Bulletproof Moments

Caspa Al-Fateh · 01-20-2012, 08:11 PM

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Word Count :: 841 Sorry- I'm absolutely exhausted and headachey and the writing quality here is terrible, but hopefully you can kind of figure out what's going on. :|

Some days her body simply yearned for those months it had spent in repose: hardly exerting any hard muscle efforts whatsoever. But now, the mutt had a reason to attempt to push herself a little further every single day. Recovery was easier to track when you had something tangible to measure yourself against, even if it was just the amount of hours she could spend pacing the borders, or the weight of wood she could carry to the smoke-house fires. Then, it never hurt to gain a little muscle anyway. She well remembered the long-ago advice of one of her first encounters in the Cour des Miracles lands, the abrupt and unfriendly warrior who had advised her to eat more. Caspa did her best, but she would never be a bulky thing. She had not insignificant size, with long legs and a broad frame, but every bone was just a little too close to the skin's surface for her to gain any advantage from her near-wolf height. She knew her best bet was to play to her talents, which she could and had been practicing from almost a prone position - the flinging of knives at targets on her bedroom wall, her sharp eyes primed to correct even the slightest millimetre she missed by. Distance was something she could not practice within the confines of the Chien Hotel, though, and she'd gone to the training ground north of the dreaded horse-ridden stables for a bout of long-sighted throwing. She'd found the targets and equipment feeling a little-less used than they had done: she knew that the woman who had trained most often here was no longer a packmate, and though they'd never met, somehow Caspa felt her loss. After what could have been several thousand throws, using her new practice knife over her favoured Sabatiers, she realised her eyes were beginning to ache from focusing for such a long time. When her next throw went so far out that it sailed right past the willow wand and hit a rotting stump, burying itself deeply in the old wood and refusing to come out, Caspa decided it was time to stop for the day. She had one more assignment for herself, based on her decision to follow a strict recovery schedule, but after that, she would allow herself to rest.

Leaving the old knife where it was - she had no clothing today to keep it in or a belt to hold it - she strode away through the trees until she reached the opening that signified the beginning of the stabling area. She did not mean to go too near the hoofed creatures today, though, but to restrict herself to the racetrack. She liked the clearly defined area for running in - it allowed her to keep track of how many times around and at what pace she was managing to sprint. She had begun on the far side from the stable complex, and made her loping way forwards in a clockwise direction. Her optime form found running so much harder than lupus, with its teetering vertical centre of gravity, and she considered it a good strengthening exercise that left her even faster in the four-footed form. It had to be admitted she looked a little strange though, taking long and almost stork-like bounds in an attempt to make any kind of good pace. Her face was set with the effort and a vaguely nippy wind stung tears from her black eyes, so she was glad to reach the more sheltered corner of the circuit where the horse gate was located. As she rounded the corner, though, she was met with a highly disconcerting sight - a gigantic, pitch-black behemoth of a horse or possibly a mammoth was running at her down the straight; hooves looking from here like soup-plates ready to squash her insignificant self underfoot as easily as she would stand on a dandelion clock. Caspa halted, eyes slitting as she stared it down for a moment - fear was just another flaw to overcome, after all - then she span away and ducked to one side, removing herself from the animal's path. Although she despised her own weakness, she found herself trembling from head to toe as the horse got nearer and nearer. Where on earth did this aversion come from, she wondered. She wanted to put even more distance between herself and the equine, but there was a fencepost behind her now and she thought that if she turned to duck beneath it, that might have given the horse enough of a reason to charge at her while her back was turned. As it came nearer, she saw the wolf astride its back which reassured her a little. Surely if he was up there, he must know what he was doing and have some level of control. Still she could not take her eyes away from those beating hooves and pumping chest muscles, transfixed by her irrational terror.

Image courtesy of h.koppdelaney @ flickr; Table by the Mentors!

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