Season's Change Winter's Plight Book 1

20 Training Wheels

She taught him how to use her bow when they were not training with a blade. It was difficult in the small confines of their living space. But they managed it. He learned and trained and worked very hard. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into his training. When they started, he didn't even know what fletching was much less how to do it or to do it well. He half expected Katana to laugh at him every time he picked up the feathers and the rods and the knife. She taught him first how to add the feathers to the arrows they had crafted. She was patient and kind, yet stern and demanding in her instruction of him. When he made mistakes, she first showed him how to correct them by doing it herself while he watched. Then she placed her hands over his and guided him through the process. He labeled the small sensations he felt when she touched his hands as stupid and pushed them aside until he didn't feel them anymore.

She explained to him the subtle nuances in the wood and taught him the prayers that were offered when the wood was taken from the trees. She did all of that without allowing him to leave their cave complex. They trained by what he could only assume was day and Fletched, once again in silence, by night.

When the silence and limited conversation had finally worn his patience thin, and the weight on his heart was too much to carry he found his voice and his words and he shared them with her.

"Katana?" She turned silver eyes to him and raised a silvery brow.

"Avi?" For once she didn't call him 'Stupid Human', whatever that meant. He twisted his hands in his lap, once she was looking at him that way, with those eyes, he forgot what he wanted to say. He fought hard to find his words again, wallowed past the fear and hurt that lumped in his throat.

"Why did you stop talking to me? Have I offended you in some way? Did I insult you?" He finally just blurted it out as if the words that came out of his mouth were on fire and completely beyond his control. They may as well have been. He had held them too long. The hurt he felt – it burned.

Katana looked at Avi like he had grown a third eye right in the middle of his head. Her eyes squinted and then grew wide, she opened her mouth, but then shut it again. She was momentarily angry. He was the one that stopped talking, He was the one that had pulled away. How could he be asking her that? She set her ire and confusion aside

"Did I say it wrong?" his eyes went wide with panic.

"No. You spoke well. I will answer." She paused and turned to the fire then returned her eyes to his. "Do you remember the day you came into the cave and I was bathing?" His ears and cheeks turned red. He definitely remembered. He hadn't been able to forget it. He nodded, struck dumb by the question.

"Did I not appeal to you?" Avi started to sweat under his light shirt. Naturally, she did. He wanted to tell her how she haunted his dreams, how seeing her that way made him feel and how it had ignited his curiosity about things he had no business being curious about. There was so much he wanted to tell her, all of it wrong. He had no right to feel what he felt, and no right to want what he wanted from her. He just didn't.

"Umm." He fumbled for the right words, but never found them. He ended up nodding like a fool and trying to not look into her beautiful mysterious eyes

"I see," she said, and her eyes returned to the fire.

"I don't."

"My body is not pleasing to you. To look at? Is this because I am Dark or Faye, or both? Do you not want to touch me?"

"I never said that!" Avi's anger threw him off balance and threatened to consume him. Why was he angry? He didn't understand his anger, but he felt it burning deep within his heart.

"Then why did you not take me?" Suddenly he was furious, his fist and teeth clenched, his breath came in short angry puffs. He forgot all the lessons he had been taught about diplomacy save one. He held his tongue.

"Why are you mad?"

"Who put that idea in your head?" His voice took on an edge she had never heard before. It was no longer the soft and gentle sound she was used to. He spoke through his teeth. She could see his jaw and fists clench. What had she done to make him feel so much anger? She wanted to move away from him. To just get up and run away. Suddenly, Katana was afraid of the man that sat before her with anger in his dark eyes and a hard, cold snarl in his gentle voice. "This idea that just because a man sees you without your clothes on that he has a right, no is expected to take you. To just do as he pleases with what is rightfully yours. That is a ridiculous notion. No man has such a right. No man would ever take from a woman that of which she does not give to him freely." As he spoke, he stood and started to pace. The more he spoke the more he remembered, her culture and his own were vastly different, this was just another reminder of that. He calmed his nerves. Forced his anger under his patience and understanding and returned to where she sat watching his every move with fear deep in her eyes.

He took a deep breath and held out his hands with his palms facing up and his fingers spread wide.

"Please," he pleaded softly, "place your hands in mind." He did not realize how much he was asking for in asking her to surrender her hands to him. He had scared her. That was genuine fear she felt. She had never seen so much anger in the man. But he had not hurt her, ever, in any way. She knew just as she was alive that he never would. So, she surrendered her hands, her weapons, her life, over him. He didn't close his fingers over hers or attempt to hold her hands, he was a warrior, he understood.

"That is not the way it is supposed to work up here. Not the way I work. I don't just take a woman because I believe that I am are entitled to do so or that the woman is beautiful and tempting." His eyes blazed as he spoke to her. "To be with a woman, to share her bed. It is an honor and a gift that only she can offer. It is not to be taken. It should only be offered to one who can return the gift. If you were to offer. I would have to say no. I am betrothed to another. I cannot lay with one woman when I am promised to another. It would be wrong. I have no claim over you."

"You do not want me to give my," She paused not understanding the word knowing only that it referred to her body. "gift to you? Her eyes were silver and gold beauty, oddly innocent and yet somehow not, as she looked into his eyes. She was shaken by his anger. It was curious to her that he would take such offense. "Have you never lain with a woman?"

"It would be wrong for me to accept your gift." His blush returned. He cleared his throat. He never, in his wildest dreams, thought he would be talking about sex with a Dark Faye Elf. Embarrassed, he purposefully avoided answering the second question. She did not need to hear his answer.

"Why?" She was very curious. Humans were such confusing and strange creatures. She'd seen groups of men lay waste to a village kill the men and take the women for themselves, forcing them to do things she did not need to imagine. Perhaps this boy was mistaken or seriously misguided. Humans did the things he said he did not. They did them to anyone they wanted to do them too. He was not right, or he was perhaps a broken human. He was definitely a stupid human.

"I am betrothed." He said quietly as he let her hands go and return his eyes to the fire, then look back up to watch her reaction. She turned her head and looked at him the way his puppy used to when he didn't understand him.

"What is that?"

"To be married."

"What is that?" He eyes lit as understanding dawned. "But you have not been with a woman? Do you know how to please one? You should be with one first, so you can please your b- bu- betrothed," she stumbled all over the word. "How are you going to do that if you do not know how?"

"We will learn together." He squeaked. He was suddenly very uncomfortable and the space they were it was entirely too hot. She was way too close to him. He couldn't breathe. His face turned redder than red and he started shaking his head, "I—" he stumbled on the words, then fell silent.