Maybe I have always been a writer, but never properly explored it until now. At school, I adored creative writing and got great feedback from the few short stories I wrote. Now, I am starting something new. Hopefully, it will turn into a proper novel; maybe even a whole series set on another planet. This is why I have come to SkillShare.

The central character is a young woman named Zahra. She lives with her community in homes carved out of mountain sides in a rocky desert. The story is about her discovering her nascent powers and how to use them, their good and dark sides, and how she grows and evolves through a quest to find the father she never knew.

She dresses in long trousers and boots, a tunic and a long coat or cape with a hood (see AI image). She is about 18 of our years old, but looks older. Her hair is curly, cut short and is the colour of ancient oak - a brown so dark as to be black except in strong sunlight. She is slim, but fit and strong and carries with her a staff, which she expertly wields as a weapon when the need arises. Like other women in her culture, she is able tell what others are feeling - she is an empath. Later on, she discovers another ability that marks her out as unique. What follows is the first draft of the opening scene.

Zahra sat motionless on her favourite rock. Not many people in the world have a favourite rock, but Zahra had one. This one. Because it was flat on top so it make for an excellent seat, and because it could only be found by walking up the steep pathway from the canyon floor below, all the way to the top. That walk had taken her nearly an hour, and she'd completed it in almost complete darkness. But she had walked that route a hundred times before, and knew every turn and every rock and tiny tree scrabbling for light and air. She came up here often at this time of the day, when it was cold, before the sun had warmed the rocks and the sand hot enough almost to cook on.

Her eyes, pale green with flecks of amber, scanned the horizon to the east, where the sun would soon be visible. Already, the sky was turning from blue to orange to yellow. As she watched, the rim of the sun appeared, a deep orange colour, and began to visibly rise to fill the space between two hills, It would start warming her soon.

She scanned the ground around her. Her eyes could pick out a moving desert antelope or wild dog miles away, but so far there were no signs of life anwhere in this seemingly endless expanse of stone, sand and scrub. She sat like this for another hour, watching for any sign that something alive and edible would appear. But today, there was none. With one last sweeping scan, she got to her feet, picked up her backpack and wooden staff, took a drink of water from the bottle at her hip and started walking back down the trail to the home she shared with her mother near the canyon floor.

When she arrived, she called out: "Good morning, mother. It was a beautiful morn..." She stopped as her mother, Samira, appeared in the archway to the next room. Something was wrong. Anyone could tell that from the look on her mother's face, but Zahra, like all the women of her culture, knew what her mother was feeling. And Samira was not well. Zahra knew instantly that her mother had a fever, an infection. A wound. Indeed, Samira was holding one hand to her side. Zahra knew that her mother was flooded with emotions - fear, anger, frustration. And yet also relief.