"No it doesn't."
Morana went and picked up a new acorn. Repeating her slithering climb from before, she once again perched the acorn on top of the statue.
When she returned to her sister's side, she resumed her human form. "I said, hit the acorn. Not the statue."
She crossed her arms and stared her sister down. She was being overly harsh, and she knew it. But she knew Lisbeth could hit the acorn. She just needed to focus. Lisbeth might have been a little weakling, but in the years since they'd last seen each other, her sister had turned into quite the crack shot. It might take an arrow or three to hit the acorn, but she was sure it was well within Lisbeth's skill level.
Lisbeth stood with an arrow nocked to her bow. She looked up at the acorn. It was a tiny target. She didn't think she could hit it.
But she also knew that Morana would not let up. She had to find some way to meet the challenge.
She decided to take a shot and see if luck, or the blessing of Frey, was on her side. She took a deep breath, aimed her bow, focused on the tiny target...
...and the arrow she fired flew wide.
"It's too small," she said. She ignored her sister's smart ass retort to that comment.
She took another shot, aiming as carefully as she could. She tried to picture the acorn as just the bullseye on a target. But it was way smaller. The acorn was thinner than the width of her arrowhead. Hitting it wasn't just about skill. It required more precision than she had ever used in a shot before.
She shot again, then again. She managed to hit the sword again, just half an inch below the acorn, but Morana again said that wasn't good enough. She waited for her sister to plant another arrow up on the stone sword, then she stopped to consider her approach.
If she couldn't hit the acorn because it was too small, she figured, then she would have to make her arrows wider.
She knelt on one knee and pulled a bundle of cloth from her pack. She carefully wrapped it around the arrowhead until it made a nice thick binding. In battle, such a wrapping could be soaked in oil and lit on fire, but she wasn't going to start shooting flaming arrows here in the park. But even still, it widened her arrowhead from razor-thin to more than an inch wide.
She smirked at her sister as she took aim. She carefully lined up the shot, then fired.
The arrow flew straight, and barely clipped the acorn, knocking it from its perch. Her shot had been about half an inch to the right, but the wider head had done the trick.
"There," she said, lowering the bow. "Did it."
"See? That wasn't so tough."
She'd been grinning the entire time she watched her sister prep the special arrowhead. It was technically sorta cheating, but it was cheating she approved of.
She went and retrieved the acorn from the ground. Since it had been hit only by cloth, the acorn was mostly intact.
She walked over to her sister and put the acorn in Lisbeth's hand. "You can do whatever you set your sights on. You just need a little confidence, and a little cleverness. And you'll need that in the war."
She gave her sister a hug. Morana knew she could be a major pain in the ass. But it was for Lisbeth's own good.
And if the lesson helped keep Lisbeth alive during the war, then it would all be worth it.
{done}
