Rings on her fingers...
and Bells on her toes...
The rings were part of Kiama's earliest memories. Ringed hands holding her as a baby, soothing her tears, ruffling her curls filled the images of her past. Male and female hands covered in metal and gemstones, images of animals and strange symbols. They hugged every digit, almost every phalanx, and caressed knuckles. Slender fingers perfect for playing piano and fingers with knuckles like knots from arthritis bore the rings. Some were well manicured, others showed bitten fingernails, and still others were rough on callused skin.
Some wore dozens of rings, filled their fingers so that flesh was not easily seen. Others wore very few, only what was necessary. Kiama's mother was one of the latter. She only wore the basics - an iron coil on the left middle finger, a gold and diamond ring on her right index, her rose gold wedding band with words in the ancient tongue etched on the metal and always glinting even in the darkness, a gold and copper depiction of her bear totem on her right ring finger, and a silver and aquamarine on the middle phalanx of her right smallest finger. Those rings were as familiar to Kiama as her mother's hands and voice and name. Always, the rings were present in her memory.
Kiama's best friend, Lujayne, wore as many rings as she could get her hands on, or in. Kiama's mother laughed at the girl's greedy fingers and told her daughter that the number of rings was not always an assurance of power as most rings easily obtained were only cheap trinkets with a glimmer of power.
Indeed, Lujayne's rings were mostly those bought for a favor here and a barter there and rarely had a flash of power when wanted or needed. Only her birth ring, an onyx band, and her totem, a silver snake with blue topaz eyes, had any true power.
Kiama fidgeted with her own totem, a silver toad as tiny as the head of a pin on a thin band on her smallest right finger. Lujayne often teased Kiama about this totem. It was true that her tiny toad looked pitiful next to her friend's flickering and coiling snake. A snake for ever-changing and transmutation was Lujayne's. A toad for finding treasures in the swamps, beauty in the dark waters of the world was Kiama's. Kiama wasn't peaked by the teasing, she knew the strength of her totem well.
Still, the toad seemed tiny, a mere glint, as Kiama eyed the armor of rings on Magan's hands. Everything from his wolf totem to his steel birth ring that covered all three phalanxes spoke of the type of magic he came from; war magic, battle spells.
