Sarah 1

Her feet hurt and her muscles ached but they had warned her that would happen, that the path is long and hard and out of the way. Sarah had nodded, reckoning that made sense. How else do you keep a secret city, well, secret?
"Are you sure you want to go? We can't and won't make you." They had asked, almost unsure of her. "If you don't pass the seers test you won't be allowed to come back. And it isn't an easy life." As if her current life was. As if she would have anything to come back to.
They had warned her but it had not prepared her.
It had been warm and comfortable in her seaside village, the air was heavy with salt, when the keeper came arrived. The keeper was a small girl with grey hair to her waist, and a mustache atop a wide smile. She spoke often and with passion telling stories of past adventures and jokes. If it weren't for that grey hair Sarah never would have believed she had seen over sixty winters.
The keeper helped her pack a single bag, stressing the need to pack light, but insisted Sarah bring a single momento. She picked an old doll that had a vague memory of who she thought might be her mother attached to it.
They set out after a small breakfast, the previous days mild heat gaveway to blistering sun and heat. Through swamp and salty marsh they trudged, mosquitos and alligators threatening to draw blood. Slowly though that little coastal village melted away into the southern horizon.
They walked that day until the sun threatened to fall below the earth and the next morning ate breakfast and started again. That day they escaped the dredged swamps and made to solid ground composed if pine forests and clay mounds. The day after went much the same as the last two.
On the fourth day however Sarah could go no further. She had walked more in one day than she had her whole life, and she had walked three of them with no rest. Her joints and muscles burned and ached.
Fear grew in Sarah that she had failed, that her keeper would leave her behind. She had invested in something too high and she couldn't deliver.
"You made it further than most!" Her keeper had told her, but this only brought more fear that Sarah was close but not good enough for the keeper and her so called "family" she so often told stories about.
But the old woman never left. In fact throughout the next few days the keeper hunted and made her soup and broth from the haul. Slowly Sarah grew stronger again.
It was around the campfire on the second night that Sarah said her first words to the old woman.
"Why didn't you leave me?" After all that's what is done with those who can't carry their own weight; they were left. Or worse.
"Because I see it in you. A want for love and love to be given, even if you don't see it yourself." The grey haired keeper replied. After another second, she added "you'll be a good addition to the family."
The old woman got up to go to her bed roll when Sarah spoke for a second time. "Wait... what's your name?"
The keeper smiled "Jessica."