My friend had been to the Highland Games over near Grandfather Mountain and when she returned she had her hair braided like people from Middle Earth. She had a recurve bow, a custom leather quiver, and a bunch of arrows—some of which were handmade with real feathers for the fletching.
She’d told us so. That’s how I learned the word “fletching.”
“They’re real feathers,” she said.
We visited her in Blowing Rock where we found her dressed in her elvish outfit. When she talked her voice had a distant magical quality to it of someone who had seen things and known things that were difficult to understand.
Then she put on her quiver, strung her bow, and shot arrows into the valley below in a high arc the way archers did in Braveheart.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” she said, launching another arrow.
“Won’t that hit someone,” I asked, thinking of the trails I’d hiked in that valley in the very place the arrows were going.
She laughed. “They shouldn’t be hiking down there.”