The Winds of the Past [Rune Factory 4]

Chapter 12

The next morning, I was the first to awaken. I quietly stoked the fire, so as to avoid disturbing Dylas and Avani as they slept. They had changed position in their sleep but remained curled up together, Dylas on his back with one arm wrapped around Avani, who slept with her head on his chest and her arm flung across his stomach. They looked so harmonious in their sleep, I admit I felt a pang of envy.

Shaking off potentially dangerous lines of thought, I decided to go catch some fish for breakfast. I dressed silently in the dim light, then headed to the lake, chopping down a slender sapling along the way and shaping it with my knife to use for spear fishing—an activity I had greatly enjoyed in the days before I was bound as a Guardian. I was out of practice, but fish were plentiful in the spring, so it wasn't long before I had a decent quantity of fish to take back to camp.

As I fished, I thought to myself about the people I'd grown up with—my family, my friends... and Maria. I wondered for the thousandth time since reviving how they'd lived out the remainder of their lives... if they'd been happy, and if they had remembered me long after I was gone. Displaced as I was in time, I occasionally felt a peculiar loneliness—the loneliness of one who is in a place and time but not of that place and time. I wondered if that was part of what drew us former Guardians together—that unique experience of not truly belonging anywhere. And despite being an Earthmate herself, Avani had befriended us all.

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When I returned, Dylas and Avani were both awake and just finishing dressing. I greeted them and started to clean the fish, joined a minute later by Dylas, who seemed keenly interested in learning about spear fishing. I explained the theory to him as we worked, and I promised to teach him how some time. Meanwhile, Avani embarked on her morning exercise routine, having first released Baldur from his guard duty. I watched in fascination as she moved through a number of lunges, kicks, stretches, gymnastics, and contortions, ending in the same black flip landing in a crouch as the day before.

I noticed that Dylas likewise had stopped working and was watching her, completely engrossed. When she had finished and strolled over to splash her face with water, he said in a low aside to me, "I could watch her all day and never get tired of the sight. I don't know how she does it. Me, I can barely touch my toes."

"I wonder just how flexible she is? Have you ever asked her to show you?" I asked curiously.

"Uh... no. No, I haven't," he replied, blushing furiously.

"Hey, Avani?" I called to her as she dried her face. She looked up at me questioningly, and I continued. "Just wondering—exactly how flexible are you, anyway? I mean, that's some pretty amazing movement you have going on there, but I wondered if that was reaching your limit, or if you can flex even more than that?"

"Oh, sure," she said with a grin. "Want me to show you?"

"Sure, why not? I'm curious, at least, and I assume Dylas wouldn't object," I replied, grinning back at her.

She went back to the rock she'd adopted as her workout floor, and lay on her belly. She then raised her torso, bending her head backwards over her spine. At the same time, she lifted her legs up, bending them at the knee. She continued curling herself up tighter and tighter until finally her heels rested on her shoulders. Next she unfolded herself and stood up, then bent backwards farther and farther until she was doubled over backwards and grasping her ankles, the back of her head  behind her knees. Then she went into a handstand, and holding her torso parallel to the ground, she slowly swung her legs back over her head until their entire length was bent back over her head, her backside almost resting on the back of her head. Next she slowly lifted first one leg, then the other, straightening them out so that they pointed towards the sky in a traditional handstand, then lowered them back down in opposite directions into side splits, continuing until her legs were parallel to the ground  and then even farther. Then she again raised her legs and lowered them into front and back splits. Finally she lowered her legs until both feet were flat on the ground, her back arched, and she slowly straightened up until she was standing. Her face was flushed and she was breathing heavily, but she grinned and said, "Ahh, that felt great! I don't often stretch that deeply—it was good to push it a little bit."