Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Up. And here…good. Very good.” Detraeus sat crouched by his daughter, adjusting her grip, elbow, and the point of her aim as he spoke to her, a small bow — fashioned specifically for a young handler — strung in her arms.

It was the spring of their seventh year, shoots of new green grass springing up out of the melting snow of a long winter. The wind between the mountains was still crisp and chilly, holding on to the remnants of the cold season, and Ataya shivered as his eyes wandered. He wanted to be inside still. Curled up on his bed with a book and practicing his reading or going over spellwork. Scribbling his letters. Helping Mother cook. Spending time with the new colts. Anything but this.

Detraeus had worked on Araceli long and hard, pushing insistently over the years — unbeknownst to Ataya — from when they were as young as three, after the incident with the invaders in their home, trying to convince her to let him begin training them. Weapons. Hand to hand combat. Self-defenses and offensive maneuvers of all varieties they could manage. The sooner, he argued, the better. Finally, a year and a half ago, Araceli had caved — though she emphasized her strict concerns and insisted he be, of course, intensely careful. So, weapon training had begun.

Ataya hated it. Had hated it. Would always hate it, so far as he could tell.

As with most physical things, he had immediately lagged behind his sister, a point which became ever more grossly obvious the longer things went on. Though neither of them were ‘good’ — being barely over seven years of age, still unpracticed overall, and undeveloped physically — he in particular felt especially ill suited. His grip was either too stiff or too loose. Always too weak. His arms grew tired and sore after but a few attempts at anything. His body as a whole seemed to exhaust itself near immediately after the start of any physically straining endeavor. He bruised himself often — through both clumsiness and/or lack of attentiveness to the act at hand — and nothing he did seemed to be ‘right.’

His vision, at least, was good.

That might have been, in fact, his only physical characteristic in which he seemed to have a natural advantage over anything. Whenever Detraeus took them out to walk and scout, though Ataya wore out quickly, he could see with great detail into the distance and pick up on finer points of the surroundings that his sister often as not seemed to miss. His only redeeming feature paled in comparison to his pitfalls.

Sighing to himself, he prodded at the dulled tip of the ‘arrow’ he was to be practicing with. As young as they were, his father wasn’t yet giving them properly sharpened weapons, but he wanted, just the same, to give them a balanced range of opportunities to practice with what physical instruments they could handle. ‘Handle’ being a very loose term in particular when it came to Ata, since all he seemed to do was fumble, drop, break, trip over, and otherwise improperly execute his every attempt to manipulate the weapon appropriately.

“Ataya.”

Ataya’s head snapped over and up, the dulled arrow slipping from his fingers in his startlement and clicking against the pebbles beneath his feet as he looked up to his father. Frowning, he crouched back down and picked it up. “Yes, father?” he said, his gaze moving over to his sister in spite of himself.

Detraeus held out the small bow that they had been passing between them. “Come. Try again.”

“Do I have t—?”

“Yes.”

Ataya bit his lip, gnawing at it irritably as his father’s hand at his back guided him along, forward to the shooting point in front of their temporary target. A good ten paces closer up than his sister, since he’d been doing so abysmally — that is, since he had yet to come close to hitting anything — that his father had seen fit to attempt make things ‘easier’ on him.

Ataya found it futile, and humiliating to boot.

“Nock it,” Detraeus commanded.

Ataya looked down to his arrow, shifted the bow in his grip and brought the back of the arrow to the string awkwardly, trying not to break any feathers this time.

“Faster.”

Ataya frowned. “I’m trying.”

“You’re not.”

“I am—”

“Relax your shoulders.”

“How am I supposed to move quickly if I’m relaxed?” Ataya quipped. “I’m relaxed when I’m not moving—”

“You will never move both quickly and accurately if your body is stiff.”

“I’ll never move quickly and accurately ever if this is all I learn.”

“You won’t,” Detraeus agreed, “if you do not practice, and cooperate.”

“I want to practice other things,” Ataya muttered, but he cooperated, mostly, as his father reached out, adjusting his arm, shoulders, chin, hips, and hand. Shoulders again. Arm again. Elbow—

“Ataya…”

“Yes, father.”

“I cannot correct your posture if you move again immediately after I correct you.”

“…so, I’m supposed to be quick, and accurate, and relaxed, and not move…?”

“Fire.”

Ataya pulled back on the arrow, wincing at the soreness in his shoulder and squinting as he tried to aim. Before he meant to fire, though, the bowstring shifted, rolling sidelong and pinching a portion of his finger between the string and butt of the arrow. He yipped, releasing his grip immediately and letting the arrow whizz out in some haphazard direction.

“Ataya—”

“It bit me—”

“Ata,” Detraeus clipped, and Ataya flushed, frowning as he glanced up to his father and nursed his pinched finger.

