It was a busy day at the Wu Shi academy: training went longer than expected for you. For the past few days, you’ve been training your heart out. Every mistake made was counted for, you told yourself you could do better by staying extra hours after the original training was done. When you did, your girlfriend would often disagree with you. She worries you’ll one day burn out because of you forcing yourself to try so hard.
Ashrah knows you’re improving, but as she puts it, “You strive too much to improve quickly. Skill comes with patience. Don’t forget it, dearest.”
Those exact words repeated every time you trained. And when they did, you often shrugged it off and continued to be stubborn. You wanted to be the best, just like her.
It was past noon when you stayed after training. The sun began to sit, meaning dinner was going to be soon. You were drenched in sweat from head to toe, some bruises from hitting the training dummies too harshly. The thought of eating a huge meal after all this made your stomach growl, so you chose to work on your kicks one more time before cleaning up.
You eyed down the dummy in the middle of the grounds, bringing your left hand up to align, and your right hand sharpened and stiff like a blade. You quickly charge at it, bringing your right leg to strike first. Then you bring your other leg up to strike it, only this time you strike it twice with your left leg. You turn and strike it with your right leg again, ending it with a knee kick to the middle part of the dummy. You decided to be a bit cocky and do a new move from today’s training. It ended with you slipping, causing you to fall on your bottom. You groaned in pain, because of your mistake it definitely left a bruise for months to come. You slowly stood on your feet again and chose to end your extra practice. You cleaned up any pieces of the dummy that flew because of your harsh moves on it and anything else that came from you.
Once you are done cleaning, you grab your things and start to leave the grounds. As you head off, you notice something sticking out with a cloth on top of it, leaning against a wall. Only a part of it is peeking out, so you put your things down to go inspect. You squint a bit at it to make sure it wasn’t anything dangerous; it’s just some sort of stick you think. You stepped towards the object, carefully taking the cloth off it. Turns out it is Ashrah’s beloved kriss.
“How could she be so careless?” you said, inspecting the sword.
You carefully ran your hand over the sheath of the sword, the design was smooth to the touch, whoever crafted it took their precious time to make perfection. You carefully took out the sword of its sheath, it makes the beautiful sound you hear anytime Ashrah wields it in and out of training. It was lightweight to your surprise, a smile creeping on your face with the idea you had in mind. You walked back to the center of the training grounds, the sheath of the sword at your hip and the sword held carefully in one hand. You got into a ready position to swing the sword as you placed your other hand on the handle. You start off with an upward vertical slash, starting from the bottom and ending at the top. With quickness, you moved into a blocking stance, the sword held out in front of you. Then you gripped the sword tightly to do a horizontal slash, you felt the strength of it on your forearms. You took a deep breath, all that slashing and pokes made you tired. You stood straight up once more and looked at the kriss in your hands again.
“Maybe I could ask Ashrah for sword practice…” you smiled.
“I’d be delighted to assist.”
Your skin jumps at the sudden voice of your girlfriend. You turn to find her leaning against a pillar, her eyes fixated on you, and her smile always shining.
Your heart starts to skip beats. “Oh uh- Ashrah hey! I was just looking at your sword…nothing else I swear!!” You smiled nervously.
She laughs, “Don’t be nervous, my darling. I think it’s interesting for you to try out new things.” Ashrah steps away from the pillar and walks towards you, “I left my kriss here by accident. I’m glad you were able to find it.”
You swore your stomach did backflips once she got close to you. By the elder gods your love for Ashrah…
She stood next to you, a hand on your shoulder and a hand on the arm wielding the kriss. Ashrah looked towards you, your face had a worrisome look. “Is there something wrong? I can step away if you-“
“No no please!” You interrupted. She tilted her head slightly, confusion went through her mind. You cleared your throat, “I’m not gonna lie, Ashrah I thought you’d be pissed once you saw me carelessly handle your sword…”
“I’d never be mad at you over this. You aren’t harmed, and my kriss is in perfect condition as I left it. I trust you with my life.”
You nodded, “Right.”
“But now that we’re here, would you like me to show you some tips to help with your sword practice?” Ashrah gave you a small smile.
You nodded excitedly. She took the sword from you and started the short lesson. Ashrah discussed stances, showing the proper way to hold a sword and where to store the sheath of it on your hip. She then talked about attack moves, defensive and offensive. As an already skilled fighter, Ashrah was confident in her movements. Showing them to you gave her a boost greater than before, she is graceful now that you want to give it a shot. Her final discussion point of the lesson was patience. Ashrah knew you were very stubborn, but this time she promised to help you anytime you both weren’t doing regular training. She offered to do days there wasn’t any training and decided to use those for sword practice. You agreed to the offer, maybe things would change once you took your time. Once you both agreed over the discussion, your stomach growled loudly.
Ashrah gave a soft laugh, “Perfect timing.” She put her kriss away, attaching it to her hip. She held out her hand for you, “Come. Let’s go to dinner.”
You took her hand happily as you both went to the mess hall.
***