Chapter 14: Aggravated Training

After a couple of hours, Wolf has been laying on the couch for a while, reading a book that he found on a shelf in the room silently, waiting for any sign of Zena.  Suddenly, he hears strange yelling and grunting- type sounds coming from behind the house.  He gets up slowly and wanders out to the arena behind the house.  There, to his surprise, is Zena.  He is quite impressed, as he hadn’t seen or heard her leave the house. 

                Zena looks like she’s been out there for a while.  Her forehead shines with sweat, and her face is a shade darker than her already darkened complexion from a layer of dust that chose to reside there during hours of swirling around the assassin’s feet.  She wears a pair of army green cargo pants, with a black muscle shirt, and a pair of tennis shoes.  Wolf tries to hide his surprise, having not known that she even owned a pair of shoes other than her stiletto heels that she wore all the time.  Her hair had previously been pulled back into a tight pony tail, but now it is loosened from vigorous activity and bouncing on the back of her neck as she moved, coming to rest between her shoulder blades only when she paused in a ready or ending stance. Her dark eyes are laced with something " fury, or persistence, or maybe even a hint of sadness.  From where Wolf is sitting, he can see her motions clearly, and every time she moves, he can see the muscles contract and expand in response. 

                Wolf walks silently through the gate and hoisted himself up on the edge of the fence into a sitting position to watch his mentor.  Standing in a ready position once again, she holds her blade out towards the invisible opponent.  He jumps when she suddenly leaps into the air and lunges at her imaginary enemy. 

                Zena battles her own fears, creating a dance of death within the confines of the dusty tendrils that rise up around her.  She stops suddenly and turns to look at him.

                “Are you ready?” Zena asks as she lets out her hair, tips her head forward and shakes it out, combs through it with her fingers, and then rakes it back up into a messy ponytail.

                “I-I’m not sure” Wolf replies uncertainly, wondering if it’s smart to be fighting with someone with as much anger radiating from them as she has.

                “well you’d better get ready, cuz Jaenes isn’t expecting us to be standing around.  He asked me to mentor you.  If I’m going to get you to be any excuse for an assassin, we have got to train hard,” she scoffed, and seemed to harden to stone as she did so.  Wolf looks at her credulously, pauses, and then goes to gather up his suit. When he comes back, he looks nervous, but, not wanting to disappoint either Zena or Jaenes, he enters the ring.  He starts planning what his grave will look like and what his last will and testament will say when he sees the look of anguish on her face.  She lunges towards him with a silver blade, and he ducks out of the way, landing painfully on his a*s.  He yelps and scrambles back up, darting away from the blade flitting about with little reason or rhyme to his actions before realizing that Zena is unmoving. Zena stands still and acts like a statue.  Wolf stops darting around like a startled butterfly, and steps close to her, watching the wind silently blowing her bangs across her forehead.  Her eyes looked like glass, unmoving and bright. 

                “Ha!” she shouts as she spins around and faces him.  A thin line of blood appears on his right arm close to his shoulder.  He stares at the thin line and his eyes grow large as he watches the blood start to breach the edges of the laceration.  He whips his head up and runs at Zena, stopping short when the cold edge of the blade tip touches his throat like an addition to her outstretched arm. 

                Zena walks in close to him, her blade unmoving, and whispers in his ear, “Good work today, use that vigor every day and we might actually get somewhere.”

                She stalks away and goes up to the house, leaving dusty footprints behind her as she goes.  Wolf stands confused for a second and then sprints after her.

Reviews

[Meat of Dog]

It's interesting to see Zena's change of attire. She seems like one of those women that are strong and independent, while still feminine. I didn't previously imagine that she had such a rough and tumble outfit lying around for training. I'm hoping soon that a little exposition for Wolf will appear as well. Where did he come from, and why? How did he meet Jaenes? Anyways, another good bonding moment for the two of them (even if she was upset during it).

other suggestions:
-"ready, cuz Jaenes isn’t..." because. Cuz is slang, so it works in dialog, but it sounds out of character for her to say, really.

-"well you’d better" Capitalize 'well'

[Thomas Sawyer]

Good chapter here.

[Coyote Poetry]

A very good chapter. Good to good more people involved in the story. The training is interesting. Need to add some tests of a sort. A excellent chapter.
Coyote