Flashback Mind the Grind

[Ixzo]

72nd of Summer, 511AV

The early morning drizzle that scattered through the clan comforted her. Her mother had risen bells before dawn, left with her bondmate for a mission in the heart of the city. Her father had gone to the coast with a few of the other men in an effort to gather some of the more rarer items that the clan always yearned for. So beside her seemingly hundreds of cousins, aunts and uncles, Ixzo was more or less alone. She was used to the early mornings by now. Just barely mature and not even considered a teenager by most human standards, Ixzo still worried that she was falling behind her peers. It didn’t help that she was about ten years younger than any of her Myrian counter-parts, or that she had yet to turn two. There was an air of competition among her clan-members and even as the odd one out, the Kelvic always found herself caught up in the mayhem.

And so the child slug her bow across her back, tied the quiver of arrows to her hip and slid the two tomahawks into her belt. Barely standing at five feet, the small arsenal of weapons she carried was considered fairely normal among her Myrian kin.

The rain must've been a very light drizzle, but once the water had filtered down the large leaves of the canopy above her, and pooled together, it came across as the occasional large water droplet, falling on her shoulders or nose or into her short dreads.

[Ixzo]

"Good morning Ixzo!" Olnat grinned at her, waggling his eyebrows at the tomahawks snuggled at her hip.

"Mornin'," She tried to return the greeting, but her voice cracked with sleep, making the man crack up in the dark.

"I suppose you've come to ask about intruders once more, little one?" He asked, clearly humoring her. Like all the Myrian children, she was avidly looking to wet her hands with the blood of her enemies. Unlike all the other Myrian children, Ixzo only sought death for 'stupid' reasons. She refused to go out hunting with her cousins, choosing instead to interrogate the patrols, of which she was too young to join, if they had come across criminals or trespassers. It was a long shot, since very few foreigners visited Taloba. Even few ventures out of the main city and even fewer dared commit a crime. Her people had acquired quite a reputation, and it was, in her opinion, making it harder for the rest of her generation to get their Cloak of the Fallen.

"No." She denied, although it was exactly what she had come for. "I'm just going to practice a little bit. You know, for when someone does trespass." She said nonchalantly, walking past the man and his leopardbred, who skittered out of her way. She wanted to hiss at the thing, give it a true reason to fear her, but instead she felt a slight pang of resentment for the creature.

As she walked over to the target range, she thought about how much she adored the creatures. The horses that were so comfortable in the heavy rainforests would not allow her to near. Her mother said it was because she was far too much like her lion form for their comfort, and that she shouldn't think personally of it. The Ixam and tigers hardly seemed to mind her. Yet, Ixzo couldn't help but take it personally. She sat, watching her peers learn to ride and selecting their mounts, while she remained on her feet. Sure, she could travel farther as a lion, but she hardly took that form to simply walk to the market.

"Good luck!" She heard Olnat call to her, and then the trample of hooves told her he had ridden in the opposite direction, and she sighed.

[Ixzo]

By the time the young Kelvic reached the clearing designated for weapon's practice, the humid Falyndar jungle had already coated her forehead with a slick layer of sweat. But the young lion wasn't going to let that stop her. She was notorious within her clan for falling behind in her ability to master weapons. Although I hunt far better than most my age. She gloated to herself. That much was true, considering the Myrians her age could barely walk. She had the worst peers to compare herself to.

Slipping the bow from her back, Ixzo walked up to the target. She glanced at the target. It was made of simple vines and canvas, although it was riddled with holes so much you could barely see the paint of the rings in the target. Although the bright red bullseye in the center was hard to miss, with barely ten holes puncturing the paint, ripping it from the canvas with the violence of an inexperienced archer. Today, she was determined to wear that paint off.

Taking thirty steps backwards, Ixzo turned to look at the bullseye. It was not longer as big as her now, but perhaps as tall as her arm. For aiming purposes, this would have been nice. But the child knew that her longbow was very powerful and would require a further target. Perhaps that was why she had issues with aim?

Ixzo thought about that as she slipped a arrow from the quiver at her hip, lining the shaft up with the shelf of the bow and then hooking the nock on the string. With a comfortable ease, she brought the bow up in front of her. The position, so practiced by now, was easier for the child, and she loosened her joints while keeping the pose. This was harder, although now that her mother had taught the importance of strength training and stretching, the young Kelvic thought herself more aware of her joints to be able to prevent injury. An injured warrior was useless, after all.

