[Training] It'll be fun, trust me!

"It'll be fun, trust me!"

Morana strolled through the park, tossing the apple up and down in her hand. It looked pretty tasty, but she hadn't brought it along to eat.

The park was fairly empty this early in the day, and the few passerby didn't really pay them any attention. The two twins didn't stand out much, aside from being cute redheads. Nothing to see here.

"Let's try over here," she said, pointing to a small stand of trees near the middle of the park. There was plenty of cover there to make sure no stray arrows hit any random people wandering through the park. And if Lisbeth did hit someone, well, that's what they got for not paying attention to where they were going.

"Okay, here we go." She stood with her back against a tree, then perched the arrow on top of her head. It took a few tries to get it to balance right. Once she got it standing straight, she gestured to her sister. "Go ahead. Take your best shot."

"No way," Lisbeth said.

She watched every toss of the apple, feeling her chest tighten more and more the further they got into the park. It was a very small apple. Not so small that she couldn't hit it--she'd hit smaller targets without much trouble--but small enough that she definitely wasn't confident with what her sister had in mind.

"We're not doing this." She stood across from Morana, crossing her arms. She refused to draw her bow. "Just forget it. I'll shoot at some normal targets."

Frey had commanded her to practice her archery before she could earn the privilege of being gifted a magical bow. Lisbeth practiced her archery nearly every day, so in itself, it wasn't much of a request. But she didn't want to just practice with her normal routine. When she'd told Morana this, her sister had come up with this insane plan.

There was no way they were doing this.

"Don't be a wimp!"

The apple fell from Morana's head. She scooped it up off the ground, then carefully balanced it on her head again.

"You said you need to make it a quest-worthy training session, right? What could be better than this!"

She held her arms out to either side, waiting. A woman passed by walking her dog. She gave them a strange look. Morana gave her the finger. The woman huffed and hurried along.

"Go for it," she told her sister. "I trust you."

She grinned, waiting for the shot. She knew her sister wouldn't hit her. Probably.

"No." Lisbeth continued to stand there with her arms crossed. "If I miss, I could kill you."

She shook her head. This was crazy. She was sure she could come up with some other way to train with her bow to meet Frey's requirements. It didn't have to be this.

"How about you toss the apple in the air, and I try to shoot it mid-air? That would be a challenge." She was pretty sure she could make that shot. She'd been getting a lot of practice lately.

Her bow remained securely strapped to her back. She stared her sister down.

"Look," Morana said, holding as still as she could. "I won't let you train any other way. This is it. You have no choice."

When her sister expressed doubt, Morana said, "If you don't shoot at the apple, I will break your bow. Snap!" She mimed the motion of breaking the bow over her knee. The apple was jostled and fell off her head again. She fumbled but managed to catch it before it hit the ground. She placed it back on her head and waited.

"I will stalk you as a giant snake and break any bow you find. I will bite them in half and never let you train again. I will be relentless, never ending."

Her sister's exhausted look made her grin.

"Look at it this way," she added, spreading her arms out wide, "Frey will be SO impressed with this that she'll probably give you two magic bows. Or one bow that's twice as good. Whatever."

She closed her eyes and waited.

Lisbeth sighed, scrubbing a hand over her face.

Her heart sunk as she listened to Morana's threats. She'd actually do it, too. When they were kids, one time Morana had hidden all of Lisbeth's pants and shirts, just to force her to wear a dress to school one day. Specifically, the day she was supposed to work on a team project together with the really really cute girl Lisbeth had had a crush on. She'd been so red-faced the entire time that she hadn't been able to concentrate on her school work.

They'd gotten a C+.

"Please don't," Lisbeth pleaded, giving her sister a wide-eyed look. She pictured Morana breaking her bow, then doing it again, over and over if Lisbeth bought a new bow. Morana would do it. She was just that stubborn.

Reluctantly, she pulled her bow off her back. "Look," she said, hesitantly drawing an arrow. "I'll do it one time. That's it."

Hands shaking, she nocked the arrow and raised her bow.

"Great!" Morana grinned, holding still.

At least, at first.

She waited while Lisbeth lined up her shot. Waited. Waited.

As soon as the first arrow flew, she feigned a shriek and ducked, covering her head with her arms.

She looked up to see her sister's reaction. She knew it was a mean trick, but that was the point. She hadn't seen her sister in years, and she had a LOT of fucking with Lisbeth to get out of her system.

"Oh God!"

Lisbeth screamed, starting to rush towards her sister, horrible, bloody images flashing in her mind. She had known this was a mistake. She had nearly killed--

She stopped in her steps. Morana was laughing at her, practically rolling on the floor.

"You...you!" She threw her bow at Morana's head. It smacked right into her, but it didn't stop Morana from laughing.

"I hate you! Do you have any idea how scared--"

She cut herself off, forcing herself to take a deep breath. This was what Morana wanted, she knew it. She needed to not give in and give Morana what she wanted. That would only encourage her.

She stalked over and snatched her bow up. "We are done here."

She grabbed the apple off the ground. Then looked at it.

There was a slice off the side of the apple where her arrow had grazed it. If Morana had just held still...

It took a couple of minutes before Morana could stop laughing.

Eventually, she sat up, wiping the tears from her eyes. "That was great! You should have seen your face!"

