But One Star of All

First Entry - Perfect Proficiency

{If you have read it, this story does not perfectly align with the information and events of The Prince's Pretend Mother, in part because I never thought I would be writing this form of story and in part because I found, after a great deal of thought, that each story would be better off slightly separate from each other, even if the facts didn't match as they would in an ideal pairing. Please forgive me; blame the fact that I'm an artist. We don't care what anyone thinks.}

Never tell me that not one star of all

That slip from heaven at night and softly fall

Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.

*

My mother called me a mess of unexpected contradictions; my father called me a reservoir of valuable interests. I suppose it is abnormal—or at least uncommon—for a woman of my high birth to be equally proficient in music, dancing, drawing and foreign languages as well as swordsmanship, acrobatics, weaponry and military strategy.

“It is hardly fitting that a woman of your position to be accruing bruises as you do,” my mother said as she slowly wound golden thread into lace. Humans required a magnifying glass for the miniscule work my mother could create as easily as most others could stitch a seam.

I was in the process of sharpening my sword, which lay across a leather apron protecting the ice blue brocade of my gown from the coarse whetstone, the oil and the powder I was refining off. I wore thin, white leather gloves to protect my hands from the odd cut. “Bruises only last in my skin for a week, if I take a bruise at all.”

“Your ability to heal yourself well does not commend you for the occupation.”

“Dearest Mother, how else shall I control those awful things you call my fidgets if not through physical activity. There is only so much dancing one can do, and you know I prefer to do useful things.”

“Hmm.”

“Make the effort not to part anyone from their preferred appendages,” my father said when I left the next morning in my training gear. I was the head training master for the higher levels of those rising in our military. He always said something along those lines, and it always made me smile.

“I will try to restrict my damages to toes,” I said as I hung my swords belt and sheathes over my arm. I typically didn’t bring my own weapons to training; they were too sharp and therefore too dangerous. Everyone had their own dulled weapons to bring after they graduated from wooden weapons—I simply left mine in our training rooms.

“Do not flinch,” I admonished, guest-training with the lower levels today. “If I see you flinching with a weapon coming at you I will make you do it again until you do not. Why is it hazardous to flinch?” I lifted my chin toward one of the young men in the front, who clearly had the answer.

“Tense muscles are slower than loose ones, and flinching throws off both your balance and your aim.”

I gave him a smile. “Thank you, yes.” I flicked out my hand. “We will put you into threes and begin.”

The trainees’ original instructor and I wandered through the threes, making sure no one person was consistently on the defense from his two opponents. When I caught people flinching I bumped their elbows and nudged a toe into the backs of their knees, exaggerating the mistakes they made when they recoiled and causing them to often take the resulting bruises.

“I understand the instinct to pull away but you must learn when your instincts are an asset and when they are an inhibition. Do not make me force-teach you.”

“How do you force-teach someone how to ignore an instinct?” one of the quicker trainees asked, ducking one of his opponent’s swings and locking a foot onto the hip of the other to shove him back.