Nasrin 1

Nasrin was a very lucky girl. Oh, she had her problems like anyone else. The occasional challenge or opportunity could be taken in stride, but there was always something around. The corner that would simply have to be endured. She met all of this with her chin high, the result of her natural character; and with an assurance that she could and would cope. This last trait was courtesy of her grandmother. Her parents did their part, they showed they loved or respected her a little more than average and showed disrespect or neglect or disappointment a little less often than average.
Neglect was the real thing though. Her father was often away, or at least away too much, and her mother was always busy. That was a chore to handle for a child who thrived on validation, as so many of us do. Even when he was home, her father could never have enough time for her and for everything - or anything - else.
What saved her was her grandmother. Grandmother was retired, she made that quite clear. She "indulged" herself in a few very specific chores around which everyone else's domestic rituals revolved. The family master stock was the second most important chore she had retained. She was prouder of that stock, only 43 years old, than matriarchs who had a stock measured in centuries.
None of the others knew the day and hour the stock was started, but she did. It was part of the first meal she cooked in the house she was granted after, apparently, from what people would tell a girlchild, saving more or less everyone. From something. Nasrin had a settled version of the story she had decided on as a young child and that persisted even in the face of new hints people would drop as she grew older. What wasn't a child's imagination was the pair of swords over the doorway, sized for grandmother's hands, not grandfather's.
Grandmother had developed a taste for the boring, the staid, the domestic. For routine, and for waking up in confidence that nothing unusually horrible would happen that day. She had also developed a keen appreciation for how hard it can be to achieve that state. The skills, and attitudes, she had developed on her way to such illumination were taught to Nasrin. Luckily for Nasrin, the lessons learned from fickle, murderous fate; and from large, shouty men were tempered with love. The produced a dogged determination and a cheerful optimism that would serve Nasrin well throughout her life.
One day, in the hills behind their plot, Nasrin would have to choose which of her grandmother's lessons she would apply. It hadn't been a normal morning. The same chores were done, the tea was the usual, breakfast wasn't unprecedented, but it all stood out more clearly. More real. The morning would have stood out in memory even without the afternoon that followed.
Before lunch she would learn that one local myth was all too false. Luckily for her, "if you can, carry more than one meal with you, do so" was something her grandmother had learned early. Nasrin was well fortified for what would prove to be a very long day.

Chapter 1 Nasrin
Chapter 2 Nasrin and the thing
Chapter 3 Nastin discovers something
Chapter 4 Nasrin and the other thing
Chapter 5 Nasrin saves something small
Chapter 6 One perfect day
Chapter 7 Nasrin Thales some Nasrin time
Chapter 8 family comes first
Chapter 9 the deadly is mundane to the prepared
Chapter 10 hard choices vs simple souls, souls win big
Chapter 11 what actually is justice anyway, never mind, do it my way
Chapter 12 why would anyone ever do that ?
Chapter 13 because the price was unimaginable, end with tea.