Story Time! - Graceling read-along - the origins of our Graces

Hey all! 
For our Graceling read-along, Erika and I are writing up the story of how our personal characters found out about their Graces! You can still see both of our profiles on each of our blogs. 

If you remember, my character was Graced with thievery. Here’s a little backstory for her character. 

Usually, one can see if a child is Graced a few weeks or month after their birth.

This wasn’t the case for me. 

Since I was little, I have always been the fun yet strange one. I was always interested in clockwork and cogs, mechanics, architecture and acrobatics. I had a collection of keys hidden in a little cabinet in my room. And, I was unusually silent. For years people in my surrounding thought I was just an odd one. 

My eyes only changed when I was five. This has always been unusual in Lienid, not to mention in all of the Lands, as Graced eyes usually settle in infancy. The day one of my gray eyes turned an impressive shade of violet, people thought I was tricking them. Even my older sister didn’t believe it was natural, until certain skills sharpened. 

One of the groups of older children of the orphanage once locked me in a room, just for the fun of it. When I managed to pick the lock and escape in under a minute, everyone found it impossible to believe. It wasn’t that difficult - the lock was quite standard. Other kids then started locking themselves in rooms on purpose just to try what I did. Of course, after hours of trying, I was always asked to get them out. 

I gradually became even more quiet and better at hiding in plain sight. It doesn’t sound like much, but I find it easy to move objects without it making the slightest sound. Pranking the bullies by stealing their things and making them think they were crazy became as easy as breathing. That got me the nickname ‘Shadow’. It’s better than ‘Thief’, anyway. 

The strange thing is, people never thought that that was my Grace. Everyone was expecting something else to suddenly turn up. They saw my balance and stability and thought that I may also be a Graced archer. The best bow-maker in the land made one for me, and, though I practiced every day, and was good at it, I could feel it wasn’t my Grace. Some people still put that label on me, and, if I ever want to hide my thievery Grace, I lie and use the idea of archery being my Grace to my advantage. Only experts can tell it isn’t my Grace, but no one ever manages to discover what it really is. Just a handful of people in the world know what my Grace truly is. 

Now, I am not interested in stealing a crown or diamonds or money. There’s no fun in that, and with my position it would only get me in trouble. Instead, I enjoy the art of stealing from thieves. For that I had to learn tracking, but that also came quite easily. It is always nice to be able to return a stolen item to its owner. 

That’s as far as my imagination goes for now! What did you think? How did your character find your Grace? Let me know!