Blaecwyn bent over from the waist and bowed her legs, using her thighs to lean her hands against as she panted to catch her breath. It had been eight months since that fateful day and a little under six since she had awoken to find herself swaddled like a child in bed.
The months of rest and healing had left her unfit - at least by her standards. She had never been a small woman, never been slender or even fat. She had, however, spent the vast majority of her twenty-eight years keeping active and building her considerable muscles in one manner or another. A ten mile run, unarmoured, had been a breeze in the past, but this day she had managed a mere two. That was not good enough. She needed to be fit again, she needed to be strong and healthy and well. She needed...
Who am I kidding? she chuckled breathlessly at the thought. I need to fight!
It was true, oh so very true. There was a war going on without her. People were fighting and dying and she was not there to help them, to protect the people back home by offering herself in their place. She was not there to satiate her lust for battle, to calm and direct her violent tendancies into something more constructive than hitting training dummies or people who annoy her in the tavern. The war called to her with a sirens song that she found so terribly difficult to resist, especially now when there was nothing to keep her in Bree-land, yet she could not respond to it. She was not fit enough, not strong enough, not ready.
Blaecwyn growled and shook her head, gasping in a deep breath before stubbornly beginning to run again. Her shield arm still was not quite right, but it would be soon. She had to keep it exercised, along with the rest of her, for all that it would begin to ache abominably after a mere few minutes of hefting the weight of her shield. Once the run was over, she would take up her armour and seek the dummies regardless. It had to be done.
As she ran, she considered recent events and her next move.
Almost as soon as she had been mobile enough to leave the manor house, Eovad had appeared to offer her company and, in his own way, comfort. He had allowed her to move back into the spare room of his humble house, which was far more to her liking than the rich trappings of Siwards manor.
However, shortly after she had come to live with him, they had entered a conversation that she had not seen coming. He had asked about their future and if now, because she was a widow, would she be wanting to enter a relationship with him. He had made it clear that whilst he had feelings for her, he was wanting nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, the topic of conversation had awakened the feelings she had long since put aside regarding him and whilst she was not ready to consider entering into a partnership so soon after the death of her family, still things felt awkward for her. It was difficult to be around him so much, to live in the same house as him, when they both knew what they wanted but refused to have.
He had admitted freely that her being around often confused him. Was she to let that continue? Is that what a good friend would allow to happen? She doubted it. Of course, she also doubted that a good friend would kick her friend in the head and then leave him for dead in a canyon, but there was nothing she could do about the past. She could do something about the present and the future, though, and she would. She would move out again. Soon. But how to tell him without making things worse between them, or making him feel bad over it all?
She would be the first to admit that tact was far from being a strong point of hers and her skills with subtlty were non-existant. Worse than that was her ability, or lack thereof, in speaking about feelings and the like. It was something she had always had difficulty with, even when she was younger, and it had only gotten harder since her experience with her first husband, Arangilas. She did not have the words or the gentility to explain herself in any meaningful way.
Blaecwyn grunted as a stitch formed in her side and, gritting her teeth, powered her way through the pain. That was something she did have experience with and could work her way through. Physical pain, in so many ways, was a comfort to her. It let her know that she was alive, that she was doing her best. Emotional pain was beyond her understanding, beyond her control, for all that she had suffered from it many times. Pain of the body, however, was a thing she knew intimately and from all angles. There was no mystery in it, no puzzlement and it could be overcome.
Better, she decided, to put all those awkward, twisty, hard to grasp, emotional things aside and get back to a world that made sense to her. She would concentrate on her training and return to the fight at the first available opportunity.
