It was a strange feeling the filled her as locks of shorn hair fell from her head. She couldn't help but recall standing in the river, cold water swirling around her knees as she had hastily hacked off the greater length of her hair with a hunting knife. Just as it had then, this change in her appearance marked a sudden shift in her fate. The prospect was dizzying. It seemed impossible, yet somehow it was happening.
Servants came in to fit her with a uniform, moving her about like a doll as they did their work. At the same time a disgruntled looking squire talked her through what she needed to do at the ceremony, thankfully not much. No matter how hard she tried to relax her mind kept racing.
"It's time." The words were clipped, more than likely the squire would rather be doing anything else.
She snapped to attention, instantly on her feet and following the squire out of the room. She felt her spine straighten at the crisp feeling of the uniform, her bearing some strange mix of what her mother had taught her as a child and what she had observed of the knights during her time in the castle. The courtyard was crowded with soldiers, the highest ranking at the front and the lowest packed together at the back. The stared at her, some with barely disguised hatred and disgust. It wasn't hard to guess what they were thinking. A woman. Barely more than a child. A slave. Yet there she was, walking among them on equal ground, about to receive a commendation most of them could only dream about.
She felt a swell of pride as she stepped onto the dais, bending one knee and touching a closed fist to the stone, head lowered. The lord of the castle was speaking but the words seem to float around her without actually reaching her ears. It was only the strange feeling of the gold signet being tied into the hair against the back of her neck that seemed real. Only a handful of knights shared this honor, and in the whole of the army no other person's braid of office started with recognition for saving their lord's life. The weight of it adumbrated everything else in her life, everything she had been before that moment.