Completed Taking to the Sling

[Tsaba]

28th Summer, 513 Tsaba could feel the heat working its way into her bones as she strode through the foothills. Heat was nothing new, but in the moist Zeltivan air it was only the preservatives inside her that kept her from spoiling like the fish at market. She supposed a lot of people would be walking in the foothills during the heat, if only to get away from the smell; she, of course, didn't need to breathe, and had a different motive in mind. With her left hand, Tsaba caressed the strip of leather she'd bought , carefully stretched in the center to create a small pouch. On her belt, she could feel the weight of the little lead pellets meant to fit into that pouch. And tucked carefully under her right arm was a library book, Introduction to the Sling. She had her doubts about being able to learn such a practical art from a book. But without a teacher, there was little to do but try. The truth was, Tsaba was feeling somewhat defenseless on the mainland. Zeltiva was safe enough, but eventually she'd have to leave. No matter how many guards she hired or who she travelled with, having to protect herself somewhere along the road was a very real possibility. And a Nuit wasn't built for combat, with their sluggish reflexes and easily-damaged muscles. So she'd picked an easy-to-find weapon that seemed the least likely for those things to be an issue, and taken a little stroll in order to learn it. Finding a broad, sandy patch where she was probably the least likely to lose her pellets if she dropped them, Tsaba sat down and began to read. boughtsling = 1SM; 20 bullets = 2SM

[Tsaba]

Tsaba laid her book open on a diagram of the proper method of holding a sling and looked at it closely. She threaded her right middle finger through the loop on one end of the sling and held the other end between thumb and forefinger as the book described, then dropped a lead pellet into the pouch in the center. The sling loop was almost the length of her arm. Quoting the book, Tsaba muttered to herself, "The sling is a deceptively dangerous weapon. Many underestimate the effectiveness of a stone or bullet hurled at high speed, and a master of the tool can drop a man or horse with a loop of leather and a small ball of lead." Tsaba moved her arm through the motion a couple of times, making sure she knew when to let go. Then, she braced herself and swung, flicking her wrist at the apex of her throw to send the bullet flying. All in all, it was probably fortunate that she didn't have the knack for reaching a decent speed, because the lead ball sailed straight up and right back down, hitting her squarely in the eye. This was going to take some work.

[Tsaba]

The second throw had the pellet hit her nose. The third throw, it definitely flew and was lost in the grass... but she couldn't tell whether it had flown forward or backward, let alone straight. There was no point searching for it. Tsaba set a new bullet in the sling and tried again. It occurred to her that she probably should've brought a first aid kit. Losing ichor to a self-inflicted puncture wound and staggering back home all the weaker for it would be frankly pathetic. Fourth throw; lost the bullet again. The fifth hit her foot. She was going about the whole thing the wrong way, Tsaba decided. Leaving the pouch empty, she took a few very slow practice throws, checking her sling arc and release position against the diagram in the book. Ugh, if only she had a teacher! Slowly, she sped up her practice throws, stopping and slowing once again whenever hr release position was off enough for her to notice. But given that she was throwing, could she really rely on her own perception? It was hard to see what she herself was doing wrong. There was nothing to be done about it. All she could do was keep trying.

[Tsaba]

Tsaba wandered further out, keeping track of the sun's position to keep both her timekeeping and her directions straight. Not that the sun was possible to ignore. She scanned the land around her as she walked. Eventually, she found what she was looking for -- a sparse shrub about as high as her waist. She stood back 30 feet, faced the shrub, and took a few more practice swings until she felt ready to load another bullet. The bullet clipped the edge of the shrub, sending twigs scattering. Delighted, Tsaba tried again. Total miss. The next one missed as well. But at least she wasn't hitting herself any more. Tsaba depleted more than half her ammunition before her shoulders began to stiffen in the heat, and she decided that she should probably head back. She didn't hit the bush again.

