Niata wants to leave the Horde, no, to be precise, Niata wants to leave this desert. When did she come to think of this? When did her own father die in battle, and Zasya came to inform her mother and announce that she was going to marry her and adopt her? Or when did her mother call Zacia her father? She couldn't tell herself, except that since her father's death, she was tired of everything in the desert, even herself in the desert.

The scene of that day is like yesterday: in a simple tent, the mother is weaving a camel blanket and complaining about the scorching desert sun, and the mother always complains about the desert weather. Niata was grinding the colored minerals of the desert that were used to dye the blankets, listening to her mother's complaints casually, thinking that her father was coming back, and wondering if she had brought back anything for herself, she touched the fox fur hat on her head, thinking about the touch of her father's rough big hand holding her small hand, and her heart became more and more expectant. Zacia's voice came from outside, interrupting Niata's musings, and her mother hurriedly put on her headscarf, and Zacia then went into the tent to bring the news of her father's death, and they couldn't even retrieve his father's body.

The mother wails and cries, she cries half for her husband and half for herself and her children, orphans and widows in the desert are always hard. Njata's mind was also blank, and she looked at Zacia's mouth in distraction, saying comforting words one by one, and the smell of camel dung and burning hay in the air seemed less pungent.

God knows how much I hate that smell!

Zacia emotionally announced that he was going to marry his mother and adopt Njata, and the cacophony of voices around him, his mother's words of gratitude, the admiration of the tribesmen, the crackling of the fire, the sound of camel bells in the distance, he calmly watched and listened to all this, and to this day, Njata can paint the scene word for word. The blood stains on Zacia's clothes, the shape of the shadow formed by the sun shining on the tent, the angle at which the door opened, the pattern formed by the mother's tears spilling on the ground..... Everything is as if it were yesterday.

That night, Niata and her mother moved to Zaya's tent, and in her sleep, Niata heard her mother's moans and Zaya's gasps, and in the desert, there was nothing wrong with it, but Niata just felt that something was wrong.

I didn't come to ask Njata what she thought, the women in the desert did not have the opportunity to express their thoughts, women obeyed their fathers before they got married, and obeyed their husbands after they got married, and they could only make their own decisions when they were widowed, but then they had to face the hardships of life. Women in the desert are like this, submissive, stoic and reserved, and perhaps their most presumptuous time is when they receive the news of their husband's death. The men don't care what the women are thinking, as long as the women work and are obedient enough, and from this point on, in the desert, women and camels are actually about the same.

In all fairness, Zacia was not bad for Niata's mother and daughter, both in terms of food, clothing and attitude, there was no difference between other wives and concubines, and when Niata was 12 years old, she also had her own small tent according to custom, and got the dowry left by her father: five camels, and Zacia generously took out five camels from her personal property and gave them to Niata as a dowry, so Niata had a very rich dowry: ten camels.

According to the custom, Nyata should learn how to be a new wife, how to take care of livestock, how to process food, how to weave and dye blankets, and more importantly, how to obey her husband, waiting for the age of 16 to marry a warrior under the auspices of Zaya, and give birth to a bunch of children after marriage, hoping that her son can also become a warrior, and her daughter can also marry a warrior, and finally slowly wither under the scorching sun, and become a part of the desert, which is the happiness that a desert woman can hope for。

Njata was not interested in any of this, camel or marriage, and her heart was filled with a sense of anxiety, which grew worse as time went on. The mother was vaguely aware of this, but she didn't care, there will always be some problems before the desert woman gets married, and some still exist after marriage, and the scorching sun of the desert and the hardships of life will smooth out all unrealistic illusions. After getting married, the desert woman is like a mold carved out, the same obedience, the same numbness, calmly and helplessly accepting her husband's tenderness and tyranny, and bearing her husband's caresses and punches. All this will polish a woman into a shape like the wind and sand in the desert polishing stones.

Njata was terrified, fearing that she would eventually become like her mother: numbly weaving and dyeing camel blankets in her tent, complaining about everything in the desert, silently bearing her husband's punches and kicks, proudly showing off the jewelry that her husband gave her when he was happy, desperately trying to hide the scars left by her husband when he was unhappy, arrogant in the face of the herdsmen of the tribe, triumphantly beating and scolding others at every opportunity, laughing at women whose dowries were inferior to her own, jealous of women whose dowries were more generous than herself, being respectful to the chiefs and priests, and crying and scolding her husband when she learned of her husband's death, overjoyed when he learned that the chief was willing to marry him, and blessed the chief with gratitude.

Njata knew that she couldn't change anything, that she would eventually become like everyone else, and knowing this made her even more depressed, but helpless, just as she was about to accept it all, a plague changed all that.

The plague claimed a great deal of life from the tribe, and all of Zasya's wives and concubines suffered misfortune, leaving only Niata, a righteous daughter, and an unsuccessful son named Link.

After burying her mother, Njata was tasked with delivering food to a remote well in the desert, which had been left to Link's mother, and was now left to Nyata, where an exiled witch lived.

The tribe, like all desert peoples, revered magic but rejected magic, especially witches, which was a blasphemy against desert traditions, and the witch who left the tribe when she was young and returned to the tribe many years later, saying crazy things about the sea and the great city of a million. The tribe banished her to an abandoned well, but feared her magic and had to deliver her survival supplies regularly.

At first, Niata remembered Zasya's words and did not speak to the witch or listen to the witch, but soon she was immersed in the outside world that the witch had taught: a forest countless times larger than an oasis, an ocean countless times larger than a lake, snow-covered peaks and glaciers, a city of millions of people, elegant and beautiful elves, stubborn dwarves, greedy dragons, towering castles, loyal knights, and insidious thieves, all of which fascinated Niata, and she began to listen to the witches' words, to think, to ask questions。

Like all people who are excluded from the group, the old witch was very happy to have such an audience to listen to her story, the old witch keenly discovered that Nyata not only had the qualifications to learn magic, but more importantly, Niata had a heart yearning for freedom and change, so when Njata offered to learn the art of magic from her, she agreed without hesitation, and she began to teach Nyata how to decipher magical words, how to construct a spell model in her soul, how to draw energy from the magic web, and how to prepare magic with spell slots.

The old witch watched with satisfaction as Njata grew stronger and stronger, and because of her power, Njata was full of confidence and youthful vitality, just like she was back then. Niata was puzzled and asked the old witch why she had returned, and the old witch looked in the direction of the tribe in a daze, and said lightly: "This is my home after all." ”

Shortly after Niata's 16th birthday, the old witch fell ill and rejected Niata's offer to ask the old priest of the tribe to come and heal her, and died soon after, Nyata buried the old witch, inherited the old witch's spellbook and spellcasting materials, and wisely followed the old witch's advice and concealed the fact that she was a mage's apprentice.

Tonight, Niata walked out of Link's tent in a huff, looking at the starry sky and calming down. "What a stupid guy. Nyata thought hatefully, but she couldn't help but sympathize with Link when she thought of him becoming a slave, and then her mind drifted to the dead old witch and remembered an incident that had happened before.

Not long ago, Niata went to the witch's tomb to pay respects, and was surprised to find the old priest of the tribe kneeling in front of the witch's tomb and weeping bitterly, and the old priest wept as he placed a cup containing the witch's favorite milk tea in front of the tomb.

Too far away for Njata to make out what the old priest was saying, she slowly and silently retreated back to the tribe.

"Teachers have their own stories. Niata looked at the starry sky and thought a little silently.

Now, the story is over.

The tears of an old priest and a large tombstone in the desert.

That's where the old witch's story ends.