[Training] Scratching an Itch

As a testament to the attuned's sturdiness she had actually been making out quite well living between the outskirts and ruins returning readily to the semi-feral state of her childhood where the only people she knew were her parents and the strangers that crossed paths with them from time to time. Pillaging the wilderness for food and comforts came readily to her, as did an iron gut capable of tolerating things sometimes difficult to stomach.

The solitude that came of becoming a wood-hermit upon her arrival had not managed to detract form her buoyant mood yet, though she enjoyed passing interactions with the people that lived in this strange land finding the stories fascinating. It reminded her of when she had first arrived on the docks, awash in the variety that a major port city invited. It had been overwhelming at first, but in time she had grown to love the excitement of it, the new stories she could hear simply by buying a drink and lingering for an evening in a busy tavern would keep her imagination going for days, if not weeks. This did not look like a port city, however, and Papillion did not yet feel any strong desire to investigate the city just yet, and had enough to discover on her own. There was something about that Spire that just made her skin crawl.

No, she was happy to stay away, finding the fields a comfortable analog to the scrubland surrounding the port city she'd lived in and camped many times in the last five years after being evicted shortly after the great port city began to enact xenophobic isolationist policies. Though she had yet to pitch a formal campground, Pap had rather enjoyed the experience, the challenge, of roughing it.

The briskness of this Leafchange morning invigorated her, seeing her up by the break of dawn, driving her from the empty building she had taken to sleeping in, all the way to the woods where Pap had imagined she might even be so lucky as to find something edible, perhaps even manage to set a rabbit snare if she could find the supplies necessary. Though she might have been a thug she wasn't a thief and had no intentions of pilfering crops or herds from the nearby fields that might possibly have incurred the wrath of some very unorganized farmers. Pap had caught a bullet shortly after arriving at the port city for stealing sheep but had thankfully learned her lesson from a grazing wound - she'd seen and heard much worse where surgeons that would work on thieves had an equal chance of being butchers as they did actually having medical knowledge.

Though she had only just set foot in the woods, her mind mind was already busy planning a day of itches to scratch, from new experiences to practicing old habits she considered her options, following a twisting track that wove between trees and over a fallen log crossing an empty, muddy ditch. By the time she looked up to find herself in a clearing she couldn't recall what she had initially intended to do. Having dropped the ball majorly her shoulders sagged in brief defeat as she bore a sheepish grin, naturally finding herself stretching as she attempted to recall the itinerary she had just moments before been so eagerly planning. Woops.

Jigano

Jigano had been practicing alone, letting the calming meditations of his rapier forms center his mind and ground his thoughts, even though the sword he used was short and broad rather than his usual beloved schlagger blade. He had much to worry about these days, with Zariah's seizure of power that grated against everything he was, like sandpaper over his soul. Rebellion was a long-cherished hobby of his, and this would not be his first overthrow of a corrupt government... but there were none who wished to lead it, and he was among those who were uneasy with taking power again now that he had begun a new life away from all that.

On his own he would have simply left, gone elsewhere, flown free of the nonsense. But he wasn't on his own, he had people he cared about who couldn't or wouldn't leave, and they tied him to the fate of the Hollowed Grounds even with the recent turn for the worse. Still, he hadn't been able to bring himself to sign the stupid sheet of paper, even knowing that here he was free to lie, unlike on his world. Instead he had retreated to his animal forms for the most part, hiding his scent, dying his hair - and by extension, feathers and fur - to unmemorable grayish blacks and taking human form only rarely, and never near town.

His sword flicked out, not quite as graceful as it should have been were it his proper blade as he slashed at a falling leaf, missing it the first time, but managing to cut it on the backswing before it landed, seeking a peace that was proving elusive to his tightly-bound heart. Peace that was as elusive outwardly as inward, it would seem, as a scolding squirrel and a shift in the local birdsong from quiet territorial songs to alarm calls caught his attention. He had enough time to sheath his sword and turn towards the source of the woodland disturbance, body tensed to burst into feathers and flight as he faded back into the edges of the clearing, still and watchful.

