Heron's eyesight had grown dim, and Gasping Cliff was dark even on a good day. Whenever she dropped something,…
Heron's eyesight had grown dim, and Gasping Cliff was dark even on a good day. Whenever she dropped something, she could never seem to find it again.
Today it was a hairpin, and not just any hairpin. It was the prize she had won for taking first place in the Young Prodigy Contest as a child, an egret hairpin carved by the Grandmaster himself. She used to wear it every day, back when she still had sharp eyes that could read people and judge things at a glance.
She searched and searched, but it was nowhere to be found. In the end she thought, bitterly, "If it's gone, it's gone. Same as my sight."
Just as she was about to give up, a newly admitted junior disciple came over, grinning, and handed it back to her.
"It was on the rock right behind you. If you'd just turned around, you'd have seen it."