The air was humid and warm as Arela prepared herself for the fast. She could look forward to 2 days and 2 nights, with only lukewarm water to sustain her, as the final part of her trials to become the earth shaman for her tribe. Her ceremonial dress consisted of a simple tunic made of deerhide leather, belted with woven grasses, and boots of the same leather. Her long auburn hair bound back from her face with a smaller thong of woven grass, and a pendant cunningly wrought into the shape of the earth rune were her only ornaments.

As she finished tying the thong in her hair she glanced around her home, a small building, consisting of crude wooden walls with woven grass and leaf thatch for the roof, supported by 4 young trees at the corners of the rectangular dwelling. Her bed, a cloth mattress stuffed with grasses and flower petals to give it a pleasant scent and herself pleasant dreams, lay unmade with the woolen blanket, barely needed in this warm weather, sitting askew at the end of it.