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Season of Summer, Day 49, 513 AV
Sixth Bell
Jorin was getting used to waking up before the dawn. It wasn't that actors were necessarily lazy. Rehearsals often took place in the mornings, just never this early in the mornings. But Jorin knew better than to be late to the Amphitheater. So he learned to get up at fifth Bell, eat a light breakfast, and head over to the Sasaran with time to spare. Inside, the clack of wood against wood could already be heard. Jorin began his daily routine by stretching.
He started the stretching routine with a simple forward leg stretch. He began by stepping his right foot forward, and lowered into a lunge. He stretched his fingertips on the floor toward his big toe, placing them on the floor. He breathed in once, a long breath through his nose, and then in a single motion he exhaled through the mouth as he straightened his right leg. He then stepped back, returning to the lunge position, and did it again.
He did the same thing ten times, before switching to his left leg. This was to loosen his leg muscles, which according to Sohryn was crucial to a limber body, and a prime factor for survival in the Sasaran, which Jorin was quickly coming to realize was a place where anything could happen. Sohryn was becoming less and less a presence in his training, preferring to supervise than to directly intervene. He only intervened the first two days because Jorin had known, literally, nothing. Now that he had practiced the moves Sohryn had showed him several thousand times, Jorin realized they were heavily ingrained into his head.
The stretches also gave Jorin time to think, as they were relaxing and required very little thought to do. He realized that was the point of making him repeat the same movements so many times. To make them habit, to train the muscles to remember the move. Sohryn had given names to the three moves: the forward thrust, the horizontal buttstroke, the center block.
As Jorin finished up his routine, he automatically strolled over to the weapon rack and picked up his practice staff. It had become second nature now, after two days of relentless practice. He hefted the staff, and began the routine. Imagining an opponent, he thrust the staff forward, the right hand guiding the staff in a slight bend so that it came at the opponent at an angle. Then he brought the butt end of the staff swinging up and in, using his elbow as a driver, sinking the butt-end of the staff into the imaginary foe's head. Then he finished by blocking a pretend overhead swing with a center block, hands far apart on the staff, letting the middle absorb the impact. Return to stance.
One down, one thousand, nine hundred, ninety nine remaining.
As Jorin continued his routine, he found himself accidentally shuffling backwards. Each time the routine ended, he somehow ended up half a step back. He realized the horizontal buttstroke was causing his left foot to constantly step back, and that was causing, over time, his entire body to step with it.
Looking to correct his routine, Jorin did not see the big Akalak until it was too late, colliding with him and earning his first combat in the Sasaran. Jorin knew the rules, and squared off against the man. Jorin had been attempting, in fact, to avoid these "battles", but it was not that he was necessarily a coward. It was just that he didn't feel that he had the skill to stand up to any sort of opponent. He still didn't, but maybe that was the point.
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