[Training] belong to the bones beneath the ground

The youth’s expectations for this spar had flown by the wayside as quickly as it’d begun – her prior motions still following those wayward boundaries as Hotaru was struck and felled too. Perhaps it’d been more from laughter than the girl’s own attack, but something still the same.

But then Hotaru advanced, and suddenly Melita was a scurrying fiend, backpedaling on her hands and feet much like a crab, striving to maintain distance from the other woman’s grip, no intentions of being pinned into the surface (and a whole host of memories were dragged up there too – and none of them good). Thereafter, she rolled, twisted, and turned, attempting to get herself upright, not dragged into the dunes. On instinct, she kicked out, feet striving to ensure Hotaru stayed far away while she rose to her feet.

Hotaru has no idea how this spar got so out of hand, devolving into childish notions faster than the mind can track, but it lifts her spirits without fail. Melita's desperate bid for freedom makes it all the harder to stop laughing, deciding instead to roll away from the flailing feet to lay on her back and catch her breath while the youth springs back to a vertical point.

She bounces up in turn, covered and sand with bright mirthful eyes and a wide smile. [say]"Care to keep going?"[/say] Hotaru's best feature is her stamina, something passed down from her mother's side, but she's supposed to be the teacher here and Melita is the one who knows best what she would like to learn and how much.

Upright again, with Hotaru dodging her efforts, the youth hadn’t realized how worn, how tired she felt. The fight and skirmish had taken up an entirely different set of skills, so used to honing her weaponry, and not used to implementing these other tactics. Mentally she was drained as well, forced to think, contemplate, instead of merely thrusting forward with might and tenacity, rather than actual strategy. So she gulped air down in her lungs, hands dangling down by her knees, only raising her head to stare upon Hotaru again, who seemed to find all of it amusing. Perhaps Melita would too, eventually cracking a smile. [say]“I’m good for now.”[/say] She waved a palm, as if something in the air would explain the conflagration, before giving up entirely. [say]“I’m not used to this,”[/say] crackled on a fiery laugh. [say]“But thank you.”[/say] Grateful for the opportunity, for one more impact to her repertoire. Something else to practice, to hone, to understand and apply (a force of nature, and eventually nothing would stand in her way).

Hotaru patiently waits through the recovery time the lass needs, happy to control her own breathing and embrace the warmed up muscles the training has given her. When Melita calls for it to end, she happily does so and elegantly crosses her ankles, falling to a sitting position in the sand before the redheaded girl. [say]"You're welcome. You can always seek me out for training if you need it, girls - and Helovians - need to stick together, right?"[/say] Despite the playful wink she throws the girl's way, there's a sincerity to her words that she hopes will be properly parsed.

They are so alike, and already she can see that. Both determined to be strong, to destroy the boxes that surround their gender and stature alike. Both hailing from a destroyed land, thrown here without asking for it, trying to find their balance in it all. If Hotaru can help Melita do that at all, in any small way, she will.

Regrouping, resuming, until her body could return to its natural state, rising away from her bent contortions, removing the sand clinging to her arms. Her gilded eyes sprung back to Hotaru, elegantly poised along the dunes, stare widening slightly at the idea, at the notion, at the novelty, of being able to do this all over again. [say]“I’ll take you up on that,”[/say] followed with a cheeky grin, strength, fortitude, might, fire, and iron forged in the slate of her status and being. [say]“Probably after Deepfrost though,”[/say] a frown imparted in there – mostly because she had other duties to attend to. Maybe she could instigate or agitate someone else on the Ark, and get her practice in that way.

But she liked Hotaru well enough – portions of the past embedded and infused in their forms, in the way their lives had played out here. [say]“I’ll see you around!”[/say] Another bright smile enveloped, as she gathered up her things, and Fangorn meant to follow. [say]“Thank you again!”[/say] Then she hastened off, back into the wilderness, with a new angle of determination set along her jaw and brows.

[-FIN]