Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Thank you for posting Squirrel))

Hanille's cheeks turned rosey as Edward spoke to her, "No offense taken...I know I'm not a warrior...and I can tell you now that I've had NO kind of combat experience, unless getting whipped as punishment by the priests counts."

As they began to make their way out, there was a bright flash of flame, followed by a roar. Hanille's arms instinctively grabbed hold of Edward, "Who did that?!"



((Sorry the post is so short. *Is kind of trying to work different things out*))

:: Continued from here. ::

Jedrek was in class at the moment so Hayana had decided to train by herself whilst waiting for the class to finish. She now stood still on the training field, trying to find a good sturdy pose that would still allow her to redirect her center of balance when needed. Her ordinary low pose was perfect for hunting and she could sit perfectly still for hours in it (she used that trick for hunting deer with her knife, falling down on them from trees and slitting their throats), but in a combat situation it was pretty much useless. Her uncle had scolded her for it, but it constantly slipped her mind since the hunter pose was pretty much a part of her.

Hayana tested different poses for a while, swaying back and forth to see how easily she would loose balance. In the end she decided on the pose tought to her by he uncle. It put her feet only slightly wider than her shoulders and in a diagonal relative to her opponent. At first she held her fists by her cheeks, but since she was going to train balance and not combat she lowered them after a while and just stood. She closed her eyes and felt the soft breeze flow around her.

Everything seemed to go away around her as she focused on clearing her head and after a while she found herself shrouded in nothingness. It was a calm and soothing place and she used the comfort she usually felt while in a forest to further focus the experience into a comforting one. She could almost see before her a soft calm clearing with a small dark pond and a huge mossy rock near it.

".w.h.o. .d.i.s.t.u.r.b.s."

Hayana did not hear the words, they were felt. It was like a mix between a spoken phrase and a strike to the head and Hayana quickly tried to pull out of the meditation. She felt a tug on her mind as if whatever it was she had reached wanted to grab her and hold her back. A strange noise began to sound faintly. In blind panic, Hayana drew her knife in order to stab herself in the hand and let the pain help her out, but somehow the grip disappeared and she momentarily felt a soft mind touch hers and the fresh smell of leaves before the nothingness went away. She was back to normal and stood panting on the training field. She slowly sheated her knife again and sat down on the grass.

She knew about forest spirits. They were the caregivers and patrons of the forests. Some were individual beings with intelligence while others were more of a collective mind of the forest, the latter probably being the case of the forest surrounding Windsor. What had communicated with Hayana had not been a forest spirit though, it had been something much more sinister and ugly and while she did not have a clue as to what it was, she knew it had taken Akina when they were out in the forest and Alyah had not showed up in school for some time now. Of the three girls that had ventured into the forest, only Hayana herself remained.

Hayana stood up once more and refocused all her fear and sorrow into anger. She had no peace to practise standing now, she wanted to hurt something. One of the practice dummies would have to do. The hard wood felt real in a comforting way and the pain of thrusting her fists into it time after time only helped her focus more. Whatever evil it was that lived in the forest, perverted the animals and stole her friends - she was going to combat it and defeat it.

As Hayana felt the hand on her shoulder she reacted on pure instinct and quickly spun around to face whatever aggressor now stood behind her. A calm feeling of friendship and concern coming from the hand registered in her mind and when the tall figure of Jedrek appeared in her viewfield she did all she could not to punch him. The hand stopped before it hit him and Hayana sighed. She was still a bit startled though and as she relaxed her body, she scolded him. It wasn't really that she was angry with him, she just had some steam to let go of.

"Don't you ever sneak up on a girl like that again! I could have hurt you! I was concentrating here, you know, and I might have mistaken you for a thief or a pervert."

She rubbed her sore knuckles as she spoke and when she was done she looked at them. On of them was bleeding ever so slightly and she put it in her mouth to lick away the blood before she got it on her dress. Meanwhile, she looked up at Jedrek again.

She felt sorry for scolding him like that, he only wanted to help her. Him being really cute just made it worse and she decided that she would have to say something apologetic soon. She really didn't know how to put it though. 'Sorry, but I thought you were the great evil talking in my head.' was probably not going to cut it.

Jedrek soft laugh was like a cool breeze to the troubled mind of Hayana and while him laughing at her when angry should have made her even more angry, she only became relieved and a lot of her tention dropped like a stone.

