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Her hands were clenched on the hilt of her sword, her knuckles white in the strain. Sweat stung her eyes; she blinked it away and centered herself on the target ahead of her, a silhouette cut from heavy canvas, the edges frayed from the continual barrage. She breathed in slowly, firming her stance, before she struck.
The sword bit in with a sharp thwack, the vibration humming up her arms. It wasn't perfect. It never was.
"Not bad, Birdie." One of the trainees—Miles—called out from behind her, grinning. "I think you almost scared it that time."
Florence shot him a glare over her shoulder, breathless but smiling faintly. "You want to come show me how it's done, then?"
Miles raised his hands as if in surrender. "Nah, I like my limbs attached. Besides, I'm just here to admire the progress."
Improvement was the word for it, wasn't it? Long enough now that this could probably be considered Florence's normal, days passed when the ache in her muscles didn't register anymore. She'd long since stopped flinching at the sound of hollered voices or jolting boots on the practice grounds. She still wasn't the best—there always seemed to be someone out there who was faster and harder and sharper—but Florence got better with time.
More than that, she had them—her group: Miles, Ren, the others. Trainees who weren't just faces any longer. They'd become something like allies, maybe even friends. It made the endless drills bearable. It made the cold halls of WCKD seem a little less empty.
She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, looking toward the far end of the arena where the floodlights buzzed softly overhead. Florence groaned as her neck twisted—she must've pulled it. They had been doing a lot of strenuous activity, she supposed. A few months ago, and she should've laughed in your face if you had told her she would be skilled in combat and fighting.
"Back to work!" The voice reverberated out of the loudspeakers.
Florence turned around, biting off a sigh as she readied herself to reach the target again. All this was highly exhausting but grew so much more appealing than just sitting around at your desk drawing for the day. Not that she didn't miss it—after all, often longing for simplicity and repetition.
It might have started with Ren, a suggestion that he'd make, so offhand it could have been during one lunch break, when they'd sprawled across the benches in the mess hall.
"You ever draw anymore?" he'd asked, once tossing a piece of bread at Miles, who was right in the middle of telling this ridiculous story.
Florence had blinked, taken aback. She'd been halfway through a mouthful, the question hauling her out of the general hum of conversation. "What?"
Ren shrugged, grinning like it was nothing. "You're always doodling during meetings. Thought maybe you'd want to do something real with it."
It should've stopped there—just another one of Ren's casual, throwaway comments—but it hadn't. By the end of the week, Miles and the others had pooled together whatever scraps of allowance they could spare and handed her a bundle of supplies: a handful of pencils, a box of paints, and a couple of cheap canvases that looked like they'd been pilfered from a storeroom.
