Snapshot Kieyanna
05/23/2007 05:41 p.m.
“Come on, wench,” Atalar snarled, bringing up his practice sword in plenty of time to parry her blow.
“I hate this form,” Kieyanna panted out softly, “It’s all curvy in the wrong places.” The serving wench she had studied the night before had been very curvy, though if the guys in the tavern had been any indication they had liked what they saw. She parried a few more of his blows, moving slowly and exaggerating the clumsiness she felt in the form, trying to bait him into a mistake.
There! She moved quicker, blocking his sword with her own and stepping into his defenses, pointing her hardened, suddenly edged, finger at his throat. “You’re dead!”
“You’re cheating,” he returned, relaxing slightly. “The exercise was to maintain the wench.”
“I did!” She relaxed her concentration, allowing the wench to melt away as she resumed her natural, more comfortable form. Even has her form shrunk down to its five foot two inches she noticed his eyes skate away from her. A changeling midchange was never pretty, but that fact still didn’t help her flash of anger.
“Hardening your finger to slit a man’s throat is not maintaining a shape!” Atalar was annoyed at her, mainly she thought, because he hated losing.
“How isn’t it and what harm would it do anyway? At that point it wouldn’t matter if they knew I wasn’t a wench or not, besides, what wench knows how to fight?” She knew she would make Atalar more annoyed if not angry, but she hated the pointless drills that always seemed to focus more on the shapes she could make than her actual skill at fighting. She pushed her colorless hair out of her face with annoyance, and thought she should cut it again, yet wondered at the same time if it would look like the wench’s if she let it grow long.
“Wenches don’t have knife blades for fingers, that’s how it isn’t maintaining a shape and it doesn’t matter if wenches can’t fight because until you learn to follow instructions you won’t be going on assignment!” Atalar’s voice had hardened to a flint edge with his anger and annoyance at her. “You, as a Grimzek, have a duty to something larger than yourself and must learn to follow instructions until you can perceive the larger plan of the Council,” his voice was still flinty but had taken on the rhythm that Kieyanna knew meant he was reciting a lesson he had heard from another trainer.
She felt her anger flair up in response to that which she heard in his voice and knew that he was trying her help her, but she couldn’t stop her retort, “Am I Grimzek then? I’ve been in these hills, living in a cave for five years and have yet to even get wind of an assignment. I’ve heard stories of babes born into the Grimzek having more use than I. All I do is train and have the way of the Grimzek and the will of the Council lectured at me day and night.” She knew this would anger him because Atalar, like herself, had been here five years and was waiting for an assignment. In fact, it had been he that had come across her beaten and half dead in the hills.
He stiffened, as she had known he would at the insinuation that someone who had not been on assignment for five years was not Grimzek, and also she suspected at her ungrateful attitude toward the lessons that he and others had been teaching her since she had been healed. As Atalar turned on his heel and stomped off she felt a moment of remorse for making him angry, but it was quickly quelled by her own anger at him for being angry at her.
I am currently Indifferent
I am listening to Switchfoot - The Economy of Mercy