The person who appeared didn't seem to be one of Zariah's enforcers, however. He didn't recognize her, but she seemed far too uncertain as she grinned to herself and relaxed, and he cleared his throat quietly as he stepped back into the light, arching a curious brow at her.

Those who knew Provost Jigano, bard extraordinaire and general busybody with the startling white hair and honey-brown skin might not recognize the lean man in the nondescript, dusty clothing. His skin was darker, almost walnut-hued, and his hair was messily looped up and tucked beneath a broad-brimmed hat so its length was indeterminate, but the strands that escaped were dark as his eyebrows, an ashen color, neither properly grey nor brown nor black. There were lines on this man's face; he looked older, more worn, and a rough patch of black leather covered his right eye. His left was still a glacial blue, however, and sharply observant.

"Are you lost?" he asked, voice a little rough as if from too much smoke, his tone gruff but not unkind.

She looked to him and for a split second he might have see her look him over, sizing him up as she leaned into a gentle side stretch, arms grasped above her head. "Oh heeeeyyy!" Guilt melted from the woman's expression into a look of genuine delight, as if she were greeting an old friend. With all the friendliness of a puppy she straightened up her posture and took an excited half-step forward, dusting down the red leather and cloth vest down with a jingle of gold bangles and chains as she drew to a sudden halt a respectful distance away still.

Tightening the ponytail at the back of her head she allowed her arms to fall to her sides again, loose and relaxed without so much as a trace of worry or discomfort about her posture or expression. "Yeah, no! I'm not lost! See, I came out here from the ruins over there thinking maybe I'd find breakfast, maybe a spot of entertainment, a good rock to sun myself on-" She nodded enthusiastically at the thought of a good sunning rock.

Her expression softened into friendly neutral as she looked him over a second time with open curiosity. "You're not lost, are you? You know some man, he said people sometimes get pulled here? It's not so bad if you did - I did too!" Suddenly the friendly puppy returned, though she remained respectfully rooted to the spot, as if well aware of the concept of boundaries despite her overly familiar manners. Instead she clapped her hands together in front of her, giving a full-body shimmy of excitement. "Oh this is great! I can show you everything! It's going to be fine!" So thrilled with her misunderstood perception that this man was somehow stranded and in dire need of her assistance, Pap hadn't bothered to wait to hear his side of things. Company! Yay!

At least she was far too cheerful and friendly to be one of Zariah's bullies, and Jigano relaxed slightly as she began to chatter with an enthusiasm he usually found primarily in Melita. He didn't quite expect the cascade of reasons for her to be out and about in the words, and it left him too bemused to break in. In truth he was a little fascinated as to what else she might have been thinking she'd find, and he waited to see where her trail would take her after the sunning rock.

Then, suddenly, she was offering to help him, and the turning of the tables finally cracked a grin from his artfully weathered face. He noted that she kept her distance, and nodded gratefully. "Came through a while back," he admitted. "Been keeping to myself lately, at least until I saw those wee folk with the wings and all the hullabaloo over their trials. Seemed like a thing worth trying, this Greatwood Guardian title. Not much of a fighter, though, so trying to practice up." It was more than he had meant to say, but her eager chatter was inspiring, and besides, if he was going to participate he'd have to shake his new disguise out at some point. Getting some practice in with someone who didn't know him yet would be just the thing!

"You saw that too?" Pap piped up, rising up onto her toes. Thrilling! Here was some of that friendly competition she had been hoping for when she put her name on the roster. "Papillion! I watched them drive the sign, even." She extended a hand toward the stranger to shake.

