Training in the Foothills

by **Ruebia** on June 11th, 2013, 6:04 am

Ruebia
Summer, 13th, 513 AV (30 chimes before the sixth Bell)

Zeltiva was in the midst of a heatwave and it was still warm out even at night. But the salty breeze off the Bay made the night more bearable for what Ruebia planned to do. She climbed the slopes of the foothills, her boots crunching the grass beneath her feet. She had woken up restless in the middle of night in her rented room in the Inn. She had tried to go back to sleep but the outdoors was calling her. She had dressed and slipped out a window in the hall.

She had her newly acquired shortbow in her hands and the quiver strapped across her chest, her right hand was snug in its glove and her arm guard was secure on her left. She remembered briefly the good points of having these on from the constant drilling from her mothers bondmate but she had mostly been a cat while he was training his sons (and trying to train her too), climbing anything and everything with her tiny but sharp claws. The trees near her old home still had old claw marks embedded in the trunks.

She smiled at her childishness those many seasons ago. She had been much more hyper than she was now, only one season away from her third year in Zeltiva. She was still hyper now but her determination to get acquainted with her new bow kept her from changing then and there to explore the foothills surrounding the Inn on a more personal level. She sat down in a small clearing, the bow in her lap. She had examined it yesterday in her rented room in the inn, testing the tautness of the string, the sturdiness of the handle. She had noted that the string was harder to stretch than she had expected and now she ran her finger tips down it, feeling the tension in it. She coiled the fingers of her left hand around the handle tightly and stood up. She braced herself, feet shoulder width apart and raised the bow up in front of her, the string facing her. Confidently, she hooked her index and middle finger around the string like she had seen her mother's bondmate do and pulled back. Or at least she tried to. From her outstretched arm, the string only went to her shoulder. She couldnt pull it back further. Frustrated she let go of the string and the bow snapped out of her hand and fell to the ground.

She let out a exasperated muted shriek and snatched the bow back up from determined to get the string back. She gripped the bow harder in her left hand and gripped the string again with two fingers and as she lifted the bow, she pulled back on the string. This time it went back further, stopping right before her face. She could feel the tension in the string again, almost as if it was singing weakly to her. She knew it should go further, she had often seen her mother's bondmate's sons bring the string back to their cheeks. But her arms and shoulders were beginning to hurt and she let the string go. The string snapped forward but this time the bow didnt fly out of her hand. It swung side to side in her grip but it didnt fall. She grinned and raised the bow again, pulling back the string once more.

This time it went back to her cheek, the string lightly brushing her nose, her index finger resting under her chin. She could feel a sweet song in the threads of the string and she knew that this was the right length of pull. She imagined an arrow clutched between her two fingers, the back end of it balanced against the string, the head held level with her left index finger. She could feel a calming presence in the tension before the release, it was like stalking a prey in the grass before pouncing. She took in a breath and let it out slowly feeling a stillness in her. Then she took another sharper breath and let the string go. It jerked away from her, the string snapping back into place and she sensed something was off. She reached behind her head and pulled out an arrow. She had gotten used to the placement of the quiver on her back, her hands constantly reaching up to stroke the bundle of arrows in there, feeling where they lay against the base of her braid as it draped over her right shoulder.

She fitted an arrow into the bow, exactly as she had imagined where it would go. Once she was confident the arrow would stay in place, she raised the bow up, pulling the string back to her cheek so she could hear what she was beginning to call the song of the strings. It was high and right before her arms and shoulders begin to ache, she took in a breath and let it out and once again let go of the string. The arrow went wide, flying into the brush in a jerky movement. Something was off. she went to retrieve the arrow, all the while feeling along the bow handle, subconsciously asking it was wrong. She hadnt expected to hit anything the first few times so it wasnt that. She wasnt that cocky to think she would be a master at the bow on her first few tries but there was something wrong with the way she was doing it. She could feel it.

She practiced for a bell straight, feeling the strength of the bow and the tension in the strings. With each pull and release she realized something. She had been comparing the firing of a bow to the stalking of prey in her cat form but it was wrong. For one, she had learned that she shouldnt hold the handle so tightly, it restrained the bow too much. She needed to be looser with it, firm but loose. She used the same arrow each time, releasing it and going to retrieve it. But then she had let it fly on the last pull and had sneezed at the same time and had lost the flight of the arrow. She would change into a cat later and sniff it out in the brush, for now she would have to use a fresh arrow.

As she pulled the arrow from the quiver and notched it into place, a movement much more fluid than picking an arrow off the floor, and pulled back on the string, Ruebia had a thought. If the way to hold the handle was backwards why couldn't the release be backwards from stalking and pouncing? Right before she would pounce, she would breath in, gathering energy for the capture. But it was the opposite for the bow and arrow, Ruebia thought. After all, when she let it go, it wouldn't be she who would be sent in for the strike, it would be the arrow. Wouldn't it make more sense to gather the energy for the arrow and release it with it?

Following her thoughts, as she lifted the bow and pulled back on the string, she took in a breath. The string hit her cheek and Ruebia could hear the string singing with tension and she felt calm. She let go of her breath and released the string at the same time. The arrow sailed straight and steady and for once, the bow didnt swing as much. She hadnt been aiming when she had shot that arrow but she knew instinctively that it could have hit a target if she wanted it too. She went and retrieved the arrow. It had gone farther than all the rest and Ruebia knew she had done something right.