PM to join Summer training at Starseer Pavilion {Aramenta}

[Fox Starseer]

2nd Day of Summer, 513

Fox stood at the edge of the newly set up training area in the middle of his family's pavilion. He watched as his cousins, male and female alike, all brought the training weapons out and lined them up against the log wall. He had been put in charge of overseeing the set up while his father, Khanti, finished preparing for the first lesson. "Sasha, sure that log up, I don't want it falling on top of one of the younger ones" he said. "Okay, Fox" one of his female cousins said, grabbing a wodden stake and pushing it into the ground after straightening up the log in question.

"Okay, that should do" Khanti said, walking onto the training area, which consited of a cleared patch of dirt surrounded by logs. Everyone grabbed their weapons and went to the training posts, all except three of them. Khanti had set up a special training thing for those that where training with axes. Fox placed a log on the chopping block as his father walked up with his own axe. "First thing you need to realise about axes is they are for CLEAVING and CHOPPING. They are not SLASHING weapons, the last thing I want to see is someone messing up on a hunt, or fighting in a tourniment, and misusing their weapon" Khanti said, loudly and clearly, his voice filled with the authority that came from having experienced fighting and hunting. Fox stood and listened, wondering where his friend he had invited was, and if she would make it soon. I hope Ara knows where our pavilion is, she will most likely find it since it does have our banner, and it is a well known on he thought.

[Aramenta]

Ara awoke early. She did the things that were necessary - she dressed, she went to curry Canterfoot, she helped set breakfast - all with the mechanical gracelessness of her empty heart. She finished these things, then pulled her stool out into the shadows outside the tent, and began spinning.

Livvy, while it would be inaccurate to see she had accepted this new way of mornings, had grown to expect it since her mistress's return. Her presence on these morning rounds did nothing. So she had learned, some mornings, to simply let Ara be, and to run about getting more of the day's business complete, so that during the long, empty hours of the day that seemed to trouble Ara so much, she would be there, to be as useful as possible.

Today, though, was different. She came out in her old pair of riding boots, to interrupt her mistress.

"Sun gettin' high ma'am. You gone be late."

Ara was buried in the movement of the spindle, throwing her hollow mind inside of it. The movement without movement, the sort of whirling stasis gave her some small degree of relief. She pulled out of this comfort, a moment, to stare stupidly at Livvy.

"Come on Missy Ara," Livvy coaxed wheedlingly, "Come on inside. I got your things all laid out, your axe keened, everything."

Ara blinked once, and the awareness of what Livvy was talking about sunk in - a practice session. She had been invited to one, in another pavilion. She didn't resent this. It simply was. She nodded with a slow, animal acceptance, and stopped the spindle, standing to go quietly inside and change.

Livvy helped her, quickly, and within fifteen minutes, the two of them were riding through the outskirts of Endrykas, wordlessly, she on Canter, Livvy on the mule, Clompfoot, behind her. Ara actually had little idea where they were going, depending on Livvy. Livvy, who had deep hopes that perhaps some action, some unaccustomed physical activity might make the sloth of her mistress up, had scouted out the Starseer pavilion the day before. It was easy enough to find, even easier when, as they got closer, they could both hear the sounds of blades striking wood, repeatedly in the distance.

Livvy dismounted, quickly, and ran forward to Canterfoot's side, her own axe smacking against her thigh as she ran. She reached an arm up to help Ara down. Ara took the arm, more of courtesy, and got down with the bland confidence of experience, putting no actual weight on the slave's arm whatsoever. She turned, as Livvy tended to the animals, and went towards the pavilion yard, where a mass of people, almost all of whom she hardly recognized, milled through the yard, axes or swords in hand, flashing in the summer sun. She looked mildly through the group, to try to find the face of the boy she remembered from their last season's training exercises.
x

[Fox Starseer]

Fox saw Ara as she entered the pavilion training area. He walked over to her, trying not to disrupt anyone. "You're almost late, Ara" he said quietly, smiling a bit. "My father doesn't like people being late" he added. "And neither do I like people talking while I'm instructing!" Khanti said, quite loudly. "Sorry father. This is my friend I invited, Aramenta of Stonewhistling Pavilion, of Amethyst Clan" Fox said. "And this is her..." he paused for a second; "...friend, and companion, Liv" he finished. He knew, or rather felt, that what he said was sort of true, but there had to be more to it in his mind. "Well, nice to meet you. I am Khanti Starseer, Fox's father. Now that we have all be introduced, I shall continue my lession" Khanti said. Fox moved back to his position, just off to the side of his father, indicating for Ara and Liv to pick a spot to stand.