"You know," the attuned continued, chattering happily, appearing absolutely delighted by this curious stranger's company. "I think I can shoe-horn in a spar if you want! I know a think or two about a fight-" she put up her dukes, playfully boxing the air in front of her- Wham wham! - and danced away, her guard raised to protect her face. "You wanna play? Know anything about hand to hand? I'll go easy on ya'." A broad wolfish grin curled on her lips as she goaded her new friend into a tussle.

"Papillion, is it? Ah, I saw the name at the very top," he nodded and reached out to shake her hand, a bit gingerly compared to her firm and stalwart grip. "I'm Silversmith. A friendly spar might be just the thing to prepare for it, but..." He chuckled ruefully at her boxing stance, remembering a lesson with Ronin not so long ago, beneath the Longheat sun. Instead he patted his hip, where the shortsword was sheathed. "I'm more comfortable with my sword than my fists, truth be told. Though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try..."

Uncertain though he seemed, he still raised his fists up, trying to mirror Papillion's stance and remembering what Ronin had told him about how to wrap his thumb and throw from the shoulder. "Alright, let's give it a go, lass. Just a friendly match, mind, no point trying to really hurt each other!" She was nearly as tall as him, and almost as broad in the shoulders, and he had no doubt that she could hurt him if she put her mind to it.

But he was also fast and feathered and could retreat if she turned out to be playing a more dangerous game than he was looking to engage in. With a decisive nod he settled himself and then stepped forward, tossing slow, tentative jab towards her right shoulder with his left hand, while a keen blue eye studied what she would do in the hopes that he could learn from it.

"Yah-huh!" She seemed bright, the energy about her being practically radiating as she bounced with excitement in a ready stance, her posture broadening as she crouched down into a more ready position, leading with her left foot and shoulder. Her stare had become more intense as she watched him. "I ain't got a sword, though, so..."

She looked him over, appraising his stance fell into place, though his uncertainty was killing him. "Hey, I said I'd go easy on you. Don't worry, I'm always friendly!" When she had been evicted from her flat and put out on the streets, Pap already knew how to fight. Still, it was this event that would direct her toward a more violent manner of making ends meet, and as such she had grown to love the spar, to crave the contest. "Back home there was this girl - foot and a half shorter than me, fifty pounds lighter - that girl could wipe the floor with me even on some of her worst days when we sparred. Taught me everything I know about grapplin' - first lesson is tap, you know what it means to tap, Mister Silversmith?" Her tone trended toward that of a friendly conversation even as he approached to jab, cautiously as though she were either incredibly delicate or incredibly dangerous - she lunged forward, taking advantage by making a grab for his wrist with her right hand, her left foot swinging forward through his legs in an attempt to kick his base out from under him and send their little sparring match to the leaf-padded floor.

"That's good to know," he said solemnly, taking care to shift his speech patterns subtly, so that his tone was serious rather than holding the dry humor it usually would have. He and Ronin had only trained at half-speed, and he was uncertain of how things would change as he sped up to match Papillion's enthusiasm for the bout. "And I don't think I know what it means to tap - unless we're just hitting each other very light-- Hey!"

He was fast enough on his feet and stable enough in his balance that he could have avoided the leg sweep - or rather, Jigano could have avoided it. Silversmith was a bit older, a bit less steady and experienced with fighting in general, and the bard settled into his disguise with the ease of a man whose life had once depended on being someone he wasn't - and now it did again.

He went down with a squawk, right hand swinging around to try and grab onto Papillion's shoulder to catch himself as his feet went out from under him and he found himself tumbling to the ground, hat going askew as he scrambled to push the tall blond away. "What're you playing at, lass? I thought we were throwing friendly punches at each other!"

She made falling look graceful, crashing after him as he grabbed onto her shoulder. Grounded, she released him immediately and attempted to disentangle herself from the stranger, rolling onto her back with a snort of laughter. "Punching? Yeah, I mean, if you wanna break your hands." Rocking up into a seated position she made a gesture of 'tada!'. "I mean, you aren't hurt are you? The ground is soft enough, isn't it?"