“Can I go in n—”

“No.”

Ataya’s shoulders sank. “I hate this.”

“You do not—”

“I do hate it. I’m terrible at it. It hurts. I’m sore, and tired, and cold—”

“We’ve only just begun.”

“I want to stop.”

“You will never get stronger if you always stop, Ataya—”

“What if I don’t want to be strong? I want—”

“You will be both,” Detraeus interrupted. “You will be strong, and you will be powerful with your magic. But this is what I will teach you, and you will learn it as I tell you to learn it. You cannot rely on magic alone, and you will not, do you understand? Your mother’s blood will give you magic when you come of age. Mine will give you balance.”

Ataya eyed the ground at his feet, counting small black dots as they crawled along in a row.

“Ataya.”

One. Two. Three. He moved a toe out, scraping a lined across them to crush several and add chaos to their insectile lives, the corner of his lip edging up a half fraction as they scattered.

“Ata.”

He looked up.

“Do you understand?”

“I comprehend.”

Detraeus frowned and caught his son’s hand, tugging him along towards his sister. “Stand, and watch. Perhaps you will learn more that way. Akara…” Detraeus held out the bow. “Come, we are going to teach your brother how to shoot.”

Ataya glanced back towards where the trail of insects had been and wondered, passively, if they were even capable of feeling distress, pain, or anger. Perhaps it would be nice after all, to be that stupid. Ignorant of one’s own uselessness.

She hit it. Of course she hit it.

Ataya swallowed down the sting in his throat, nudged aside the twist in his gut, and reminded himself that she was not only his sister, but his twin; she was part of him. Another half of him. It was only logical that she succeeded where he failed and made up for his inadequacies. As two pieces to one whole, they would inevitably balance each other out. He sent her a half smile. A tired, ‘Good job…’ since his mood was still worn down.

Beside him, Detraeus beamed, flushed and proud.

“Good. Very good,” he said, and he knelt at Akara’s side as he spoke. Part of him wanted to push for more, to keep her on her roll and continue the practice. But he could see up close that she, too, was getting tired, and when he took her fingers in his, thumbing over the callouses, some of his previous rigidity eased out. Difficult as Ataya was, it would do him no good to push Akara beyond her limits also. She, at least, showed promise, even at this age, and he wanted to reward her efforts, not punish them. “It…has been a long morning,” he conceded. “Your bodies are small still and could use the break. Come, let us be inside for a time, mm? Ataya,” he said as he stood and took the bow up from Akara.

Ata glanced over.

“Gather the arrows and set them up on the storage wall in the stables for tomorrow.” When Ataya turned to do as instructed, Detraeus stopped him. “Ata.” A pause ensued, wherein Ataya looked back at him, and Detraeus tilted his head, tail flicking as he waited.

Ataya pursed his lips. “Yes, father,” he said at length.

“Good.”

As his father walked off, evidently satisfied, Ataya kicked at a pebble — and promptly winced when it was heavier than he anticipated and hurt his toe. After biting back frustrated language, he glanced to his sister. “That was a good shot.”

‘Everyone knows what clan you’re going to pick,’ Ataya thought, but he kept it to himself.

It wasn’t bad; it made things simple, even, to be so sure of oneself, he supposed, and his sister had always shown an affinity for the water. The ocean. Their uncle’s element. Not to mention, she showed some interest in healing as well. Lithian would surely be thrilled to hear it when the time came, and Akara would have two eager tutors on hand immediately: their father, and Uncle Lithian.

That is, assuming she chose the bow as her second.

Ataya wasn’t as certain there as he was that she would opt for peisio. Akara showed promise with blades as well as the bow — or, certainly far more promise than he showed, though that wasn’t a great measure of anything — and hand to hand combat, to the limited extent that their father had been giving them lessons there. And magic, for that matter. He frowned as he thought on it and dampened the resurgence of frustration. Her being competent at a number of things didn’t make him completely incompetent, and just because Father didn’t value it as much, didn’t mean that magic wasn’t valuable. He would excell there.

He had to.

“I’ve thought,” he said. “But I’ve not chosen yet. I want to wait until I’ve practiced all the types through tome magic, to see which favors me…there’s got to be something I’m good at.”

Ataya eyed his sister. He didn’t believe that for an instant. He had been trying. Despite his father’s accusations, he really had tried, at least at the beginning, to do as well as he could, and he still failed horribly. It didn’t help that he hated it, but he knew he also wasn’t good at it, and would never be good at it, even if he ‘really tried hard.’ He was clumsy, and weak, and all around ill-suited for physically straining activities. Because his father and sister adapted to such things naturally, they didn’t understand.

But it didn’t matter.

He did have talents in other areas, which conveniently lay where his interests were to begin with, and he would focus his attentions there. One day, perhaps even Father would be impressed.