"I don't think I can make any guesses at how the Hist are going to think or act." Kaleeth remarked. "They are like gods; I don't think we can understand them like normal mortals. I've never known the Hist to not give someone any marks, though. It's...tradition. I think we should try not to worry about it too much, though. I'm sure Julan will come to respect his own people's traditions. Who knows, maybe the Hist will even help him do that?"

As they walked along further from the village, Kaleeth leaned herself closer to Janius, walking arm-in-arm with him. "All this stress has been a lot for me, but at least it does seem to be getting a bit better. Julan impressed my father, and people are as accepting of us as much as I guess I could have reasonably hoped. It was probably too much to hope that [i]everyone[/i] would be happy to see us, but I can at least have some hope that this will all turn out well." 

[hr]

Gwindir and S'nashi shared a quick glance between one another, with S'nashi's expression betraying only a brief moment of discomfort before she started to respond. "I...don't think I would describe either of our children as 'black sheep'. Ahnasha was, um, different from Vasiq, but still our daughter all the same."

"We wouldn't have forced her into the merchants' trade. Though, I will admit I'm personally glad she ended up there. Regardless, I just didn't want her to be in danger." Gwindir added. 

Ahnasha, meanwhile, took a hold of the bow from Fendros. "You want me to set the bar first? Are you quite sure about that. I would like to leave at least [i]some[/i] suspense for our audience." Ahnasha smiled. Her playful confidence was not something that she showed as often now as she had in the past, but competitions and the like could still draw it out of her. 

The targets that Monderyn had carved into the trees were not terribly far away, nor terribly small that Ahnasha's confidence was not well-founded. Shooting stationary targets was trivial in comparison to shooting in a real battle, and she did not expect either herself or Fendros to have any trouble with it. "I actually think we should make this harder. Maybe stand farther back somewhere? Or time it?" She suggested, pulling the bow to full draw regardless. For anyone familiar with archery, there could be no flaw found in her technique. She did not fully grip the bow with her hand, but instead left the hand open as the bow rested against her palm and inside of her thumb. Even with the draw weight of the bow, her hand was almost completely still until she loosed the arrow, which flew straight into the center of the target. At the current range, it was not too much of a challenge, as long as she gave proper focus to her shots. 

Since she was not currently in any particular rush, Ahnasha took her time and did not take advantage of any techniques to improve her rate of fire. She simply drew her arrows leisurely and took her time to place them consistently on the target. She had a tight group of arrows in the middle of the tree, though her last arrow was possibly in the very inner edge of the middle ring. She could not quite tell from where she was standing.