"Now, as I was saying, the axe is a weapon that can be used to cleave armour or flesh from the target, or simply to chop wood, especially if you have a handaxe" Khanti said. Fox rolled his eyes, he didn't really like axes, but he prefered them over maces. His hand rested on the pommel of his brand new scimitar, which had been forged the day before. “And I can see, Fox is ready to demonstrate his skills,a nd what I want you all to practice” Khanti said, smiling slightly, handing a two-handed axe to his son. Fox took the axe and stood beside the log he had placed on the chopping block just before. “Now, one tactic when using an axe is to bring it back behind you and arc it up and around to bring it crashing onto the target” Khanti said. Fox did as he was told, bringing the axe in an arc behind him, up and over his hed, and down on top of the log, chopping it almost perfectly in half. “Now, I want you all to practice, one at a time” Khanti said. Fox placed another log on the block and leaned the axe against the wall behind them. He pulled out his scimitar and proceded to sharpen it with his whetstone. He watched as each person took their turn, each one using their own weapon, placing a new long on the block each time. When it came to Ara's turn, he watched closely, wanting to see if she understood the instructions, and if she could do it. It would take some strength to break the log clean through, but even just being able to get the movements right, and hit the target, would be good enough for him. His father on the other hand, well he knew Khanti wouldn't let her go until she at least split a chunk of the log off with her handaxe.

[Aramenta]

Livvy, for her part looked at the young man, and something of irritation entered her face, and something more like, perhaps, suspicion. Companion, sure. My foot. The fellow's father wasn't an idiot. She was riding a mule. Her hair was shorn short. She took her mistress's mount to tend.

Ara watched her carefully, a thin blush entering her cheeks. Livvy glowered, but said nothing. But nor did she get into line to train. She was no Drykas, not even prospectively. Ara frowned, but said nothing - Livvy was stubborn, and Ara didn't have the energy to fight that. She simply let the girl go tend to the horses, then drift quietly to one side of the pavilion, frowning forbiddingly.

Ara didn't rifle for position: to be honest, she waited as long as she could, stretching her arms only half-heartedly, and her back nary at all. It wasn't pigheadedness. Or ignorance. Standing, even with the absolutely insufficient effort she was making at being personable, in a crowd was exhausting her. She stared ahead with empty eyes, and simply breathed slowly, making the motions of stretching, largely so as not to attract attention.

When it came to her turn, she looked down disconsolately at the log. This was who she was. This was what it meant to be Drykas. This was her duty. She had to be strong, strong enough to protect herself, someday her children, even her husband, perhaps. Strong enough to not be a deadweight on her people. She had a one handed hand axe, with a blade less than two inches - she was a Drykas girl, it wasn't as if she'd never chopped wood. But with a hand axe... but she had to be strong. She had to do something, at any rate.

She put her guard hand forward, and unslung the axe from its sheath, raising it high over her head. She looked down at the wood, and tried to picture something. She'd never seen a glassbeak, or not up close, anyway. She'd seen a Zith... no. That would not do. She stared stupidly at the wood. Gave up and simply swung. The blade struck the wood, and the impact glanced it away, reverberating up her arm painfully. She winced, but stayed stiff and blank faced. The wood showed a scratch. Little more.
x

[Fox Starseer]

Fox bit his lip as he saw Ara not being able to even bury the edge of her axe in the log. And, as he expected to happen, his father wasn't happy with this. "Try again, girl! Are you weak? Can't you even cut a simple log with the tool that is designed to cut wood? If you can't do that, you'd make a terrible wife, and you'd probably die out there on the Sea of Grass without a warrior to hold your hand! I'm sure your slave friend has more strength then you!" Khanti yelled. Fox moved to Liv. "Don't worry, he's just trying to get Ara worked up enough to hit the log hard enough" he whispered, knowing his father would ignore this. "Actually, I might see if I can give Ara some reprise from this" he added, walking back to Ara. "Father, her axe isn't sharp enough, I noticed it before" he said. "Well then, take her axe and sharpen it, and then she can try again. We aren't moving on until she actually does more then scratch the log" Khanti said, turning to the rest of his students. "And that's another thing, always maintain your equipment. It may be logs today, but if you where fighting a glassbeak, or a Zith, or even a Olidosapux" he added. Fox put his hand out towards Ara. "Your axe" he said.