"Well, don't do it again or I might..."

She was just about to say something along the lines of 'hit you with something', but felt it was a rather silly thing to say since that was the purpose of their training. After a small pause she finished the sentence.

"... do something."

Which, in retrospect, really wasn't that much better. She wanted to go on with the training and leave her poorly formulated and rather failed attempts at being angry and intimidating behind. Without leaving much room for further conversation she therefore quickly formed a sentence that would hopefully make Jedrek understand this.

"So, should I hit you with a stick now?"

(( OOC: I have just installed Winows XP and somehow the nice Swedish keyboard layout is replaced with an american one. The letters are all the same, but punctuation an other stuff might turn out strange. You have been warned. ))


Decidedly not the best thing to say, but as Jedrek didn't seem to take offence by it, Hayana eased up a bit and thought it better to not try and correct the mistake.


Well, that was basically the whole point of the excercise, although she had possibly said it in a bit of a blunt manner. Manners. Jedrek had lots of them and the way he acted and carried himself was very delicate and seemed pretty foreign to her. She knew that elves raised in cities had a special air to them and she had heard that they were taller. Jedreks height confirmed this, although she still didn't really believe in it. Why should elves grow taller when in a city? Well, if all male elves looked like Jedrek after being raised in the city, she wouldn't mind some more growing up there...


His hair was really something. It looked great on him, but at the same time seemed to live its own life on top of his head. He carried it off in an almost perfect way and even his constant struggle over control with it looked good. Hayana couldn't help but giggle a bit when he cleared his face and then waited as he settled.

His stance was much better than hers, she thought as she went to fetch a stick from one of the small sheds with practice tools in them. He was obviously far superior to her when it came to fighting, just looking at his stance told her that. Well, in a fair fight anyway. He was much stronger than her, but strength could be overcome using other methods. She wondered how good his hearing was and if sneaking up on him would be the same as sneaking up on a prey. As the word 'prey' formed in her mind, Hayana took a low stance and began circulating Jedrek, looking for weak spots in his stance.

She could probably knock him right off with a strike to a vital place, but that would mean hurting him greatly and was vary much out of the question. Instead, surprise would be her ally and after a short moment of consideration she hit him in the hollow of the knee. It wouldn't hurt much and he would probably expect it. The hit was not very hard as she was not used to striking her friends with sticks and did not know how much he could take.

She hit him half heartedly on various places before landing a soft prod with the tip in his side. She knew she was terribly ticklish there and with some luck he would be too.

"Hey, you're really cute when you're blindfolded." Hayana said, quickly followed up by a swift and accented strike to the hollow of the knees again. She watched Jedreks face for reactions and then put on her own blindfold, putting the stick on the ground between them.

"So, I guess it's your turn to be hitting on me."
Well, that was another sentence that didn't really come out the way she had planned it to...

(( OOC: Arghh!!! I want my normal keyboard layout! This post would have been better if I wouldn't have to rethink how to use the keyboard all the time. Well well, not much to do about it. I tried to leave a few gaps for you to fill in with Jedreks reactions and I tried not to limit your actions too much. Your post will be great like always. ))

Jedreks face was not the only one to blush, but Hayana quickly turned away to hide it under the pretense of putting on the blindfold. The smell of Jedrek hit her as she did this and while the smell was unfamiliar to her, it wasn't unpleasant.

She readied herself and calmed down, trying to focus. This time she didn't try to calm her mind, but instead she focused on happy memories. As she slipped into the realm of remembrance she gave the ready sign and expected Jedrek to circle her before hitting.

The blow came in an instant and the sharp pain sent her straight back to the present. She felt an intense urge to rub her shin and was very near to lifting her leg, but she mustered her resolve and steadied herself. Since focusing on the past had not proven useful, she now tried entering a state of stalking. She could sit still for hours with bugs crawling on her and biting her, waiting for that one perfect moment. Focusing on an imaginary prey, the outside world became slightly dimmed and even though the next two hits registered in her mind, not even the marked second hit threw her off her balance.


The words were processed slowly and it took Hayana a while to realize that Jedrek was finished. She let the imaginary prey escape and removed her blindfold.

"I think I got the basic technique now, but I want to try it again. I want you to hit me a bit harder this time." She smiled at Jedrek.

"Are you holding back because I'm a girl?" she asked and looked at him.