[Ixzo]

Just to get her bearing, Ixzo fired a shot, watching the arrow go far. To her gratitude, the shaft still lodged itself into the target, the power of her bow was not mistakable. However the shot itself lay in the center of the outer ring, far too the upper left. She noticed most of her shots fell to the upper left.

She wanted to know what she was doing wrong so she could aim correctly. She had found her anchor, her stance, and even grown comfortable with a standing shot position. But before her father would teach her to shoot from elevation, or while moving, or while the target was moving, he said she would need to know how to aim. If she couldn't aim standing for a still target, there was no possibility of her doing so while the target or herself was moving.

A surge of excitement at the prospect of possibly riding a horse whilst shooting, sped up the shot of her next arrow. She pulled it out and fired it off, still getting used to her bow that morning.

The Kelvic had to fire the rest of her quill, finding all the shots to land in the upper left corner of the target, or into the tree behind it, before she was comfortable enough with the bow that morning to actually begin looking for her patterns, per her father's suggestion over dinner last night. Her cousins had spent nearly a bell teasing her and throwing hard beans at her with their slingshot. They were a little older than her, six years old, but the two year old Kelvic surpassed them in maturity. Still, it took longer than she would have liked to shut up the small Myrians.

Ixzo was far too prideful to let them get to her though, as she pulled the arrows from the target and ventured a little further into the large trees to retrieve the stray one.

[Ixzo]

Once back at her thirty pace stance, she positioned her bow again. This time, however, she made an effort with her aiming. She knew that she aimed just to the left of the bullseye, to favor her right handed stance. Ontop of that she aimed higher than the bullseye, to account for the arch of her arrow once shot. Perhaps she overcompensated?

Ixzo adjusted her aim so that the arrow was a little further to the right than where it usually was. The arrow itself was practically centered on the bullseye, which made her think it would go too far to the right, however she decided to go with it anyway. After all, she was not skilled enough with her bow to claim a very trusty instinct; that was what she was trying to develop, wasn't she?

Ixzo let the arrow fly, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the shot went nearly to the bullseye. It was a little too far too the left still, which made her frown. She shot another arrow, yielding similar results, although a little bit above the first shot. While not accurate, at least she was precise in her shots.

Once more, Ixzo lined up the the arrow. But just for kicks, she aimed it directly at the bullseye. She took the time to close one eye and wait until she was completely exhaled, a tactic she didn't much use now that she was strong enough to be steady with the bow. But after taking her time, she moved the arrow just above the center and let it fly.

Bullseye. Well... a few inches above the bullseye.

[Ixzo]

Ixzo frowned. Had she been wrong this whole time? Was aiming for something as simple as… aiming for it? Ixzo felt like an idiot, and ran a tongue over her thumb, swiping it behind her ear. Had she been a lion, she would have liked to lick her chest to soothe her embarrassment, but as a human, the Kelvic child simply glanced around her. There was a patrolwoman on her horse, conversing with Olnat near the huts in the clan, and a small child dissected a frog behind her family's hut, with disgusted interest painted over her muddy face, but no one was directly paying attention to her that morning. Everyone else was still eating, most likely. Even if they had, they wouldn't be able to laugh at the absurdly simply realization, it had all been in her head.

Instead, Ixzo turned back to the bullseye. She pulled another arrow out of her quiver, lined it up and then took her time concentrating before the shot. She wasn't yet ready to start getting a feel for the arc of the arrow. It was an instinct that most archers had that still intimidated her, since she hadn't yet figured it out. But she had seen Myrians roll off their mounts, stand and shoot, hitting a bullseye sixty feet away with barely an issue, not taking even a tick to aim or adjust their range to account for the arc. The young kelvic truly hoped she would succeed in that level of skill one day.

So she had to practice. Focusing back where she was, she let loose two more arrows, this time not taking her time to aim. They yielding highly similar results, and she watched the small cluster of arrows just above the bullseye build. She had come to a conclusion.

Before, she had been accounting for the tilt she had to make with her bow to hold the arrow and the fact that the arrow to one side. She had been aiming with her bow, and not her arrow, and now she realized it was as simply as aiming with her arrow. When she had first started out, she assumed aiming was like that, yet she never got close to her target. The lioness realized now that that was due to her lack of strength and discomfort with the bow, rather than not aiming correctly. Now that she had practiced enough with her bow to grow comfortable with it, making habit of all other aspects of still shooting, the aim came very easy to her.

