Doused by ICE

Afraid to hear the words: "one time thing"

          Cassius and Serena's POV

Hesitation kills.

"Hesitation kills Rory"

"Isn't it pulling the trigger that kills?"

"Hesitation has no place here; pulling the trigger is the whole point.
One small wavering of trust, an iota of doubt, a minute flickering of confidence, and what you once had in your sights, is gone"

I never understood the point of hunting lessons with my grandfather at the crack of dawn, growing up.

He was not a kind man nor was he a good man, and it was only when we hunted together that I wasn't paralyzingly terrified of him.
Yet it was the only time I ever saw him holding a weapon.
Imagine that.

This particular memory is from the summer I turned ten and my grandmother had insisted we celebrate my birthday in our ancestral home in Ireland.

It had rained for hours on end the night before, and the morning after it was drizzling still, yet my grandfather roused me at 4:30 to get ready, and we headed into the woods that was a part of our lands.

It was brutally cold, and the rain was reducing visibility, but my grandfather maintained that we must hunt.

After well over thirty minutes of wading through the woods, we found a deer in a nestling of trees taking shelter from the rain.
Our hunting group maintained absolute silence, and used overgrown branches of two trees to camouflage our presence.

My grandfather instructed me to mount my rifle and prove that all the lessons I'd had since I was seven wasn't a collosal waste of his time.
I did as he instructed, and aimed as well as I could, given the circumstances.

I took deep breaths and expelled them slowly in a bid to bring the deer into focus, and tune out the cold seeping into my bones and the fat droplets of rain pelting my face and hands and making them wet.

However, the more I tried to focus, the more I couldn't; I was simply too cold and my palms too wet.
I decided to give up and yell that I couldn't do it –which would've scared the deer away, and would've probably earned me a slap from my grandfather, but I really didn't care at that point;
I was sleep deprived, jetlagged from our flight home, cold, hungry, tired, and wet!

Then the lecture on hesitation had come.
And with every sentence, he covered my eyes, then uncovered them afterwards.

"One small wavering of trust in one's self" he covered my eyes with his right palm as he said so.

Then he uncovered it.
The deer was still there –sheltering from the rain, oblivious of its fate.

Then he covered my eyes again whilst saying, "An iota of doubt of one's abilities"

Then he uncovered my eyes.
The deer was still there –sheltering from the rain, but it now had its ears perked up; I went absolutely still in order not to make a sound.

He covered my eyes yet again to say, "A minute flicker of constitution"

Then he held very still, before uncovering my eyes slowly, as he said the words, "And what you once had in your sights, is gone"

At his words, I abruptly looked up at him.
He cocked his head in the direction of the deer.
I quickly looked from the unforgiving features of his face, to the spot where the deer had been.
It was gone!
Just like that.