[Aramenta]

Ara looked at the axe dully. Perhaps part of her mind registered the unfairness of the older man's attack on her: this was not a chopping axe. It was most certainly NOT designed to cut a log. It was designed more almost as a bladed extension of a fist, was how her sister had explained it to her. But in truth? To really feel self-righteous, she would have had to care that she was being insulted. In the bland emptiness of her generalized emotionally hollow state, she simply dissected the insult:

A) She was weak. No argument there. She'd been calling herself a coward in her head for a third of a season now.
B) She would make a terrible wife - She pressed hard to suppress images of wife. Wife. Her face went slightly green. Yes, they would not care for her to stay alive, perhaps. Just long enough... to...
C) Her slave was stronger than her - this was hardly an insult at all. Livvy, Ara reflected, more than likely was. She frowned, at it though. Perhaps she shouldn't be. Ara's free hand crept up to touch the windmark that began at the top of her neck. As if she had the strength and usefulness to truly be a Drykas. The way her mother had been. A Drykas by pity. A Drykas because Canterfoot had too much pity in her, had been unwilling to leave a little whelp to burn to death.

In the moody irritability of a frustrated teenager, it was not any of these things that irritated her at all. It was, instead, the offer of the younger man to help her.

Perhaps this, too, would have passed emptily through her. But the mention of Livvy had made her look over to her. Livvy's shoulders showed the particular tenseness of her temper rising, and where her gawky ears stuck from her shorn hair, Ara could see the blood pooling into a dark crimson. Livvy was, in a word, angry. Ara looked, and sighed. She would never have come if Livvy had not pushed and cajoled and reminded her. Livvy had, as much as a slave could, manhandled Ara into being here.

To get her out of the house, no doubt. To try to wake her up from the very stuppor she was sunk into, now, staring dully across a yard unable even to be resentful. To try to remind her that other people existed, and could be kind. And for her pains? Ara was now being dressed down by a great bully of a man. And to add insult to injury, it was Livvy who had keened Ara's axe, that very morning, preparing her for the session.

And perhaps Ara was unable to be angry on her own behalf. But for Livvy... well for Livvy it was different. Livvy, for all she was her slave, was her friend. And since the queer moment beneath the wings of the Zith in the springtime, Ara felt less clearly the meaning of that line, felt a discomfiting kinship with the girl. And then, there was the queer chemistry fo melancholy, that strange desire for extremes of emotion to snap the bones of her numbness, and that thirst and fear of humanity. In a culture with little patience for moping, Livvy had stayed next to her through it. How dare he?

She looked with a quiet, subtle coldness at the boy, so damned arrogant - at least to her mind at that moment. Just holding his hand out like a man patting the head of a troublesome puppy. She was not willing to simply be pitiable - or to make her own weakness hide behind an excuse. She resented herself for needing to be served, instead of to serve. That was the measure of strength. Livvy was stronger than, her, yes, not because of any disparities in their sings of an axe, but simply because Ara had to be taken care of, and Livvy did the caretaking.

She turned and looked at the log, ignoring the boy's outstretched hand, and her brow darkened, silently, her lips never moving. She wasn't going to split it. She was not wielding an adze, after all, that would be silly. She wasn't going to woodchop her way out of a fight. The log... the log. It was... what? A Zith? No... no, not that. No, no, she... was not ready to try to hate that. Her face boiled, and she peered hard.

Let her mind free.

And her arm swung back, and lay into the wood.

It was in part simply that she approached her weapon with a respect for its vagaries - she would find it easier, she knew, to come in a broad swoop to the side, and try to split along the grain, wher ethe wood would not be so hesitant to take the suggestion of her blade.

