Visitors arrive.

The morning passes quickly as you busy yourself with various chores, and it is drawing on towards noon when you hear the blast of horns. You run out into the town center, your mother and younger siblings following you, and your father emerges from his workshop. All around the central circle people emerge from houses and workshops, looking around for the source of the commotion.

The horns sound again, closer this time, and a few minutes later you hear the drumming of hooves and the creaking of wheels. Soon, you see a caravan coming up the road from the south, accompanied by soldiers in gleaming armor, some mounted on horses and others marching on foot. The leading elements of the procession march into the town center and you stare, your jaw dropping in amazement. The caravan is entirely women! Women clad in armor, carrying bows and spears, one even carrying a flag showing a silver moon on a black field, women in leather vests with muscles almost a match for a man's driving ox-pulled carts, women riding in the carts clad in what look like dresses, though not quite like those worn up here, and not a man in sight. Most of the women have pale skin similar to your own, but some have tanned or olive skin, and a couple have skin almost as dark a black as your hair.

Your attention is pulled back to a woman riding near the front of the procession. She has olive skin, dark eyes, and dark hair, braided elaborately and decorated with silver chains, and she is wearing a dress of pure white, whiter than you had thought any fabric could be kept, with silver beads around the fringe. She is also wearing a silver necklace with a large jewel you don't recognize, one you could swear is glowing a faint silver. There is an odd presence to her that draws your eye, that somehow indescribably makes her more important than those around her.

The procession comes to a halt, and the woman raises her hand. "Greetings to you all," she says. "I am Laurel, servant of Ama, the one you call Manai, the Lady of the Moon. We come in peace from the Amazon Isles, far to the south in the Central Seas, to trade and to see the world and to tell the story of our people and our nation."

You stare in awe. You'd heard stories from the bards, stories of a far distant land where women lived without men, or where they took men as slaves, or where they sought out men of other lands to sire their children, depending on which stories you believed. You'd heard the stories, but you never believed they were true. And yet... here they were. The Amazons, the Chosen of the Moon, right out of legend.