"Hold that blade firmly, now. You don't want to lose grip of it mid-combat."
"Aye, you don't say?"
Eofryth fixes his daughter with a stern look, and quietly chided himself for thinking, in a moment of fatherly hubris, that within their first lesson he'd be ready to pass his daughter a keen blade to practice with.
"And your shield's secure?"
It was Ferawyn's turn to fix her father with a stare.
"I know how to hold a shield, faeder. You'd think I didn't know my arse from my elbow the way you're talking."
" Well, sometimes I wonder..."
Before he can finish his sentence, he notices the fierce look being shot in his direction, and laughs.
"I know rightly that you can handle a shield, Fera, but we're starting with basics, here."
She'd taken to the proper footing quickly enough, and Eofryth was pleased with that. Once the actual sword was in hand, however, Ferawyn had become so tense that she was just as likely to crack the grip of the thing as she was to put the tip through a foe. With a nod, he signalled for her to come at him again. Ferawyn stepped into the strike with confidence, though also far too much speed and enthusiasm, and her arm came down with all the fluid grace of a dwarf rolling downhill. While the grip of her hand was tight, the arc of her swing was so stilted and tight from the shoulder down that she had little to no control over the swing. When the blow came down onto the gaurd of Eofryth's sword, Fera felt a bit of a shock from her hand up to her clenched shoulder muscles, and she watched the blade rebound off the blow to fly directly out of her hand.
"Eorl's balls!"
"Fera!"
"Da!"
"Watch your mouth, will ya."
"S'not my mouth you need to be watching."
She picked up the sword and swished it through the air, the light glinting off the blade.
Eofryth nodded to his daughter to begin again. And again, she stepped forward, swinging her blade with apprehensive and uncontrolled force. Stepping back as he parried each blow, Eofryth returned with quick, half-hearted jabs of the blade. The two of them moved in a loose circle around their quiet garden in Whittry, the sunlight catching off their swinging blades a stark contrast to the rolling hills of wildflowers at their feet. For the first time since their arrival, the two of them looking as though they weren't quite a fit for their pastoral surroundings.
Each of Ferawyn's blows was met with a quick turn of Eofryth's blade, and each of his parries was followed with a light, testing strike. Ferawyn's shield was up quickly enough to block each of her father's testing strikes, though her tension and her wild swings completely negated any possibility of her managing to riposte. If not for her surprisingly agile footwork, Eofryth mused, she'd have likely gone tumbling downhill by now.
The tension collecting in Ferawyn's shoulders brought each blow down hard and gracelessly, but Eofryth continued to bait her along. The circles they paced in now grew a bit tighter, the call-and-response blows coming more closely together, and Eofryth took a quick moment to study his daughter's face. The way she responded to this, he knew, was going to be crucial.
With each blow, with every step and block, Ferawyn seemed to lose herself more and more into the moment, until finally a strike so fluid in its abandon came down high onto Eofryth's blade, high enough that the follow through actually got past the parry and found its mark on his shoulder. The blade landed with a dull but audible thud against the thick leathers he wore, and sat there as the two of them stared at it.
Ferawyn stared at the blade. It was Eofryth's turn to express tension, as he attempted to hide a beaming smile beneath his beard.
"That's what luck looks like, girl," he said, removing the blade. "That's a good first day. Might not feel that way, but it is." He pat his daughter firmly on the shoulder, as he began to lead Ferawyn back into their home. "Let's get us something to eat, maybe something to drink, and I think I've got a few other things to show you, tomorrow morning." Already, Eofryth was silently mulling over which of the swords in his workshop was going to be the best one to pass down ...
