappointment the arrow was outside the bullseye. It was better than she expected, though, in the yellow immediately outside the vital red center. She tried to ignore the fact that it was barely in said yellow zone, almost in the wider blue. First a tentative cheer, and then another, and then more joined in the chorus. It was not enough to place by any means but she felt a sense of glowing accomplishment, of pride. She’d done what she set out to do: her best. And this was only the first event in many to come.