Feedback on an intro?

[footballbutterfly]

Hi all, just looking for some feedback on an intro to a novel I am working. Everything is appreciated!

The Priestess
Shai was small, even among the Priestesses, her robes were shortened and still they dragged behind her. She was forced to pin them at the shoulders to compensate the wide neckline. Every meal time Shai ate heartily at mealtime and drank extra vitamin waters after prayer. In spite of her efforts and the extras lifted to her room by some of her sisters, she could not make gains in height or breadth. Shai blew a tuft of unruly silver hair from her face and pulled her knees up to her chin. She laid her chin on her crossed arms and rubbed her kneecaps through the waves of cotton. What she wouldn’t give to be just a little less skeletal, to have some minor curves instead of the body of a young lad. Kila and Kriya reprimanded her vanity constantly but it wasn’t vanity, not really, she just felt so small and insignificant, not to mention weak. She could not draw water from the well or work the laundry press, she struggled to clear the tables on dish duty and needed both hands to carry the pitcher of tea at meal time. Certainly her sisters were too pure to resent her but Shai hated not pulling her weight. Shai chuckled again at her own joke and then pictured Kriya’s reprimanding look. There were no mirrors in Temple so she certainly was not standing around looking at herself and yearning for a body. She didn’t even know what a woman should look like since all of her sisters wore the same shapeless white robes. Shai just felt small. Her nickname ‘wee one’ did not help either. None of her sisters were cruel, it was against the very foundation of their faith, but she still felt wrong somehow. Nobody knew how old she was, another source of insecurity. Kriya could not even tell if or when Shai had transitioned. The thought of being stuck in such an insignificant body for the remainder of her long life was the worst part. Every day at prayer she asked Muna for her transition. Shai also asked for memory, some clue as to where she came from, who she belonged to. Five annuals ago one of the sisters had found her unconscious in the Temple gardens wearing a tattered dress and wrapped in a velvet cloak. Shai had no memory of who she was or where she’d come from but Kriya had insisted she train as a Priestess and nobody questioned the Elder’s decisions.
Again Shai found herself thinking back in memory, pushing the edges of her mind, trying to see something before she awoke in the Temple. She stared at the tile work around her alter, purples of every shade bearing the mark of Muna and surrounding the small statuette she offered thrice daily prayers to. Shai marveled at the beauty of the Moon Mother’s visage flickering firelight from her jasmine candles. And then it came, hard and fast, Shai tried to fight the aura, tried to fight the vision, but then she was falling – again.

Heat, no warmth, and bright light touched her face, her shoulder, her hand. Shai jerked upright and shielded her eyes against the glow though they still teared up at the intense glare. After a moment she realized she was in the Before again. The light was from the Golden Orb and she knew that once her eyes adjusted she would see colors she could not name and hear sounds that she could not describe and then she would hear something above it all and she would turn and see him, and then she would fall again. But it did not come, she stood and felt the grass between her toes, a color, real color unlike the silver blades of Isthile, and the sky was bright and blue, but unlike the blues of her home, vibrant and clear, and the Orb glowed like a million flames high in the sky. Shai was struck dumb by the beauty of this land. And then he was there, across the meadow, hand raised in greeting, no he was motioning to her and there was a sound she could not quite place, it tickled her ears and she realized he was making it. Her stranger was calling her with words – voice. He had voice. Shai had only read of it, an absurd concept she sought to name because of him. Her Stranger. She moved toward him slowly at first and then faster as she closed in. Her Stranger looked on her with wonder, then shock, then fear and she stopped suddenly as the last emotion crossed his face. Shai looked at her feet and saw the grass disappearing, and the earth between them began to shake and split. Her Stranger called to her “It’s the Divide. It’s almost time,” and then he was gone and from the cracking earth a fog rolled up and out. Shai watched in horror, frozen in place, as the fog rolled over the place her Stranger had just occupied, draining all color and spreading fast up the tree trunks and into the sky toward the Orb. It’s going to take the light, she thought and as her own voice exploded in protest she fell…