[Ixzo]

Now she had to focus of understanding the arc of her arrows. This was a little harder for the Myrian-raised girl. Her tongue had no written form, and while they used the numbers of the common tongue, as they transcribed between all languages for mathematics, Ixzo wasn't familiar with degrees or angles, at least not in the mathematical way. She could not judge the distance in anything other than what she could measure herself, and so her brain grasped the difficulty of math in a different way.

So instead of thinking of her aim in terms of degrees, she focused on the feel of it. This time, Ixzo had to shoot as she normally would again, to have a mark to gauge distance from. Aiming her arrow, not her bow, just a few inches above the bullseye, she let it fly, expecting it to land somewhere above the bullseye, as she was not a little more practiced with aiming at the bullseye. She was definitely aiming too far up. This time, when Ixzo brought her bow up from hooking the nock on the string, she aimed just barely above the bullseye. She didn't want to aim directly at the bullseye, for she knew the arrow had to arc, however she wanted to the difference of the drastic change in aim.

This time the arrow hit just below the bullseye. So a few inches, from her eye-view, above the target was too far, but just above the target was too low, at least at about thirty paces from the target, which was fairely close, for a long bow. This time, Ixzo aimed just between her two previous point, not really expecting the shot to reach the bullseye.

[Ixzo]

A yelp of joy echoed from the child and she jumped when the arrow embedded itself into the center of the red dot. Without waiting to empty her quiver into the target, she lunged forward, jogging to the target to pull out all the arrows, all two of them, except the one on the bullseye. She wanted to leave it there for some reason.

Instead she examined it. It wasn't directly in the center of the bullseye, since the bullseye was half the size of her palm, but it was completely within the torn red painted canvas, sharing a hold with someone else's arrow. It was bullseye enough for her.

Ixzo grinned and pulled the arrow form the target, examining the tip before putting it back in her quiver. Her arrows were starting to show some wear and tear at this point, but her easy practice with nothing but targets was hardly damaging her arrows. Nonetheless, her father had told her it was a good idea to get in the habit of checking her arrows soon, rather than when later. In the middle of a battle with nothing but broken arrows to use.

Ixzo resumed her stance, still giddy from her first bullseye ever, she fired off three consecutive shots. One barely made it into the bullseye, but all rings around the edge of the red dot, greatly improving from her previous aim.

[Ixzo]

It wasn't until she had fired off her entire quiver, thickly ringing the bullseye with her various aims, although she hit within the red dot twice more before she decided she needed a change of pace. There was only so much practice she could handle. She would need to do this multiple times before she fully trusted her still standing aim to move onto kneeling or mounted aim anyway.

In the meantime, Ixzo adjusted the arrows she had retrieved into her quiver and set that and her bow against the ground behind her, making sure to balance the bow string on the quiver so it wouldn't get dirty. She wasn't very good at cleaning her weapons, and did her best to take care of the gifts. To her, it felt like she didn't have nearly as many birthdays as her Myrian cousins. She'd only had one real one so far, after all.

Pulling one of the tomahawks from her belt, she held it out, trying to remember how to hold them correctly. Like a hand shake? Ixzo switched the axe to her left hand, holding it so the blunt end of the blade pressed into her forearm and the most of the shaft extended forward. Copying how Olnat had taught her, she handed it to herself, immediately finding the grip comfortable. She hoped it was right.

Ixzo swung the tomahawk by her side a few more time, since she was still not quite comfortable enough with the weapon to know how to hold it instinctively, like her bow. Time to practice.

[Traverse]

Ixzo

Experience:

• Longbow 5
• Observation 2
• Planning 3
• Socialization 1
• Tomahawk 1

Lore:

• Horses: Able to Sense a Large Cat, Even in Human Form
• Understanding Where an Arrow Will Land Requires Repetition and Patience
• Arcing the Trajectory of a Shot
• Achieving a Bullseye
• Handling a Tomahawk Correctly

Additional Notes :

Alright well, lot's of bow exp! Let me know if those lores aren't suitable, and if you can think of a better XP than planning, she thought a lot about her technique and how to shoot her arrows, which is why I threw it out there, I enjoy how well thought out this thread was

If you have any questions, concerns, accolades, complaints, etc about your grade, drop me a PM and we can most certainly talk it out.

As always, Safe Travels!