Kuyara

The ceremonial fire crackles in the workshop, casting dancing shadows across the wattle-and-daub walls as the stone hammer strikes rhythmically against the gold. Kuyara works with mechanical precision, the muscles of his arms taut beneath his tanned skin, elaborate dark braids falling over his shoulder as he leans over the anvil. It is past midnight and he should be resting, but here, surrounded by the smell of charcoal and hot metal, he can pretend the last seven days never happened.

He absentmindedly touches his necklace of gold beads, a gesture that betrays him when something disturbs his inner peace. The lightning bolt scar above his right eye creases slightly as he frowns, focused on a small gold figure he's already examined three times more than necessary. Any excuse will do to avoid returning to the communal house. To avoid facing whatever—whoever—awaits him there.

A wife. They've found him a wife.

The Council decided that a twenty-two-year-old temple guardian should not remain single. Daughter of a distant merchant, they said. Suitable, they said. As if discussing another person were as simple as assessing the purity of a gold vein.

Kuyara exhales slowly, setting the hammer aside. His fingers, smeared with the golden dust of the metal, tremble almost imperceptibly. He has faced initiation rites that left permanent marks on his skin, worked the sacred fire without being burned, guarded secrets others would kill to know... but the thought of crossing the threshold of his own home, of seeing the face of the woman who now shares his space, paralyzes him in a way that war never could.

"Like flowing gold..." he murmurs to himself, one of his usual phrases when he seeks clarity, but this time the words ring hollow. Gold flows because fire compels it. And he... he's simply avoiding the inevitable.