Learning to swim ((an EQ1 tale))

[Dicey Reilly]

*author's note* This story is one that was open and at times contained other posts by members of my guild on Xev.  However the other posts have not been reprinted, and only the two of my character's posts have been included.

Part 1

Sinead strode purposefully out of Last Exodus' bar the Crypt muttering to herself as she went and headed directly to where that water met the Desert of Ro.  After a brief conversation with the northern fisherman that lived near by, the warrior carefully removed her weapons, and then her armor leaving both in the watchful care of this man of her people.

The cool night desert air felt good against her skin, and reminded her of home.  She only wished that the water would be as bracing as the frozen river that twisted its way throught the tundra.  She needed clarity, and cold always seemed to bring that out in her.

Stepping into the surf, Sinead slowly began to swim out into the deeper water.  She paused some distance from the shore and changed course as she began to parallel the contours of the landscape, keeping the sand steady out of the corner of her eye.  The water was calm out here with few waves breaking and swelling to keep her from easy precise strokes.  And that was what the northern woman was trying to achieve precision and concentration.

The strokes became a natural repetition to her muscles and the northern woman began to focus on what exactly had pushed her out into the night to swim.  It had started with a comment from Ishkur she believed.  He had of course been making grand generalizations about her kind and drink.  Implying that she may be too drunk to understand him.  Little did he know that she rarely had time to drink, let alone take the time to get drunk, and she never did so outside of Halas.  She did not trust herself to lose control that way outside her clan.

But he had made her think.  What did she have outside of the hunt and the kill?  She searched for her brother.  But as of yet, the last word of him had lead to a dead end, and a dead slaver again.  She protected Jaggedd, but even turning him in to the authorities had lost its luster as of late.  There are of course only so many times that you can bail a man out of jail before he realizes that you really aren't going to just leave him rot.

As she swam images of Tarsk and Oulan filled her head, and the younger warrior knew what she sought.

Perfection.

Part 2

Sordia was deeply troubled.

News had reached her ears that Sinead was concerned enough about her concentration that she spoke with her old trainer in Halas about it.  Never had Sinead lost focus in a fray.  It was the one place where her obsessive nature served her well.

She had spoken with Elder Oulan briefly about her concerns.  She would have spoken to Elder Tarsk, as the two were close friends, but he has been away from the house much as of late, and she was unaware of where to find him.  Sordia remembered Tarsk commenting that Oulan was an observant and skilled warrior, and she hoped that he would be able to get somewhere with her sister, that she could never hope for herself.

Sinead resented it when Sordia questioned her about anything.  She thought that she acted more like her mother and less a sister, and mostly she was right.  Sordia had been almost twenty when Sinead had come into the Wintersbane's care at five, orphaned.  And much of her life Sordia had tried to steer Sinead away from her chosen path of a warrior.  But still, there were times that Sordia wished her sister would talk to her.  Especially times like now, when something obviously was wrong.

Sordia sighed as she entered her home in Halas to find Hangetsu teaching by the fire again.  Crowded around the monks feet were many young Halas lads and lasses trying hard to become 'tranquil" and meditate.  Smiling the shaman wondered when her mate would realize that her people were to quick to follow this path.  Too quick to anger, too quick to action and too quick to love.  Fierce was a better word to describe her people.  Doing her best  Hangetsu impression, Sordia sat down next to her mate.  The children around her looked up at her quizzically and burst into giggles when the shaman winked at them, her face in mock serenity.

Her worries for the moment, left with the laughter around her.


Part 3

Anger and humiliation drove Sinead back to the water for the second moon.  Through clenched teeth, she again spoke with her people in the small fishing village in Northern Ro.  This time it was in a woman's care that she left her beloved weapons and armor.

A knowing smile crossed the barbarian woman's face as she assured Sinead that her things would not be touched.  Chuckling she called out to Sinead, "Ye can't be running from 'im forever ye know.  They be havin' an annoyin' tendency to follow ye, e'en to the unwanted places of yer dreams."

Sinead turned back eyes glinting and looked at the barbarian woman who had turned her attention to cleaning the days catch to make it into fishrolls, and decided that it wouldn't help to take her frustration out on a stranger, when all she really wanted to do was strangle her overbearing meddlesome sister.

Diving cleanly into the water, Sinead again made for the calmer, deeper water and strengthening her strokes.  Already she had improved greatly, mastering the skill easily with her well toned and well used muscles.  Her trainer had been correct in suggesting that she learn a new physical skill in order to figure out exactly what it is that had been bothering her enough to distract her from battle, and enough that the distraction was noticed not just by herself but Elder Oulan.

