The walk back home seemed to take twice as long as the walk to the well had, and not just because of the added weight of the water. I was well aware of it sloshing against the sides of the bucket, but I was still careful not to let it spill over. Water was a precious resource here, and we were barely given enough to survive. Loosing even a little bit could mean the difference between life and death. Still, only half my mind was concentrating on keeping the water in the bucket. The other half was on the news I just heard, the king coming for a visit.

There were several of these camps scattered through the Southern Sands, but Syncoy, the name of our little hovel, was one of the smaller ones and hardly got any notice. It wasn't uncommon for the king to do inspections, but it was usually of the larger camps. I don't ever remember him coming to Syncoy, at least not since after I had been born. There had been one time where a large group of Imperial guards showed up in the middle of the night and dragged my mother from her bed. That was the night she had been executed. I tried not to think about it ever, but as I thought about it now, not even in that moment had the king bothered himself with our tiny little camp.

Shaking those morose thoughts from my head, I shouldered my way through the door of my home. Papa must have finished his work in the forge, because he was sitting at the little table we took our meals at, whittling away at a piece of wood and whistling a merry tune. His joy slid away when he saw the darkened expression on my face. I slammed the bucket down on the table hard, but not hard enough to spill any, letting that speak for my anger. "Did you know?" I asked through gritted teeth, ripping the scarf off my head.

"Know what?" Papa arched his dark eyebrows at me and I scoffed at his audacity.

"Don't play dumb. You're one of the council members, of course you knew. You knew the king was coming. Why didn't you tell me? I should have been the first to know!" My anger was quickly getting the best of me and my voice got louder and louder.

Papa quickly got up and grabbed my hands in an attempt to calm me. His hands were rough and calloused from all his time spent in the forge making weapons. I supported my own blisters, but my hands were still relatively smooth. "Hush Kida. Yes, I knew, and I'm sorry for not telling you, but I thought it would be best."

"Be best?" I repeated. "How am I supposed to hide myself if I don't know the king is coming?"

"Because," he sighed, squeezing my hands. "You worry too much, and worrying causes you to slip up, and slipping up can be fatal. This isn't something we can take lightly. You can't let him even think there might be something unusual about you."

For the second time that day, my blood went cold. All my anger faded and fear replaced it. "What if he already knows?" I whispered.

"That's highly unlikely," Papa said, but I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. He was just saying that to placate me. "If he did, he would have come much sooner."

I wasn't convinced. I had only been 6 years old when they executed my mother, and no one ever told me what crime she had committed to warrant paying with her life. I had my own theory that the king suspected she was like me, and that's why he had her killed. Because of course, the Imperial guards wouldn't do anything that wasn't an order from the king. They didn't just stroll in and decide to kill her for the fun of it, though I fully believed they were capable of such an act. No, it had been under the king's orders that she was executed. If my theory was correct, and he suspected she was like me, then it was possible he suspected my gifts as well, and that could be behind the real reason for this visit. I trembled at the thought. But Papa was also right. If the king did indeed know my secret, he would have come long before now. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't going to be a routine visit.

"Come on," Papa said. He tugged at my hands, seeing that I was no longer going to rage at him. "Let's get dinner started. I'm famished."

Bottling my fear, I managed to give him a small smile. That seemed to satisfy him, and he turned around to grab the wood he had been whittling and his carving knife off the table. However, he moved too quickly and his reflexes were not what they once had been. He lost his balance and grabbed the table for support. In doing so, the table jerked under his weight and the sudden movement. The bucket of water, which I had place on the very edge of the table, swayed and toppled over. I threw out my hand as if too catch it. Instead, the bucket clattered to the floor and the water itself hovered in an orb halfway between the table and the ground.

Recovering quickly, Papa grabbed the fallen bucket and set it back on the table. Moving my hand, I directed the orb of water back into the bucket. Once it was safely inside, I released my hold on the magic that allowed me to control the water. All the while, Papa's eyes darted around to every crack, crevice and window that someone could be peering through and using to spy on us. When he was satisfied that no one had seen what had just happened, he relaxed. "You have to be more careful Nakida," he chastised in a rare use of my full mane.

I huffed. "It was either that or go without our water ration for two days," I said defensively."

"You're right," he sighed. "But still, we were lucky no one was around." Without another word, Papa began grabbing dried meets and vegetables off the shelves to prepare with dinner.