[Tsaba]

There was something very particular about Zeltivan heat. Tsaba knew the approximate limitations of the average human body when she was wearing it. It was something every Nuit learned, if only through trial and error. She knew what types of pain and weakness were safe to ignore, how much force she could exert without causing unacceptable levels of muscle damage, and how to preserve the delicate, dead skin that held in her precious, life-giving ichor. She knew that the discomfort of the heat pounding down upon her as she headed back into town was no problem. She'd go somewhere cool and wait for her body temperature to drop to the area temperature, and it would be fine. Or, it would be in Sahova. Humid air, ocean air, was a whole different matter, as Tsaba was continually reminded. The way the muggy heat clung to her was completely unfamiliar, especially to somebody without any natural body heat to speak of. She felt her very muscles stiffening and body weakening as she moved. Barely halfway home, she stumbled to a stop. But she couldn't afford to stop. Resting wouldn't improve the situation. Tsaba's problem wasn't that she generated too much of her own heat, it wasn't something that would go away if she stopped moving. Tsaba's problem was that she had no blood circulation and no ability to perspire. Okay. Fine. What did she have? She had a sling. She had a book. She had her clothing, and an assortment of thing she carried around in case they might be useful; a knife, a pouch of water, some basic writing supplies. She had the uneven landscape of the foothills. She had Nuit endurance. She had her senses. Her senses. Tsaba headed for a shadowy-looking trough between to rises and knelt. She closed her eyes, took an unnecessary but habitually relaxing breath, and focused. "Dalat djas-pond," she murmured, letting the familiar cadence of the old language settle in her mind. "Radjudt Irst." Tsaba opened her eyes and, with them, her Auristic sight. If she wanted to know what to do, the first step was to see what was going on.

[Tsaba]

Tsaba wasn't sure that she would ever get used to looking at the aura of her own dead body. It was a level of creepiness that just stuck with a healer's child like herself. Dead flesh would always be a little bit wrong. But dead flesh was what she needed to look at. Well. The tiny ripples of light in her aura that denoted the movement of fluid, of life, were normal; that is, basically nonexistent. The heat didn't affect her circulation, because she didn't have any. She lifted and lowered an arm, checking how the movement slightly displaced the ichor within her. That looked pretty normal. Her bones were, well, bones. Life darted along her nerves, up and down her spine, as she expected. Her muscles... Her muscles were stiff in the slightly moist heat. Again, she experimentally lifted her arm, this time focusing on the layer of aura that told her about the texture of the fibrous meat within. The movement pulled, almost tore. That was bad. Logically, she knew that any use of her muscles damaged them, because Nuit didn't heal. That had been pretty resoundly drummed into her head as part of the 'don't overexert yourself' speech that her guardian had given her back when she'd first died. But the damage shouldn't be severe enough to notice through her Auristics. Either she had become implausibly good at the art over a short period of time, or moving about unshielded in the heat was a bad idea. Tsaba was pretty sure it wasn't the first possibility. She shut off her Auristic sight and wrapped herself in her cloak so that all of her possessions were underneath it, then lay face-down in the shady ditch. Eventually, the sun would go down, and the air would cool, and it should be safe to move again. All that she needed to do was wait.

[Tsaba]

The sun started to drop. The air started to cool. Tsaba had a lot of time to think to herself without moving. It did seem sort of fitting, a corpse lying motionless in a ditch. That was basically what a grave was, after all. The only difference was that they filled in the ditch. She hoped nobody came along and saw her; that would be very awkward to explain. "Oh, yeah, don't mind me, I'm just resting. No, I'm not hurt or in trouble. I'm just dead." This sort of problem would never arise in Sahova. Perhaps it had been a bad idea to head off on her own. She was just a child, for mercy's sake. What had she been thinking, traipsing off onto the mainland by herself? Not that any of the other researchers had cared all that much. She was pretty sure they expected her ti die. And Craun... well, he was just happy that she'd found something with which to occupy herself, she supposed. It must have been stressful for him, having to watch her with the expectation of impending suicide all the time. She'd write to him about learning the sling, when she became good at it. He'd like to know that she could defend herself. Once darkness fell, Tsaba repeated her Auristic diagnosis and, to her relief, found her muscles working normally again. She got to her feet and strode back towards the buildings of Zeltiva, leaving the foothills behind. The problem wasn't that the mainland seemed unusually dangerous. It was that she didn't know what the dangers were. Tsaba fingered her sling. But, she thought, I'll make sure I'm prepared for them.

[Abstract]

Tsaba

Skills

+ Weapon: Sling - 2
+ Observation - 1
+ Auristics - 1

Lores

+ Feeling Defenseless
+ How to hold a sling
+ Slings are actually dangerous
+ A Nuit lying in a ditch

Other:



Notes

I liked how this turned from a sling-training thread to "Ak my body's messing up!" XD

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this grade, please PM me and we can work it out!