The thought of Elder Oulan brought forth all her anger fresh again as she silently cursed Sordia.  What could have possessed her sister to ask an Elder to intercede for her!  Why did she think that what she would have wanted was for someone ELSE to know that she had failed herself and Rallos Zek.  And of all people why would she tell Elder Oulan?!

The only way it could have possibly been more shameful would have been if Sordia had told both Elder Oulan and Elder Tarsk.  Though Sinead was sure that Elder Oulan planned on discussing her 'problem' with Elder Tarsk the first chance he got over a pint of ale.  Sinead seethed as she pictured the two elder warriors laughing over the waelin warrior's clumsiness, and missed blows.

Pushing herself to exhaustion, Sinead swam for hours until her rage finally left her.  Night had set fully now, and the cool breeze pricked at her skin on the short walk back to the hut where her things were safely stowed.  The northern woman was no longer in plain sight, but Sinead knew her belongings had been well guarded by the hound sleeping with its head in its paws directly next to her things.  On top of her bag was a short note in the barbarian tongue and with a strong feminine hand.

"Demons can swim"

Part 4

Sinead was angry with her.  Again.  At least that was what Oulan told her.  Sordia wasn't really all that surprised actually.  It seemed that no matter how she handled her sister she did it wrong.  She told Oulan that it wasn't necessary to try and talk to Sinead again. If he pursued the matter it wasn't her doing, though she was sure Sinead would not see things that way.  If she was insisting that it was just nerves, then Sordia would accept the answer that her sister gave, even if she knew it to be false.

Sinead would do as she always had.  Force herself away from those who would care about her.  Keep herself separate and alone.  Live only for duty and service to Clan and Hall and Rallos Zek.

And Sordia would continue to wish that it was not so.


Part 5

Elder Tarsk was back in the house.  Sinead had heard of his arrival the eve before after her swim and a night of dreamless exhausted sleep.  Sinead spent the day hunting with a ferocity that she had lost of late and  with an abandon that when she was younger in seasons, caused Vilanie to openly call her insane.  And she was again growing quickly in strength nearly mastering one full season's skills in a single moon.

Instead of retiring to a much needed rest, the northern woman again found herself on the shores of Northern Ro looking out into the endless waves.  She dropped to her knees next to the hound who seemed to be sleeping outside of the huts and scratched behind his ears.  The hound picked its head up off it paws and eyed the warrior lazily, belying its attentive and watchful nature.  A small smile formed on the warriors lips as she thought about how if one was foolish enough, that lazy appearance could end up causing any would be thief a bit of pain.  Sinead removed her armor deftly and laid her weapons and packs down, before removing a small parcel from the top of one of the bags.  Unwrapping a mammoth fillet, the warrior placed the treat at the paws of the hound hoping that he would appreciate the small taste of home.

There was not much more that Sinead was learning from her nightly swims in the physical sense, and the warrior thought that it may take many moons to cover this last bit of ground with the skill before she would learn no more, and that her nightly swims would turn from a learning experience to one keeping her muscles fresh and the strokes natural for when battle would require this skill to be reflex.  But her swims did serve a few other purposes, well beyond the one she required of herself for her warrior training.

The first was introspection.  As her muscles learned, it freed up part of herself for examination.  She knew herself better, these last few moons, and in that knowing, she knew how to deal with herself and those things that distracted her that had no place, no place in battle, no place in duty, and no place in her life.  It had stung to discover that she wanted some of these other things,  but more it had surprised her.  She had grown up knowing the boundaries of her place in her clan, that of the orphaned and the outsider, belonging both nowhere and everywhere, to no one and to all.  She had known all her life this was the way she would be, duty bound to the clan, but not really one of them.  What surprised her was this desire to actually belong, and to be one with Exodus instead of to serve Exodus as she did her clan.  It was not that the clan did not accept her, for Sordia's family took the utmost care to ensure that she was treated as all other children were.  It was not that Exodus did not accept her, as she was sure that if she allowed them to, they would treat her as family much as the Wintersbanes did.  It was that she knew that she didn't belong, at least not in the way that the others in the house did.

