Sophia Meets Logan pt 1

It's been floating i my head. I think I want to do something with my “Gwarcheidwad” concept eventually.

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I’d been a Guardian, excuse me, a “Gwarcheidwad” for six months now. I’ve got to get used to using the proper term.

We don’t work in groups. Well, hardly ever. Your predecessor doesn’t even train you. If we pass each other on the streets, which would be an incredibly rare occurrence to begin with, neither says anything. I think it’s intentional. The Spirits seem to invariably choose people with this “Lone Wolf” mentality for the job. When you add that to active Gwarcheidwads staying within territory lines, we just never meet each other.

But, stuff in my territory is getting serious, to the point of needing a little more diplomacy and a bit less head bashing. That’s fine by me, but I don’t know the protocols. And my Spirit isn’t old enough to be able to communicate with me in anything as clear as full sentences. So I need a mentor. Temporary of course. I am a Gwarcheidwad after all.

My Spirit, Tewa, and I don’t talk in complete sentences, but I’ve heard from a lot of the Critters about my mentor. They’re kinda famous in this area, as Gwarcheidwad go. The North Wind Spirit doesn’t choose a Gwarcheidwad to partner with often, and WindShadow has had a pretty long run for a Gwarcheidwad. You usually die or get incapacitated in this line of work pretty quickly. So I’m excited. Meeting the North Wind Spirit is amazing enough, but WindShadow has to be all kinds of crazy intimidating too.

I tapped my foot impatiently in the public library map room. So what if I’m early?

10 minutes after the meet time.

20.

No sign of anyone.

A short... girl? Yeah, I think it’s-- yeah definitely a girl. The baggy t-shirt and messy short-cropped hair did a lot to hide gender, but there were definitely boobs under there, and the pants were a really girly fit. Plus, there’s no disguising the face, very definitely feminine.

The girl looked at me through tired, half-lidded eyes. “Hi.”

“Uh... Hello.” She couldn’t have been five feet tall even. In fact, she even looks younger than I am. No way that’s the infamous WindShadow. But, no one else has shown up. I guess I could look.

A little bit of concentration, and my Sight was active. And next to the very small, very un-intimidating girl was a Wind Spirit. It looked like someone had crossed a lion and a wolf. I couldn’t see the back feet for the sheer bulk of the Spirit and it’s mane, but the front paws were as big as car tires, and ended in four vicious-looking claws. And yet, it seemed to be made out of a blue fog, so the wild, ever-moving mane extended out in to the air, and faded into it rather than actually ending. My Tewa is a Wind Spirit too, but he looks tiny and weak by comparison to this, thing. That has to be the North Wind Spirit.

The girl who had been watching me without a word walked over, the enormous Wind Spirit moved with her. I had a foot on her easy, but she laughed gently like an old kung-fu master upon meeting a brash new student, and placed her hand on her Spirit’s head. “You were expecting someone more.”

The sentence wasn’t unfinished. I understood, because I had. I had expected someone more, everything. Taller, older, intimidating... Hell! Someone punctual! But I wasn’t going to say that to the North Wind Spirit and the WindShadow. “I! Err-- I-- No! I--”

Continued: [link]