Sanctuary

Chapter 15

Jaynah

I rolled out of bed and groaned as I looked at my phone. Midday. I'd only had about five hours of sleep. By the time we'd finished patrol and done all the reports, exhaustion took hold. After a quick breakfast, I fell into bed around seven in the morning.

My hands rubbed themselves over my face as I tried to remove the sleep from my eyes. There was no point in trying to sleep more. The sun coming in my window was too bright. I went to the window to close the curtains. Noise from the courtyard drew my eyes down to a group of trainees. Dieter was walking among them as they engaged in mock combat drills. I stood and watched them for a few minutes. There were some that needed extra work on the basics. Others were just a few months away from being ready to graduate.

One girl caught my eye. In between assignments, I would often help the trainers in Lyon, acting as a tutor for some trainees, helping diagnose problems that others might have, or even just giving the more advanced trainees someone to challenge themselves against. The girl that caught my attention seemed to have problems with balance. She used a training sword like the other trainees, but she would wobble on her swings. Her problems called to me and brought memories of a time when I was like her to mind.

They were memories I would rather forget, but they were also memories that affected how I interacted with the trainees I would tutor. There are at least thirty trainees that made it to graduation because of me, and I kept in touch with each one. Some of my friends in Lyon used to joke I was a better trainer than they were. The head trainer even confessed he had considered offering me a trainer's position. Training our young people is one of the most important positions a Mohiri can have in our society, but it's not one I had ever considered doing full time. My eyes flitted back to the young girl. She needed help, and I needed something other than my case to focus on for a while. I dressed in my training clothes and raced down to join them. "Need a hand?"

Dieter smiled as he saw who had approached him. He nodded and turned to face the girl I had noticed. "Candace is having problems with some of her swings causing her to overbalance."

"I noticed as I approached your group." The trainees gathered near us, my presence distracted them too much for them to focus on what they were being taught. "You have balance beams here?"

Dieter nodded, his eyes searching mine for hints of what I was thinking. He turned to two of the boys and told them where to find the equipment I had asked for. "What are you up to?"

The boys returned with the beam and set it in front of me. As soon as they had moved back to their original places, I walked along its length and finished with a dismount that would have done a gymnast proud. Dieter smiled and raised a single eyebrow as he waited for a response. "I held my first toy sword when I was three. When I was playing with it one day, Mum noticed that my balance was a little off. She had me work with a balance beam every day for about six months until I could swing my play sword without falling on my butt. As I got older, and I replaced the play sword with a real one, my brother dragged the beam out again so I could work on balance. It's amazing how fast balance problems can resolve themselves when you're training on a beam that's suspended above a pool filled with cold water."

I smiled to reassure the young girl and shrugged. "I won't make you do that today. For now, I want you to walk across the beam."

"Walk across it? What's that going to show?"

Dieter smiled, a small nod his only sign he had understood what I was doing. He raised an eyebrow in an invitation for me to continue. "It will show me if your problem is one of balance, or technique."