She cocked her head, grasping her feet before her, the soles pressed together. "Look, you're all gangly and skinny-like - you have wingspan that you could be a real menace grapplin'. We can start down here if the fallin' bothers you- come on, up on your knees." With that, she rose to her knees to illustrate and postured herself with a fist extended to him.

"When I say tap, I mean you tap the ground. That lady I practiced with - Miss Val - she wasn't no brawler but she knew her stuff. She described it once as uh... What's that game with the horse?" She squinted. "A horse... a tower... some sort of priest..." Shaking her head, Pap giggled. "It's a strategy game, y'know. She said it was like that, but with your body. Your opponent might be bigger than you, might be meaner, but the ain't shit with a broken arm or if they can't breathe, y'know?" She flashed a harmless enough smile at him, perhaps attempting to reassure the stranger that she would, in fact, play nice.

"Now, when I say tap, I mean tap. Tap me, tap the ground - when you can't breathe, when you can't escape, when you feel pain. Won't be the Guardian of anything if you cripple yourself practicing up." She illustrated this by slapping the ground with an open palm, then patting her opposite arm. Tap tap. "Now, you wanna tussle?" She nodded to her outstretched fist, knuckles just waiting to be bumped, the invitation to be taken.

He made it easy to disentangle from; he was trying to get away and so was she, and Papillion would have no trouble wriggling free and putting space between them again, as he was doing. "But that's... isn't punching the point?" he asked genuinely puzzled. He nodded cautiously at her query about the ground. He'd taken a bit of a surprise and was a bit scuffed, but otherwise everything seemed to be in order.

He wasn't so sure that he wanted to continue her particular brand of sparring; it had a great deal in common with the type of fighting Jenny had excelled at, and which he had never even tried to emulate. Still, Papillion seemed innocently enthusiastic enough that he reluctantly rose to his knees and tried to mirror her position again, wrinkling his nose at her description of the game. The woodswise Silversmith was not likely a chess player, Jigano decided on the fly, and responded accordingly. "Horses and towers? A card game of some sort?" he asked cautiously. "Mostly I just try and keep a length of steel between me and anyone bigger or meaner than me." A practice that had, to be fair, worked out fairly well for him so far.

"This sounds more dangerous than a friendly sparring match..." he said dubiously, straightening his hat with a sigh. "But if it'll make you happy, lass, I'll give it a try." Getting beaten up wasn't exactly his idea of fun, but he wasn't one to turn down learning, even if it looked to be rough on him. He sized up the way she was kneeling, then cautiously tapped her fist with his, waiting to see what she would do next.

"Nope!" Pap chirped, shaking her head, snickering. "No, no, imagine if you were to be disarmed, annnnddd..." She lingered on the word as he tapped her knuckles. She gave a little show of a shuffle on her knees, her hands, raised not unlike a boxer's guard, her hands open, however, fingers closed. "If I wasn't bein' friendly I wouldn't have told you to tap, Mister Silversmith. This is gonna beat the pants off of that swordplay you seem to fancy so much."

As the game began, she allowed Silversmith the benefits of a first time grappler. "The idea is to stop your opponent from being able to fight - now we're gonna be friendly, Mister Silversmith, remember. No bitin', no punchin', no dirty tricks. I promise I won't drive my knee into your groin if you promise not to tickle me - y'got it?" She paused, only to continue without any real regard for his reaction. "You got your hands, you got your arms, you got your legs and feet to control your opponent on the ground and turn a potentially unfavorable situation to your benefit. Might I demonstrate? Won't hurt ya', Mister Silversmith, won't even knock that hat of yours off... yet." Mister Silversmith's hat had just become the canary that had caught the cat's eye, so it seemed.

