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Evelyn wished she had brought a pen and paper. She wished she could have written it all down. She had noted the way he spoke about the swords, so nicely. So sweetly. Maybe swords weren’t so bad.

He mentioned enchanting…maybe she needed to talk to Adeline about learning some more enchanting. She needed something to fill her hours…she needed to not be thinking too much. Just focus on her lessons.

"...And that will only come with experience. Lots of it."

…that made her want to hug him again. She wasn’t completely sure why either.

Finally, the time had come to actually start Evelyn's training off proper. He smiled with a reassuring warmness usually seen on the High Priestess, the tone of his voice wrapping things up and moving them on. "Well, I hope that this brief introduction has been informative... again, don't worry if you can't remember much. Everything you need to know, you'll learn in time. Now..."

He knelt gracefully down and looked over the staves on the ground for some time, silently weighing them up. Finally, he picked up two short, slender sticks, stood back up with them, and held one out for Evelyn to take. "Here you are - your first practise staff. This one is a bit shorter than the standard short-staff, so you shouldn't have much trouble getting used to it. It's not unwieldy."

The staff was in fact more than a foot shorter than Evelyn. That meant it had nothing like the kind of reach the staffs he and Gloria had been using had, but it was light, and there was no risk of it overbalancing the beginner. Jessie must've been planning to practise close-up manoeuvres before attempting anything more difficult. "Now, get used to how it feels in your hands," he said, "And then watch me."

"The first thing I'm going to show you is the basic staff grip. Basic. You can attack with this, you can defend with this... it can't get any simpler."

Jessie had chosen a staff roughly the same size, though slightly longer as there wasn't an exact duplicate in the pile. Making sure Evelyn paid close attention, he placed his left gloved hand around a foot from the butt of the pole, and then his right around a foot and a half above that. "This is called quarterstaff. It's hard to say whether the staff was named after the grip or the grip was named after the staff, but the point is - if you can see it - that the distance between your hands is roughly a quarter of the length of the whole staff."

Evelyn held the staff awkwardly, not sure how to move. Her hands were right in the middle, and she had it pulled close to her chest. She was still trying to absorb all the information Jessie had thrown at her, and now, with the staff in her hands, she realized how little she knew. She was going to look like an idiot. At least with magic, she had a background. Weapons…you might as well have told her to sprout wings. Well, seeing as she could magick them on, the author probably needs a better metaphor.

Gilroy was watching his friend with great concern. You can do it, Evie. Come on.

Evelyn slowly moved her hands further away from one another, but kept the pole as close to her body as possible, almost touching. Her knees were shaking, her breathing was near non-existent, and her hands still seemed like they were too close together.

[[THIS IS MY 100TH POST THIS TIME AROUND. WOOHOO!!!!]]

“Of course you can! You’ll love it,” she replied cheerily to his inquiry.

Evelyn stared at the boy as he apparently pondered her question about his own family. She didn’t know that it would cause him to think like that. But his response…now, that hurt her for him.

“You don’t remember your parents? At all? Oh, that’s awful! They’re probably still missing you! They might think you’re dead! Oh, Xei, we simply must, must, must find them! Can you imagine? Going who knows how many years thinking that your dear, dear son is dead or worse?”

Gloria couldn't hear what she was saying from her position further back, but she could see that Evelyn had gone from just a little bit rigid to practically ready to burst into tears. But rather than being annoyed, she suddenly felt a little bit sorry for her. Gloria wasn't the one who had to have people following her around because her family didn't think she was capable of taking care of herself. Damn, if her confidence was low it was a wonder she'd even come out here in the first place.

Jessie's heart literally ached for her. And he couldn't help but hate whoever had driven this nonsense into her head in the first place. He couldn't seem to help for a lot of things - in the dimming afternoon light, the gentle glistering of her snowy hair was utterly apparent to him, and beneath it, her alabaster skin looked soft and perfect. From the sea of milky peach that was the apple of her cheek, to her neck, and yes, even lower, to the full curves of her young breasts, unclothed beneath the loose material of his shirt. This close to her, it fell away from her chest as if offering them up to him.

And then there were her lips, the mouth, that sensuous gateway, which had gotten her into more trouble than she had possibly bargained for - or gotten her out of it, depending on how you look at it. And before anyone could tell what was about to happen, he brought his hands up and ran them over her bare shoulders, up the length of her neck, to lift up her head as he kissed her.

