Angel Tongue

ūndecim

Isaac bit into the slice of fruit, which promptly burst into tiny globules of juice and pulp in the chamber of his mouth. He closed his eyes at the sensation, letting the sweet-sour taste permeate his tongue and refresh his tired mind.

"So, where did you learn to fight that way?" Pax asked him, his hand wrapped around about two or three more oranges, which he had claimed to be saving 'for later'.

"Fight badly, you mean?" Isaac shot back, biting back a scathing laugh at his own expense. He watched the other boy pace along the ground, an orange slice wedged between his teeth. They had just finished weapons training, to Isaac's inexpressible delight. Rows and rows of trees grew around them, creating a landscape of multiple unmeeting layers when viewed from above. The round, fire-colored fruits hung from the tree branches, easy and ripe for the taking.

As it turned out, the Manus Dei owned and maintained a vast orchard of oranges, which in turn helped supplement their income. Isaac, being the homebody that he was, never went out of the building's four walls, and as a result never saw this, even though it took up quite a considerable amount of space on the wide Sanctuary grounds.

"It was not that terrible," Pax rationalized Isaac's combat skills (or more appropriately, his lack of them), earning himself a silent glare and an arched eyebrow from his companion. Seriously, did he think Isaac to be that gullible? "Alright then," he finally relented, raising two orange-clutching arms in defeat, "just a little bit. I'm just surprised you could fight at all."

"I had tutors," Isaac told him, taking another bite out of the orange. "They taught me a couple of things."

"Oh, right," Pax said, the realization plain in his tone. "I forget that you are rich sometimes."

Isaac raised his eyebrows once more at what Pax said. "Why do you call me rich all of a sudden?"

"Well, aren't you?" Pax returned with a short laugh. "You were at quite a grand gathering when we found you with the demon. The room was magnificent. The food, especially, seemed glorious, if you don't count the fact that it was scattered on the floor."

At those words, Isaac had to laugh along. Pax, it seemed, saw more than he made one think he understood. Isaac shrugged, nonchalance in his movement. "My parents then," he told Pax, "not me."

"It's derivative," Pax replied, his face lit up in a grin.

"You are, too! I wore your fine clothes during that first dinner, remember?"

"You still are," Pax said again with a smile, motioning to the laced shirt Isaac was wearing at the moment. True enough, since he had not yet returned to his family's home, Isaac was still borrowing his clothes from him.

In the distance, Isaac saw a figure walking towards them. Sierra was going towards them, having lost her leather armor like the rest of the others and gone the extra mile of changing into cleaner clothes. He watched her put her right arm over her face as she walked, determined to block the sunlight from infiltrating her eyes.

"Sierra's towards us," Isaac notified Pax as they both looked in her direction, watching her grow larger in their vision as she came closer. Isaac kicked a stone towards her as she did, though she was too quick for that and simply knocked the stone out of the way.

"Are you still angered by your loss, Stjerne?" Sierra asked in a light teasing tone as she came close enough to speak with them.

True to what she had made known to Isaac by the end of their duel, she returned to her usual weapon-the double short-sword-when they started actually training with Flora. When he saw her with her double blades, for the entire time he was looking around helplessly, he thought to himself to be thankful that Sierra had instead used the sword and buckler, a combination she was not used to, against him. He remembered, as an impressionable youth, asking his tutor if it was possible to wield two swords at the same time. The tutor, probably trying to be as kind as possible, had told him that yes, it was possible, however, not without years and years of training. Isaac, now that he thought about it, had the lingering suspicion that the tutor had simply meant that yes, it could be done, but no, certainly not by him.