How she would deal with this new desire she did not know, and more importantly how she would deal with explaining herself should she be asked again she was not sure.  She had claimed nervousness, and from any other warrior, that would have been an easily accepted answer.  It was her first house clomp.  She was the youngest of the warriors and new to a task the size and scope of the raid on Chardok.  But for her, as any who knew her could easily attest, these challenges would cause her to focus harder, and to fight more fiercely.  She knew that her answer had been seen for what it was, a lie.  But what that lie covered, she was not sure if Elder Oulan had been aware, and even in the cold waters, Sinead felt a blush rise to her cheeks.

And there was the second purpose of her nightly swims.  Avoidance.  She could not be asked questions she was not prepared to answer if she was not there to be asked.  She was sure that some knew where she was most evenings and what she was doing, as she made no attempt to hide her activities from any in the hall.  But she was also sure that most would not care enough to follow her into the water, and that fewer still would interrupt her training, and that none would expect her to talk and swim at the same time.  And she had made it clear to Elder Oulan that her trainer in Halas had suggested this course of action for her.  If any were to ask, Dargon MacPherson would confirm this, and would most likely be encouraged that she has so fully followed his instruction and with her more normal vigor.

The third and fourth reason were tied up together in her emotions, and physical fatigue.  She had discovered, that after swimming for hours she was too tired to feel much of anything, and she was too tired to dream.  It would not last forever, she was sure.  But for now, it served its purpose, until she found a way to either satisfy or purge these new found desires.

Quickly wringing her hair out, Sinead paused briefly to enjoy the cold breeze coming in off the ocean and into the desert sands.  Her turmoil again lost in the waves.  A small note rested on her packs, this time a top a few fish rolls.

'E'en a grandmaster o' the seas can drown in calm appearin' waters'.

Part 6

It had been weeks since Sinead had been ordered to learn to swim by Dargon MacPherson. In that time, the warrior had not only concentrated on her nightly lessons in the water, but also on learning all that she could as quickly as she could to complete the ages as Rallos Zek saw fit to define them. She was but 23 years old, and yet, she had passed through 58 seasons and was beginning her 59th.

The single-mindedness of her desire for perfection in her craft, had again caused her to ignore her feelings. She was again living only for honor, duty, clan, and house.

It helped that neither Elder Tarsk nor Elder Oulan had approached her in all this time. She did not have to think on those things that had caused her concentration to slip. She could again ignore all things except her passion for battle and her anger and rage at the murder of her mother and father and the kidnapping of her brother.

And Sordia had left her alone too. She had stopped pestering Sinead, once she had spoken to Dargon MacPherson and heard that he was not truly worried about the young warrior.

'She will mellow' he had advised Sordia. 'She has always been intense, and who could blame her, watching her family being destroyed before her, and not being able to do a thing about it."

Sordia was all too aware of how those things effected Sinead. Instead of crying, the five-year-old girl had taken to picking up a practice sword and swinging. Sordia remembered in the years following the murders, when Sinead was new to her family's household, countless times waking in the middle of the night to find Sinead in the practice field of the clan, hacking away at a target silently with a deadly look of resolve on her face.

The young shaman knew that Sinead had been dreaming before these nightly lessons, because of the muffled moans and cries that the younger girl had made, but as soon as Sinead woke from her nightmare, unlike any other child Sordia knew, there was no crying for an adult to comfort her, no request to join an elder child in bed to keep the monsters at bay. There was only the soft padded footsteps, and the thwap, thwap, thwap of the practice sword finding its mark, until Sinead was to exhausted to swing.

Yes, Sordia knew well, what drove Sinead. She just hoped that her younger sister, for she truly thought of her as her sister, was able to keep from cracking under the pressure she put on herself.

She had accepted that Dargon MacPherson knew his pupil, and knew what she could and could not take, and left it at that.

Sinead, smiled as she wrung her hair out and gathered her her armor away from the hound that had become the closest thing the warrior had to a friend. She had almost perfected this skill, and she was not far from perfecting many others she had set out before herself. Once dressed Sinead sank softly to the sand absently stoking the fur of the powerful beast beside her, her mind lost in the ever continuously pounding of the surf.

Part 7

Sinead's shoulders burned and her neck ached, but she felt wonderfully alive and focused. Everything in her stroke screamed perfection. There was no hesitation in muscle reaction, her entire body flowed in perfect rhythm with the water around her. She was done.

And yet, the warrior swam on. Stroke after perfect stroke with nothing left to learn, but her own mind.

This is what Dargon MacPherson wanted the warrior to find, a way to examine herself, a place she felt safe enough to feel things that she otherwise pushed to the back of her mind.

No, there was nothing left that the water could teach her body, but there was plenty that the water will continue to teach her mind.