More than this, though, Ara felt, for the first time, a real, righteous fury, a true and abiding hatred, and the glorious thirst to break something else. How dare they. How DARE they. She would not be pet and whipped while they made snide remarks about Livvy. And more, more than this, this oozed down, farther into her, into a resentment of the uglinesses, the moral ambiguities that had left her lonely and hollow and unsure of herself. All she had wanted was to have something morth her service. Petch them. Petch him. Petch him.

Her vision went red, and a low, unvoiced hiss came out her teeth, inhuman, unsettling, and utterly hateful and cruel, not a battle cry, but the sound of an animal, the coiling snake that strikes, the angry wind, the whisper of the assassin. Her body shook as the blade bit into and sent a shard of the wood, and her heart saw the blood she imagined shearing from the face she had assembled, the face she imagined but would never tell. Petch him. Petch him, and let it be damned. The shearing was not enough, and the training field left her mind, the shard was a face, and her back swing came back with a force that made her arm burn, the flat side of the axe head smacking the chip of wood back into the block, as her arm whirled once more behind her head, the axe whirling in her hand, as she smashed it hard at the chip.

Sadly, fury can grant strength, but not necessarily skill. The chip skittered, hit askance with the second blow, and she missed it entirely with the third, the hammerback of her tomahawk striking into the block itself, leaving a deep impression. She sneered, spit, and began to quiver, her eyes hazy, remembering herself. Remembering where she was. She bowed blindly, unsure of where the man who had taunted her even stood, and turned to stumble down the line and stand at the rear, her chest heaving.

x

[Fox Starseer]

Fox stepped back as he watched Ara go into, what looked like, a blind bloodlust. Everyone was shocked by how, with the small axe she had, that she was able to almost reduce the log to wood chips. Once she had moved away from the log, Khanti had Fox remove the log peices. "Okay, well that concludes that bit of training, now we can move on to sparing matches...everyone pair off and get ready...remember, we don't want anyone to badly injured" he said. Fox stood beside Ara. "He didn't mean everything he said, it's just his way of pushing us to be how we are...if it's any consolation, you may have even startled him, which is not easy to do" he said.


The first lot of sparing matches went well. Fox occasioanlly called out to help, especially when one of his cousins looked like they might be faultering. "Sasha, don't move back so much, step forward and block high with the head of your axe!" he called out. He watched as Sasha did this, throwing her partner off balance. "Good, now press the advantage!" Fox yelled. Sasha nodded and knocked her partner over, burying the axe in the ground beside his head. She was declared the winner. "Looks like we're up, Ara" Fox said, grabbing his scimitar and shield. "Let's see how you go this time" he said, walking into the middle of the sparing ring.

[Aramenta]

Ara moved to the rear of the line, and stood, her hands shaking, fumbling clumsily with the latch to holster her axe. She felt the blanch in her face. Fear. Raw and animal, and she couldn't even understand what it was she was frightened of. It wasn't the log, it wasn't even what she imagined on it. Herself, perhaps. An unsettling feeling. She looked over at Livvy. Livvy was pale, and stood stock still, staring back at her with frowning eyes.

Ara smiled, thinly, but she knew it would convince the girl of nothing. Livvy fussed a moment, and began to move to take her mistress home, just as the man approached her to invite her into the ring. She looked at him, queerly, the energy of her temporary fury entirely gone now, leaving her shaky and ready to simply retreat into herself. But she nodded, thinly and followed.

She unholstered her axe then, and looked across at him - bigger than she, more heavily-armed, more experienced, and tried to imagine how she was supposed to do anything in the situation - an impression furthered by her own current tendency toward hopelessness.

She was smaller. And without the impediment of his weaponry, perhaps faster? That much she could say. She tied a leather guard over the axe blade, to avoid injuring her opponent - if she could get so close - and went into a low defensive crouch, setting the axe into a low, defensive figure eight in front of her, clumsy but not entirely ineffective. And waited, still not confident enough to be aggressive.
x

[Fox Starseer]

Fox fitted his leather guard to his blade too and stepped forward, his left foot at the front, with his left arm, and his shield on it, forward as well. His scimitar held in his right hand, just behind his shield. He tapped the blade of his weapon on his shield, trying to coax Ara into striking first. He head his cousins cheer on either him or Ara. He glanced at his father standing at the edge of the ring, no emotions on his face, as usual. He never did like showing if he wanted one to win over the other he thought, watching Ara closely.