Vampire Academy: Dimitri's Point of View

Sunday Peace

The next morning came much faster than I hoped. I met her at the gym before the rest of campus had started stirring from their beds. She was still five minutes late, but it was a vast improvement on the previous afternoon. Her t-shirt was a tad wrinkled and her hair was a mess, and there was still some lingering hints of sleep in her eyes. It was obvious that she had ran to the gym to try to make it on time and I appreciated the effort.
"We'll start with laps today before moving on to some weights and combat training."
Her face dropped a little and if possible, she looked more exhausted from just the thought of running laps. "Seriously?" she asked, but she was already making her way to the back door and towards the track. Her movements were stiff from yesterday, as I knew they would be, but she didn't complain...too much. "How many?"
"Not sure yet. Consider this an assessment. I need to see what you can do before we can start the real training."
She rolled her eyes and let out a sigh before looking at me again with pursed lips. She was stretching her shoulders in an attempt to work out her muscles' weariness. I knew she wasn't thrilled with the idea, but we had to start somewhere.
"Come on," I encouraged while placing a hand on her shoulder. "You'll feel better once you start getting your blood pumping. I'll even run with you today."
I let her take the lead as she started from a slow jog, gradually working up to a steady pace. She was well out of practice. I could see beads of sweat working their way around her hairline while I barely felt my heart rate rising. Soon, her breath was becoming ragged.
"You can do this Rose! Concentrate on your breathing. Focus on an object ahead of you and make that your goal." Her form adjusted with each instruction and she continued to push herself until I knew she had reached her limit. "Once you hit the starting point, you can stop."
This was the last bit of motivation she needed. She picked up her pace slightly for the last bend and crossed the finish line with her arms raised as if she has just won the Olympics. She walked one more lap to cool down before grabbing her water bottle from the bench and collapsing in the grass. She smiled and laughed to herself as wiped the sweat from her brow, still high off of the exercise endorphins.
Meanwhile, I picked up a small notebook from my bag and marked her time and distance. Eight laps, 2 miles. The distance wasn't far off from a beginning freshman's at the academy, but her timing was still longer than I had hoped. While most freshman could finish this distance in 20 minutes or less, she completed it in 25.
After giving her a moment longer to rest, I instructed her back towards the weight room. She followed me in, while rustling through her bag.
"Damn!" I heard more expletives being mumbled under her breath.
Without slowing, I glance over my shoulder and raise my eyebrow. As much as I tried to chastise her for her foul mouth, I actually found it somewhat amusing. No one would ever accuse her of being inexpressive. She reminded me a bit of my grandmother Yeva. Sure, she may not always be appropriate, but she always said what was on her mind. It could be an endearing quality...sometimes. "So how is the world ending today, Rose?"
"Not quite that dire, Comrade." She was inspecting a small tube. "I just didn't get the chance to pick up more lip gloss before you kidnapped us. I'm running a bit lower than I thought."
"I'll try to be more considerate next time." I longed for the days where my biggest concerns were about things as trivial as lip gloss. I didn't quite appreciate my final years of schooling, and I wish I had.
"Next time?" She asked optimistically.
"Don't get your hopes up, we still have a lot of work to do before I let you loose upon the world again."
By this time we had made it back to gym's weight room and after an hour or so of rep's, we reviewed some of the things she had missed in her combat and theory classes. We followed a similar pattern for her afternoon practice. Saturday, I let her sleep in a bit longer since I wasn't competing with her class schedule, but made up for it for double the practice time. Instead of the usual three hours of daily tutoring, we had a full six.
Thankfully, she was a quick study and I realized that it wouldn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to catch her up. Within a few weeks, I expected to be able to start some sparing to practice and perfect the techniques, and perhaps I could even introduce some more advance ones. The only thing truly holding her back was her stamina, but even that was getting better with each practice. As long as we continued to improve her physical endurance, she would graduate. There was a chance she could even excel towards the top of her class. I couldn't help the small sense of satisfaction at the thought. While I never intended to become a teacher, I was already proud of my student and glad that I had taken the chance on mentoring Rose.