Midsummer Fires

Dakshana had reached her seventeenth summer and long forgotten to wonder about her lost straw doll. She wore her best shift and jewels in her hair, and she stood with the other maidens beside the midsummer fire. Even though she had no parents, she would choose a hunter, same as other maidens, and in the coming months, during the courting, she would choose a husband. The hunters came from villages afar; the hunters from her village left seven suns before. In the shadows, on the other side of the fire, Dakshana saw a hunter with moonlight hair and dawn-blue eyes.