The Diamond of Strength

Prolouge- The Story Of Acotas (Part 1)

In a small village back when the Settlers were barely taking over the Natives' lands there was a child born. A small child that was born before it was supposed to be, and yet she was strong enough to beat the odds and survived longer then anyone else had ever thought she would. Due to this and other signs that they had received from their Gods they knew that this child would grow into one of the most powerful Shawomen that anyone had ever seen. Her mother decided to name her daughter Acotas.

She grew into a very frail but beautiful woman, who was not only loved by her people but by most everyone who happened to pass through their small village. Due to this her father was bombarded with many suitors asking for him for her hand in marriage. Now her father, was a very spiritual man, who was extremely fearful of the Gods anger in choosing the wrong man for his daughter, so he decided to allow his daughter to choose the man she thought was the one the gods wanted her with.

Acotas had no idea who was the one the Gods wanted her to be with so she decided to give them all a fair chance and let them take her out on one outing, and only one. But after weeks and weeks of suitors she began to lose hope that the one she was destined to be with was there at all, and all the while she was managing to keep up her Shawoman duties that she had received along the way.

On one seemingly ordinary day she saw a man who took her breath away. She recognized him as a young man from the village a few miles away from her own, but she had never gotten a close enough look at him to really see what he looked like. He was absolutely handsome (as the white people who came through her village had said,) his hair, that was s brown as the Coco beans that she collected just the other day, was in a braid that hung down to his waist. His eyes were as brown as the old Oak tree that was near her home. His copper skin was shiny with sweat and he seemed out of breath which lead Acotas to believe that he had run over to her village from his own, which meant only one thing, that something was wrong in the neighboring village.

He caught sight of her, or so she thought, and he made his way over to her in almost a run but still trying to be polite about it and not bump into people and to those he did he apologize profusely.

"Are you the Shaman of this village?" He asked Acotas old mentor who was seated next to her for she had asked for his council on a peculiar case she had recently handled. Honestly Acotas was a little offended that the young man did not even consider her a candidate of being the Shawoman of her own village.

"No, he is not," Acotas said as she received help standing from two young men from her village that were her personal assistants when it came to things that she needed help with that she could not do herself, after she was put upright she smoothed out the few wrinkles that had formed on the material she looked up at the young man with a look of authority, " I am the Shawoman of this Village, he was the previous Shaman but the duty has been passed down to me."

"You?" The young man looking and sounding like he was completely surprised that it was her, "You mean the all powerful Shawoman of this village is the young woman I see almost every day with a new gentleman? Huh! Tell me oh all powerful Shawoman when exactly do you have time to take care of all your sick villagers while your out running around with a bunch of young men?"

Acotas had never in her life been spoken to in such a rude manner, and her body was not accustomed to taking all those emotions in at once, and due to that her body could not hold her up and she started to fall forward without anyway to catch herself. Before she hit the ground a pair of strong arms caught her and held her for a moment before he picked her up and she was able to see who it was who had caught her. She saw that it was her late fathers closest friend Kokrin.

Kokrin himself, saw Acotas as his own daughter and he viewed her as someone who was fragile and needed to be taken care of. But he also knew that she was a free spirit like her mother and that she wanted to be able to take care of herself as well so he knew that this moment of weakness was very bothersome for her. So he put her down on her seat and looked in her eyes while telling her silently with his eyes that she needed to rest there and not over work herself, and then he turned himself back towards the stranger that he was rapidly starting to not like.