This was it, the big secret. Elemental magic was the heart of Valkyra. One time, those who wielded it were considered elite and powerful. Three hundred years ago, a paranoid king and the direct ancestor of the current king, was convinced that water users were out to assassinate him. From what I had learned through my mother, water users were once very powerful but relatively peaceful. However, under that peace was a deadly weapon waiting to be unleashed. One water user in particular learned that our magic over water could be used to control another person's body in ways that were violating and painful. In the Frozen Plains to the north, use of water magic in this way was forbidden and strictly punished. Of course, there was always the rebels. My mother never told me the water user's name, though I suspected she never knew it. This water user had committed such heinous crimes that I wouldn't be surprised if his name had been wiped out of all history to be forgotten. Regardless, this water user and his gang was the reason the king became paranoid that he was their target. Whether or not that was actually the case, I never knew, but as a result of his fear, he ordered all water users rounded up and put to death. Naturally, the Northern tribes went into hiding. Even after the offending water user was caught and killed, the king still perused his mad hunt to rid the world of water users. He offered them a choice: remain in hiding and be killed like animals, or surrender themselves and be allowed to live under the close watch of the Imperial Army. In an effort to save their people, most tribes opted for this deal and surrendered. The ones who did were shipped to the Southern Sands, forced into camps and to live with as little water as the king could get by with giving them. The ones who remained hiding were all slaughtered. Over time, the tribes became smaller and smaller. Fewer children were born each generation and the gift of water magic became all but extinct.

I have been the first water user born in almost three generations. The old king's fear was passed down through his bloodline, but the current king had little to fear from water users now. He didn't know what I was, and I shuddered to think what he would do to me if he ever knew. That's why it's always been of vital importance to keep my gifts a secret. I don't remember the first time I ever used my magic and my parents realized I was a water user, but since then, my mother made sure I knew the history of our people, so I could understand what happened and the importance of keeping my existence a secret.

Dinner was a quiet affair, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Finally, Papa excused himself to bed. I was too restless to sleep. I knew the king wouldn't be arriving for a month, but he might as well have arriving tomorrow for all it did to my nerves. When the camp had fallen quiet and most of the villagers were asleep, I crept out of the house. The night was much cooler than the day, but still hot enough to make me break a sweat as I jogged to the southernmost point in the camp. The sky was clear, as it usually was, and the moon was almost full, giving me plenty of light to see by. The wall that marked the edge of the camp loomed before me, but that wasn't what my focus was on. At the foot of the wall was a small graveyard. My mother was buried here, and I frequented it often. There was no guard lingering on the wall. One thing that was common for all people through the country was respect for the dead. The guards usually left this part of the wall alone to give grievers privacy. The wall was too high to climb anyway, so escape from this part was impossible. There was only one gate, one way in and out of the camp.

I wound my way through the headstones. One small flaw in my education was that I couldn't read, almost no one in the village could. So I couldn't read the names, but that didn't matter. I knew my mother's grave by heart. Papa had etched a symbol of a sword and a rose crossed together on her head stone.

Reaching it, I sat down and sighed, placing my hand on the rough stone. "Hello Mama," I said quietly. I could swear I felt the stone hum underneath my hand in response. "I miss you." Under my hand, the Stone was warm from absorbing the heat of the sun all day.

Maud, the spiritual shaman of our tribe always spoke about how my mother's spirit lived on in me, and at times like this, I believed her. Even though I knew I was just sitting here talking to a stone, sometimes when I said something particular, the stone would feel warmer beneath my hand, or the breeze would pick up and ripple through my black hair, like my mother was there and listening to every word I said. It was a small comfort.

I lost track of time, but eventually a movement to my right broke my focus and I pulled my attention away from the headstone. It was a guard I had seen moving. He was still a respectable distance away with his back to me, not able to hear anything I said, but it was still too close for my comfort. I knew he was just doing his job, but I couldn't help but feel a little resentful and annoyed that he ruined my time with my mother. Behind him, I could see the sky beginning to brighten and the sun prepared to rise. I had been sitting out here all night.

Rising, I stretched my aching muscles and slowly made my way back home. Others were beginning to rise, but I was quick enough that I made it home without anyone noticing me. The only good thing about this lifestyle was that we had no jobs. Everything was controlled by the Imperial Army, so I had no need to wake up early in the morning. Grateful, I collapsed into bed fully clothed, finally exhausted enough to sleep.