Gloria just stared in shock, her mouth quite possibly hanging open, as the kiss lingered on, and then parted.

Well, her internal monologue went - though if it has a real voice, it would've sounded utterly dumbfounded. That's one way to loosen a girl up.

Her teacher put his hand back under her chin, lifted it up, and told her the truth. "You are not a useless little girl," he said. "Now - come over here. We aren't finished yet."

He led her just a few yards out to create some space around them, scooping up her discarded weapon as they went. Pressing the pole into her hands, he stood behind her this time, hands wrapped again around hers - guiding them. But this time, his body was directly behind hers; so very close. She could feel him moving - no, they would move together. "Gloria," he commanded. The girl jumped and came forward, picking up his staff and moving into position.

As she was preparing herself, Jessie gently whispered instructions into his student's ear. "Keep your back straight," he said, lips brushing against her lobe, incidentally more than anything. "I will lead you. You will see - this is just like a dance."

And it was. Gloria stepped forward on her right leg - Jessie led Evelyn back on her left. Gloria brought her staff around in an arc from her left - Jessie and Evelyn met it with an arc from theirs. And so it went on. Then, the attack - the right side of his hip pressed into Evelyn's, and smoothly, definitely, they came forward just as she had, mirroring her movements together, just as she mirrored theirs. It passed very slowly, like a waltz...

The simple, closed back-and-forth movement gradually worked into open circling. As they went, Jessie occassionally guided her:

"Slip your hands up and down the staff. Your enemy will perceive a false sense of distance."

"Your bottom hand is your lever. Use it to manoeuvre the staff with precision."

But on the whole, he remained silent, allowing her to get used to how it felt without too much pressure or instruction. After what must've been quite some time, because the light had dimmed considerably, he gradually released her, and then she was on her own, quietly circling with Gloria, no power behind either of their swings - but it was getting the movements right that mattered.

Jessie watched them for a short time, but the light really was fading fast - not that it mattered to him, but it would to the humans. Down the beach, quite a few had already packed up and gone inside. Gloria didn't know how to feel. As she went through the movements with Evelyn on the outside, she had plenty of time to think - which led her emotions to start fighting a fiercer battle on the inside. She was struggling with the kind of emotions the Order had been helping her to leave behind: jealousy; resentment; deep, burning, irrationally intense hatred. Part of her wanted to give in, disarm the snivelling little rich girl and beat her into the ground, inflicting as much pain on her as her kind had done to Gloria. The more stable part, however, was stronger - the part of her she credited solely to Jessie's influence. Violence was not the mature response. It was not the rational response. She was more disciplined than that now.

As if there wasn't enough in the mix, Cressa's words from earlier in the day chased her thoughts back and forth. The words that had made her feel like such a nuisance, a hanger-on... an outsider to their friendship. But it wasn't true, was it? Jessie had come back to her, while she sat at the table with Atlae; they'd gone to do yoga together in one of the empty practise rooms, as friends. He'd made her feel like she belonged again. She did belong with him.

How could he want her, this spoiled little princess who cried over broken fingernails and mean words, when he had Gloria and Cressa, two strong, mature women who complemented him perfectly? Why didn't this make Cressa as angry as it made her?

Was there something she understood that Gloria didn't...?

"I think we're going to have to call it a day," their teacher finally announced. Gloria hadn't even noticed how dark it had become. She could've continued the drills even in pitch blackness, she'd practised so tirelessly over the years. "We've made excellent progress. Well done, everyone."

At Jessie’s words, she stopped, and dropped her arms, and the pole dropped out of her hands likewise. She was exhausted now and her muscles were screaming at her…

She walked forward on unsure footing until she reached Gloria. She hugged her and whispered into her ear, “I’m sorry that you had to work with me today. I know I’m not the fastest learner. But thank you so, so, so much. You’re such a wonderful, nice person.”

At that, Evelyn pulled back and walked to Jessie, she curtsied without glancing at his face. “Thank you very, very much. I hope that I wasn’t too much trouble.” She rose from her curtsy and turned and grabbed the pole and put it back over in the pile where Jessie had taken it out of.

In an instant, Gilroy was standing next to her, looking like he was about to speak on around ten different subjects at once, but a glance from Evelyn quieted him. It wasn’t the time, and she wasn’t in the mood.


[[I WILL RESPOND TO YOU SOON, MAB. PROMISE.]]