The annoyed look her sister gave her in return just made her laugh even harder.

Once the giggles were out of her system, she got up, looking at the apple in Lisbeth's hand. "See? Good shot! I promise to hold still this time."

She ignored her sister's protests, taking the apple from Lisbeth. She looked at the slice, then shrugged and took a big bite from the apple before placing it back on top of her head.

Her mouthful of apple, she said, "Now it's a smaller target. Harder to hit!"

Lisbeth clenched her fists. For a moment, just a moment, she wanted to punch her sister in the face.

She crossed her arms when Morana put the apple back on her head. "What's wrong with you? How do you expect me to do that again after what you just pulled? If you move like that again, I might hit you."

They argued about it for a few more minutes. Eventually, Lisbeth relented. The constant badgering from her much-more-stubborn sister was more than she could handle.

"Fine!" she grabbed her spent arrow from where it had embedded in the tree. "You want to stay alive, then hold the hell still."

She stalked back across the grass, stopping thirty paces away. She drew an arrow, pointing it at the ground. She hesitated, taking a slow, deep breath.

She could do this.

"Hold still," she said again, carefully taking aim.

The apple was a small target. But she could hit it. She'd hit much smaller targets plenty of times. She could hit the bullseye during training almost every time. There was no reason she couldn't do this.

She whispered a silent prayer to Frey, aimed down the length of the arrow, then gently released the arrow and let it fly.

Morana grinned when she saw the arrow aimed at her.

She trusted her sister.

Plus, this was fun.

Despite it all, she couldn't help but close her eyes tight when the arrow actually came flying at her. She held still, flinching instinctively when she heard the deep thunk of the arrow embedding into the tree above her head.

She opened her eyes and looked up. A bit of apple juice dripped into her face.

"You did it!" She clapped, stepping away from the tree. The arrow had pierced it clean through.

She yanked out the arrow, looking at the apple. She nodded in approval.

She held the arrow up to her face and took another large bite from the apple. "Okay, one more time. Even smaller this time."

"No," Lisbeth said, snatching the arrow from her sister and yanking the apple off of it. "No! I'm done. I hit the target, and that's enough. We don't need to do it again."

She threw the apple to the side. She was shaking from head to toe. When the arrow had left the bow, she'd seen a horrific image flash in her mind. The arrow stuck through Morana's face, jutting from her eye. Lisbeth shuddered, hugging herself. It hadn't happened that way, but the image was still burned into her mind.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. She didn't care if Morana broke her bow. She couldn't do that again.

Morana sighed when she saw her sister shaking. As much as she loved fucking with Lisbeth, she knew when she was taking it too far.

She stepped up behind Lisbeth and wrapped her arms around her sister. "Hey, it's okay. No more apples. We'll find another way to make Frey happy."

After Lisbeth stopped shaking, Morana said, "How about peaches? Frey loves peaches, right? You can shoot one of those off my head."

She snickered, but she could tell her sister didn't think it was funny. She sighed, giving Lisbeth another tight squeeze. "Fine, fine. We'll do something else. But it needs to be something challenging."

She took her sister's hand and led her further into the park, looking around for something to challenge her sister. Eventually, she found it.

"Here," she said. The apple was lost, so she scooped an acorn off the ground. She stepped over to a tall stone statue, depicting some hero of Stormbreak's past. He sat on a horse that reared up on its hind legs, the hero's sword raised up high, easily fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.

Morana popped the acorn into her mouth, then fluidly shifted into the shape of an anaconda. She slithered up the statue, coiling around it until she had climbed all the way to the top. She coiled her length along the hero's arm, until her head was level with the height of the blade.

She shifted back, her feet now perched on the statue's arm. She wobbled, nowhere near as graceful in this form. She wrapped one arm around the statue's sword, glad that it wasn't actually sharp. With her other hand, she reached up and perched the acorn right on the tip of the sword. She had to push it down a bit until the tip of the blade pierced into the acorn, splitting the acorn nearly in half. But she got it to stay.

She shifted back into anaconda form to safely descend, then turned back once more when she was by Lisbeth's side.

"Hit that," she said, the challenge clear in her tone.

Lisbeth looked up at the perched acorn. It was a hell of a shot. She thought she could do it, but something so small made her hesitate.

"If the arrow goes flying wide, it could land anywhere," she said, looking around the park. Shooting up that high from this angle would give the arrow a very broad radius of possible landing places. She preferred shooting straight at targets, or at high targets that were pinned to a wall, so that a stray arrow couldn't cause any havoc.

She sighed, drawing an arrow. She had to take the challenge. Morana would never let her live it down if she didn't.

She aimed down the length of the arrow. The acorn was barely a speck in her vision. She couldn't see it well enough to aim properly. So she ignored the acorn, instead looking at the length of the statue's sword. The tip of the sword was no harder to hit than a target's bullseye, really.

She held her breath. Kept her aim steady. Focused her entire being on that point at the tip of the blade.

She let the arrow fly. It streaked through the air, then bounced off the tip of the blade. The acorn, undamaged, still fell to the ground, bouncing off the stone walkway around the statue.

"That counts," she said. She might not have hit the acorn itself, but she had hit close enough that, in a combat situation, such a shot aimed at an enemy's heart would still have been fatal.