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Title: Leader, Hunter, Dancer Character: Teyla Rating: G Spoilers: Suspicion, vaguely Summary: She wasn't the same person she'd been back home. Notes: Written for 15minuteficlets. I had the first line written before I even knew who/what I was going to write about. She wasn't the same person she'd been back home. Others had pointed it out to her, as they left – leaving her there, as though they no longer belonged to her. With her. She supposed it was true, in a way. She'd become something between what she was and what she saw in the newcomers. Before, at home, she'd been a leader by way of being a trader, something of a diplomat in her way. She had hunted, but it was not her responsibility. She was a leader – she could not be risked, not when she had no child to follow her, to be raised by her trusted second until he or she was of age. Now – she was a leader still, but at a distance. Her responsibilities had been taken over by that second and been supplanted by new ones. Now she was a hunter. She fought, in the field, as they said, with the weapons of the newcomers. She wore their clothes, because she saw the value in the protection they provided. But she swore to herself that she would not become them. She would tread the line. No – she would dance it. Her lips curved into a smile, but there was no one else in the small, bare room to see it. She stood, barefoot, wearing a split skirt and skin-tight top, her long hair pulled back behind her head. She stood relaxed, at ease, comfortable with her surroundings and herself. The solid floor beneath her feet, the cool air on her skin and in her lungs, the bright sunlight filtering through the brilliant windows, drenching the room in color – she was aware of all of it; she became part of it. And she danced. This was her people's way, to move as the wind itself. To fight only one's enemy, not one's self, not the elements. This was her way. No, she would not become one like the Earth-borns, who understood the truths of the world and the elements less even than they understood themselves. Perhaps she was not entirely Athosian anymore, as some claimed – but she was still the child of her ancestors, and she would not deny their blood or their will. She would become what they wished of her. Something entirely new, something entirely her own. And she would forever be free.