The morning sun spilled through my window like liquid gold, illuminating the collection of treasures arranged meticulously across my small bedroom. Maps covered nearly every inch of wall space—some purchased from traveling merchants with my carefully saved copper pieces, others painstakingly copied from books in Old Master Fendrel’s library when he wasn’t watching. Trinkets from the market lined my shelves: a compass with a cracked glass face, a leather pouch of smooth river stones I pretended were rare gems, a knife Father had reluctantly given me on my tenth nameday after months of persistent begging.
I, Elara Windrider, twelve summers old and already thoroughly dissatisfied with the boundaries of Oakhollow Village, had more important things to do than help Mother with the washing this morning. Today was my Future-Casting day, a ritual I’d invented myself, inspired by the fortune-telling Mistress Talia performed at the Harvest Festival. Instead of tea leaves or bird bones, I used my most precious possession—a genuine adventurer’s journal with yellowed pages and a binding of cracked leather, discovered in a dusty corner of the village’s only bookshop.
The adventurer’s name had been inscribed inside—Karina Stormwalker—though the shopkeeper knew nothing of her fate. The final entry was dated twenty years ago, her journey seemingly abandoned mid-expedition. Sometimes I imagined she was still out there, exploring uncharted territories too magnificent to stop and record.
I nestled into my window seat, legs tucked beneath me, and opened the journal to a fresh page. Across the top, I wrote in my best script: “Elara Windrider: Ten Years Hence.”
The quill hovered over parchment as I gazed beyond the familiar fields surrounding our village to where the Mistwood Forest met the foothills of the Serpenspine Mountains. Somewhere beyond those peaks lay everything I’d never seen—deserts and oceans, ancient ruins and sprawling cities, creatures from stories and people with magic in their blood.
In ten years, I would be twenty-two—surely old enough to have carved my name into the world’s memory. The quill touched paper, and my future began to flow across the page.
First and foremost, I will no longer answer to merely “Elara.” By then, I shall be known across the Seven Kingdoms as Elara Dragon-Friend, having earned this title after saving a clutch of dragon eggs from poachers in the Emberfall Mountains. The mother dragon, in gratitude, granted me a scale that, when worn close to my heart, allows me to understand the languages of all creatures. This proved invaluable during the Goblin Peace Accords, which I helped negotiate after discovering that the entire war had been based on a mistranslation of ancient treaties.
I paused, considering whether this might be too ambitious even for ten years’ time. Then I remembered how Bryce the blacksmith’s son had laughed yesterday when I’d told him I planned to leave Oakhollow someday. “Girls don’t become adventurers,” he’d said with the unearned confidence of a boy who’d never questioned the boundaries of his world. “They become wives and mothers and maybe herbalists if they’re clever.”
My quill pressed harder into the parchment.
My base of operations will be a cottage built into the living branches of an ancient oak tree, gifted to me by the Emerald Court of the fae after I recovered their stolen Moonstone Crown. The cottage magically expands to accommodate fellow adventurers when I host them between expeditions, but remains cozy when I’m alone with my companion, a silver fox with unusual intelligence who found me injured in a ravine and led me to healing hot springs.
The cottage walls will be lined with artifacts from my travels—a vial of sand that glows with the memories of a forgotten civilization, a music box that plays different melodies depending on who opens it, a dagger forged from a fallen star that can cut through enchantments as easily as cloth. Each object has a story known only to those who were there when I acquired it.
Through my window, I watched Bryce and his friends playing at swordcraft with wooden sticks in the village square. Their imagined adventures never took them beyond the boundaries of familiar territory. They fought the same pretend battles against the same pretend enemies, never questioning whether the most interesting journeys might follow entirely different paths.
I will carry a journal much like this one, but filled with detailed accounts of actual discoveries rather than hopeful imaginings. Scholars at the Great Library will pay handsomely for my field notes on previously undocumented magical phenomena, and apprentice adventurers will study my maps of uncharted territories. I shall be known not only for bravery but for meticulous observation—the mark of a true explorer.
My parents will have long since accepted my chosen path, especially after I returned from my third expedition with enough gold to ensure their comfortable retirement. Mother no longer jumps at shadows when I’m away, comforted by the communication crystal I enchanted that allows me to send messages across vast distances. Father proudly displays the ceremonial sword I received from the Mountain King after solving the Riddle of Stone that had plagued his people for generations.
I hesitated, quill dripping a small blot onto the page. The truth was, Mother and Father could barely tolerate my wanderings to the edge of the village. The thought of me crossing beyond known borders terrified them in a way I couldn’t fully understand. Their fears were like invisible hands always pulling me back toward safety, toward smallness.
Most importantly, in ten years’ time, I will have assembled a circle of loyal companions—fellow adventurers drawn together by circumstance and choice rather than accident of birth. We will be bound by shared dangers and midnight conversations beneath strange stars, by inside jokes and scars with stories, by the absolute certainty that any one of us would brave the Shadowlands themselves to rescue another.
There will be Neri, a healer with forbidden knowledge of blood magic that she uses only to save lives never to harm; Thorne, a scholar-thief who can pick any lock and recite poetry in seven languages; Krell, a half-giant weaponsmith whose axes are coveted by kings but who follows no ruler; and others whose paths I haven’t yet crossed but whose friendship will reshape my understanding of belonging.
The sound of Mother calling my name drifted through the window. The washing wouldn’t wait forever, and neither would the dozen other chores that filled our predictable days. I quickly finished my entry, the words rushing now like a river approaching a waterfall.
When people hear my name, they will not think “oh, the cobbler’s daughter from that tiny village” but rather “the woman who redrew the maps” and “the adventurer who found what others had given up searching for.” Children will play at being me, using sticks as my famous sword Truthseeker and arguing over who gets to perform my legendary feats.
But most precious will be the moments between adventures—watching sunrise from a mountain peak no human has climbed before, teaching village children about the wider world during winter stays in outpost towns, pressing unusual flowers between journal pages, and always, always planning the next journey into the unknown.
That is where I shall be in ten years—not in any single place, but everywhere the horizon beckons with mysteries waiting to be solved. For to be an adventurer is not merely to travel from point to point, but to live fully in the spaces between certainties.
I signed my name with a flourish just as Mother’s voice grew more insistent. Carefully closing the journal, I tucked it beneath my mattress where it would be safe from prying eyes and potential mockery. The future I’d described seemed so vivid I could almost taste the unfamiliar spices of distant markets, feel the texture of maps not yet drawn.
Ten years. Ten years to transform from Elara-who-daydreams to Elara Dragon-Friend. It seemed simultaneously an eternity and barely enough time to accomplish everything I’d imagined.
As I hurried downstairs to help with the washing, my hand brushed against the small knife at my belt—the only real tool I possessed for carving my way toward that future. But I had other weapons too: stubborn hope, insatiable curiosity, and the absolute refusal to believe that maps showing “here be monsters” marked the end of possibility rather than the beginning.
Ten years. I would make them count.
Chadwick Rye 
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