Chapter 38 - Practice makes man perfect
Dia woke to the sound of movement in the cave. She rubbed her eyes and saw Dhira already dressed, ready to leave. She didn't react much. He had been waking early every day to go push at the door, today would be the same. She was about to close her eyes again when she looked at his face properly. Something was different. The haze that had lived behind his eyes for so long was gone. There was clarity there, the specific kind that comes not from rest but from having figured something out.
She watched him move toward the cave entrance. He stopped near the wall and turned and looked at the patched wooden mace sitting in the corner. He picked it up. Dia frowned. She thought he might be planning to use it on the door. "Where are you going with that?"
"Training," he said.
She stared at his back as he walked out. Training. She almost said something, decided against it, and fell back onto the ground. When did someone like you need training, she thought to herself. Then she closed her eyes.
Outside the sun hadn't risen yet. The tall grass moved in the heavy wind capable of up-rooting the sturdiest tree. Which meant nothing to Dhira, who walked through it the way most people walk through a light breeze. He stopped in the middle of the grass field and stood for a moment doing nothing. Then he set the mace on the ground and began to stretch.
One hand behind his neck, the other at his waist. He twisted slowly. Leaned back. The sound of joints releasing cracked through the air each time he moved, quiet pops of tension being returned to where it belonged. He pulled one hand across with the other, twisted left, twisted right, rolled his shoulders once. Then he picked up the mace.
The first swings were slow. A little uncoordinated. The wooden mace didn't have the balance of a real one and his body hadn't done this in years, not properly, not with intention. The movements came back the way old things come back, not all at once but in pieces, muscle remembering what the mind had stored imperfectly. Left to right in a wide arc. Right to left. Top to bottom slam. The sequence in all directions. He kept going.
With time the swings found their rhythm. Then their speed. Then something beyond speed, a quality that had no simple name, where the weapon and the body stopped being two things and became one continuous motion. The wind around him began to respond. Not dramatically at first. Just a shift, a turning of air following the arcs he was drawing. Then more. The grass flattened outward from where he stood. The wind that had been moving across the field began moving around him instead.
Inside the cave Dia was no longer asleep. The sound had changed outside, deeper and more consistent than wind should be. She pulled a cloth over her head. The sound didn't lessen. Then something small and terrified landed on her face and she jerked upright in genuine alarm. The little monkey sat on her chest looking at her with the wide eyes of an animal that has decided indoors is the only rational option. She looked past him at the cave entrance. The wind outside sounded wrong.
She started to get up. The monkey grabbed her hand and shook his head firmly. Don't. She patted his head, stood anyway, and moved toward the entrance. He followed, still terrified, apparently having decided that being near her was marginally better than being alone.
When she stepped out of the cave she stopped completely.
A tornado stood in the grass field a short distance away. Not a large one by the standards of natural disasters, but large enough that the grass for fifty yards in every direction was flat against the ground and the air itself was moving in a visible spiral. At its center, barely visible through the rotation, a figure was swinging a wooden mace.
"What the hell," she said.
She was about to move toward it when the little monkey beside her left the ground. The pull of the tornado's edge caught him and lifted him cleanly off his feet. Dia grabbed him but the force was already taking her too, her footing going, her clothes snapping violently. She shouted Dhira's name. The wind swallowed it. She shouted again, louder, pulling the monkey against her chest with both arms as her feet left the ground entirely.
Dhira heard it on the third shout.
He stopped mid-swing. The tornado began to collapse immediately, the air losing its shape without the motion to sustain it. He saw her in the air and crossed the distance in one jump, caught her around the waist with one arm and landed hard away from the dissipating funnel. The impact was heavy. The ground cracked under his feet.
He steadied himself and looked at her. "Are you—"
She vomited on him.
He went completely still. He hadn't seen that coming. He stood there for a moment with his arms slightly out and his expression blank. He was about to say something when something small hit him in the shin, then hit him again, then started biting. The little monkey had landed during the catch, discovered he was unhurt, and immediately determined that Dhira was responsible for everything that had just happened and required consequences. Dhira, distracted by the biting, loosened his grip on Dia, who dropped the short remaining distance to the ground and hit it with an audible complaint.
Dhira grabbed the monkey with his free hand. The monkey continued throwing punches from inside the grip, landing none of them with any effect, achieving nothing except expressing a very clear opinion. Dhira looked at it with genuine annoyance, tossed it gently in Dia's direction, and turned back to Dia on the ground just as she vomited again.
He lowered his outstretched hand. "Are you alright?"
"I want to be alright," she said. Then vomited again. "What were you doing?"
He looked back at the last wisps of the dissipating tornado. "Basic swings."
She looked up at him. "Basic swings." She repeated it the way people repeat things that don't make sense to them. "Basic swings that generate a hurricane." She stared at him. "Your basic swings almost killed me and that monkey."
The monkey, having regrouped, returned to Dhira's leg and resumed biting. Dhira kicked it lightly sideways toward Dia. She caught it and held it back. "How dare you kick him. Apologize."
Dhira looked at her. "What did you just—"
"Apologize to this monkey. Look how scared he is."
Dhira looked at the monkey, who was still attempting to push past Dia's arms with the energy of an animal that had a very specific agenda. He stared at it for a moment. Then he sighed, lowered his head slightly. "Sorry."
Dia nodded. "Good." She stood, patted the monkey's head, and started walking back toward the cave. Dhira fell into step behind her. She stopped. "Why are you following me. Don't you have a door to open."
"I'm hungry," he said.
She turned at the word bath and finally registered the state of his chest. Her expression shifted. "I'll have food ready," she said, and walked faster.