The Story of Two

Chapter 11

Jenny, Alyss, and George arrived shortly after. As she had promised, Jenny was carrying a batch of pies wrapped in a red cloth. She laid them carefully on the ground under the apple tree as the others gathered round. Even Alyss, usually poised and dignified, was obviously anxious to get her hands on the pies.
     "Come on," George said. "I'm starving,"
Jenny shook her head. "We should wait for Horace," she said looking around for him.
     "I agree," Ashlyn stated. "He would be mad we started without him and I don't feel like stopping a fight today.
     "Oh come on," George pleaded. "I've been slaving over a hot petition to the Baron all morning!"
     Alyss rolled her eyes to the heavens. "Perhaps we should start," she said. "Otherwise he'll begin a legal argument and we'll be here all day. We can always put some aside from Horace."
     Ashlyn was about to argue but they had already started serving the dish. She decided she would wait for Horace to come. She knew his temper would get them in trouble. Jenny had served two pies for everyone and set aside two for Horace.
"That'll do for starters," she said. The others eagerly digger in to their pie, while Ashlyn waited for Horace to join them. She blocked out the conversation, which mostly consisted of praises for Jenny's cooking, as she watched for Horace.
They were laughing and, of course, Horace chose that exact moment to arrive. Ashlyn could practically feel the anger rolling off him. Ashlyn noticed he looked different. He seemed tired and worn out, and he had quite a few bruises. Ashlyn brushed it off as just some side effects of Battleschool.
Ashlyn muttered a curse under breath. She opened her mouth to explain, but before she could get a word out he spoke.
"Well, this is very nice, isn't it," Horace said bitterly. Everyone turned to him, laughter dying off their faces. Jenny was the first to recover.
"Horace! You're here at last!" she exclaimed. She started walking towards him, but is cold glare stopped her.
"I'm a few minutes late and suddenly I'm here at last. And just too late because you've already ate all the pies."
Which wasn't fair to Jenny. Like most cooks, when she cooked a meal, she wasn't interested in eating it. She only wanted to watch people enjoy her cooking. She actually had not had any pies.
"No, no," she said quickly. "Look, there are still some left."
But Horace's anger prevented him from thinking before he acted or spoke. "Well," he said, in a voice heavy with sarcasm, "maybe I ought to come back later and give you time to finish it as well."
"Horace," Ashlyn said in a dangerous, warning tone. "We left you some, if you actually bothered to listen, you would have known."
George, of course, stepped forward trying to bring peace to the fight that was about to break out.
"You should mind how you talk to a warrior," Horace spat.
"You are not a warrior," Will said sourly. "We are all still apprentices."
Jenny made a gesture to let it go. She could see her plans of a peaceful reunion were now falling into disarray.
Ashlyn closed her eyes and took a few breaths to calm herself. Once she has calmed herself she opened her eyes to see the angry glare of Horace directed at Will.
"Oh, I see the apprentice spies are with us," Horace said tauntingly. "Is Halt teaching you to slink around and spy on everything."
Ashlyn watched as Horace stepped towards Will. Immediately, Ashlyn tensed up, ready to intervene.
They both started throwing insults at each other. When George tried to stop them, Horace pushed him and struck Ashlyn's last nerve.
"Okay, Horace, I get your angry. Why? I have no idea, but if it makes you feel better, I still haven't eaten anything today and I waited for you. The others were hungry and wanted to start. We came here to have a peaceful picnic, not fight. Jenny was nice enough to invite all of us here, so the least you can do is let it go and make an effort to be nice to everyone," Ashlyn said, her voice slowly raising to a yell.
"And what if I don't. You're too much of a wimp to punch me." Horace retorted. "It still puzzles me how they let a girl like you be a Ranger."
"They what explains the other times I've punched you," she spat.
"That was before I was a warrior. You should treat me with respect," Horace replied. "Beside, I still am wondering why they let a girl like you to be a Ranger."
Ashlyn didn't respond. She looked down at her feet, her fists and teeth clenching. If there was one thing that could get under her skin, it would be comments like that. People saying she can't or should't fight because she's a girl.
"Think what you want to think. Tell me what you think of me when I can kick your ass in a fight." Ashlyn replied. She mounted Aurel and raced off into the forest.
She walked down a path that she and Aurel had found when they were exploring. She let Aurel lead her while she thought. She realized that some people might not accept her as a Ranger because of her gender. She knew that becoming a Ranger would be hard, but she couldn't help to feel nervous. She decided if she wasn't going to do anything, she might as well get some training in.
She rode Aurel back to Halt's cabin. She put her pony in the stables and went into the cabin to her practice arrows-. She saw Halt in a chair by the fireplace looking over reports.
"You're early," he stated, with looking up from the paper.
"Yeah, there were too many people," she lied smoothly.
Halt looked up from the papers and eyed her. "I know you're lying."
Ashlyn walked over to the hook where she kept her bow. She sighed.
"Teenage boys were acting like teenage boys," she said simply. "I'm going to practice some," she said before walking out. She walked towards the targets that they set up and started shooting. When she emptied out her quiver she examined her work. Eight out of the ten arrows were gathered in near the bullseye.
"I guess the early mornings helped a little," Ashlyn heard from behind her. On instinct she grabbed her two knives and slashed them at the person behind her. The clashing of steel echoed around her, before she noticed that she just attacked her mentor. She immediately pulled her weapons down and sheathed them.
"Sorry," she laughed nervously. Halt waved it off, and studied her target.
"You still need some work though. You use your first shots as reference points, from there you are adjusting your positioning to hit your target. If you were in a battle, you would want to kill your enemy with one shot. You need to be able to aim exactly where you need to be when you draw your first shot."
Halt grabbed his bow and positioned himself in front of a target. He pulled the string back, slower than he usually would, so she could watch clearly. When he got to his anchor he immediately let go and hit dead center of the target. Ashlyn nodded in understanding she picked up her bow, and aimed next to Halt's arrow. When she fired, the arrow went soaring through and buried itself in the target almost exactly where she aimed for.
"I think that's enough practicing today, besides isn't it suppose to be a holiday," Halt said, after they had retrieved their arrows. They walked back into the small cabin and sat by the fireplace.
"Hey Halt?" Ashlyn asked. The older ranger grunted for her to continue. "What will the other Rangers think of me since I'm a girl." She looked down at her hands. The Ranger thought for a while.
"Not all of them will be accept it because of things that happened in the past. We've had some girls become Ranger apprentices before, but not many of them completed their training. When we first started considering girls as apprentices, we didn't realize that many of them would grow out of their Ranger qualities. Most of them wanted to become more lady-like. After this had happened a few times, most Rangers stopped accepting female apprentices. I have no doubts about you, though. You've shown more dedication than any other girl apprentice I've seen. You'll do fine." Halt said.
Ashlyn smiled and gave him a small nod, "Thanks."
"But that doesn't mean that you can slack off," Halt said.
Ashlyn laughed, "I wouldn't dream of it." She got up from her chair and went back outside. For the rest of the day she relaxed and enjoyed Harvest Day. When Will got back, they ate dinner and Ashlyn went straight to bed.
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A/N
Sorry for not posting in a really long time. I procrastinated a lot on this. I will try to update a new chapter every week.  I will try to update more often. Sorry again.
As always, suggestions, tips, and ideas are always welcome and if you see any mistakes, then tell me and I will fix it (some of this chapter kept deleting, so I had to rewrite it almost 5 time. I was kind of rushing). Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed. Bye for now!
-Catherine