Lunging forward on her knees she attempted to grab the sleeve of his shirt with her right hand and haul him toward her heavily as she rocked from knees to hip to bum. Her legs moved to wrap around his waist just below the last rib, and hook her heel at the small of his back, dragging him into a closed guard. Her left arm reached across his chest to snatch at the farthest point of his collar, though did not crank it across his throat but rather paused there. Despite the yanking and jostling, she hadn't intentionally tried to dislodge the hat and in fact seemed to be moving not all that quickly at all, her grip careful not to damage seams.

"I'd rather we keep our pants on, if it's all the same to you," he pointed out, gruffly amused. "And aye, no tickling for either of us!" But he nodded cautious agreement to her demonstration, eyes narrowing a bit as he saw her glance flicker to his hat. Since it was keeping his hair out of the dirt he was rather hoping to keep it where it was, but if she wanted to grapple the way he'd seen Jenny doing, he suspected he was going to end up face down in the autumn loam at some point, and at least in his current disguise a little more dirt smudged around wouldn't hurt anything.

As she lunged forward he rocked back, not exactly startled but not eager to close with her, no matter what he'd just said about allowing her to demonstrate. He jerked his arm as she grabbed his sleeve, but her momentum was greater than his and in spite of his attempt to wriggle free on the way down he quickly found himself with a six foot blonde woman wrapped around him in a way he wasn't sure Rory would entirely approve of, even if it was a far from comfortable position. He squirmed a bit, testing the limits of his range of motion within her guard, before finally relaxing with a mournful sigh. "That was very impressive, miss Papillion now... how do I get out of it?" he asked, twisting his body a bit to try and find an opening he could use to push her away with.

She snorted, giggling at his protests as she released him and twisted away, scooting across the forest floor on her side. "You struggle, obviously. I'm teachin' you how the game is played, but I can't do all the work for you!" At arm's length away she rose again to her knees, brushing herself down, picking leaves from her clothing and hair.

"Look, Mister Silversmith-" Pap clasped one hand around her fist as she leaned forward, beseeching him in sort of hunched bow. "I know you're not exactly enjoying yourself, but I think you'd do real nice at this." She straightened up, cracking her knuckles and extending her fist once more. "I want you to try it out, yeah? You think you got the idea? I want you to move first this time, we can start slow so you get a grasp on it if you want!" Beaming pleasantly, she waited.

"Just try to uh... keep your breathing calm. When you start to panic, that's when you lose. Just try to focus on where you're putting your hands and feet..." She paused. "And don't think about it like that. We're training."

He had been struggling! Well, a little. Carefully. Unsure of if there was a specific way he should have been struggling, and very much aware of the nearness of her forearm to his throat. He pushed himself up to his knees, brushing himself off a few perfunctory times as they both returned to their starting position. Papillion had been taking things slow and hadn't tried to actually hurt him, he acknowledged, and she seemed to honestly mean well. He wasn't so sure he had the hidden talents for this sort of grappling that she seemed to think he did, but he was - slowly, maybe a bit reluctantly - starting to enjoy himself a bit.

"Wellll... alright, I can give it a try," he agreed, a small smile finally curving his lips as he nodded and squared himself up, mirroring her pose and taking a calming breath. She was certainly right about the panicking bit causing problems! He had just about prepared himself to reach out when her final quip made him snort with laughter over the warning. That was supposed to be his line! "I'll try not to, miss Papillion," he said dryly. Then he reached forward, moving slowly enough to be sure of his motion and correct himself if she indicated he was doing it wrong.

He attempted to grasp her forearm, the same way she had done to him, and pull her into the same guard she had shown him before. It wasn't as clean as her maneuver had been, but his balance was a bit better now that he knew what to expect, and he was a bit stronger than he looked. If she let him, he would be able to copy her final position, a cross-arm held to her shirt but not pressing against her throat. "Like this? And then I suppose the next part is to press the arm in until you, ah, tap me?" Not that he was going to follow through on it, since they had agreed to a friendly game! "But now that we're here, can you show me how you got about getting out of it?"