I'm not very used to making author's notes, but here goes. I'm going to be posting about two-five more chapters today and then I'm leaving you all at a cliffhanger.Unless you actually ask for more. Good luck with that! Happy reading!
Chapter three Beginner's lessons
I woke up early and went to where Lanille had told me to go. I sat beside Minks, since we were early, again. "We won't go in at the same time," I began to tell Minks. "So we'll just stay apart, but save each other when needed, I'll keep my eyes on you, since I can hide almost too well. I hope you don't mind," I said openly.
"I don't mind, just don't get killed." He said calmly as he took a bite of his cold salmon.
Lanille walked in with Bondick behind her. "So, have you both eaten?" She asked. We nodded and then she and Bondick pulled us out the door and into our separate rooms. "We'll be working on recognition of plants today," she told me. She took out a book and handed it to me. "This is a book of berries that the Hub is allowed to put in the arena. I have a couple of them in these containers. Your job is to say if they're edible." She said in a quick and very hard core tone.
She opened up a box and showed it to me. "Sweet Forn, not edible, deadly." I said. She opened up another one, "Chrysthalys, edible, tastes like honey." I answered. She opened up another, "Lisanumyl, poisonous. When a knife or arrow dipped in its juice goes into you, the poison will first paralyze, and then it will kill after a matter of minutes, no matter how deep the blow." I said.
"I don't think I'll need to coach you for this," Lanille said with a smile. "You already have this locked. For the interview, well, I say just be yourself, but look like you're a bit weak and say the other opponents are bigger and better as well as kind nudges to how the other competitors will have the advantage in a fight between you and one of them." She said. "Let's get on to in the arena. What weapons can you use?"
"I'm good at archery. I can use a sword and throwing knives. I'm good at traps and making shelter. If I need rope, I can use leaves to make my own man made rope. Not much apart from that," I said. It was really nothing compared to what Ronnie could do. With a spear in hand, she could take down a moose without getting dirty. "Oh, and spears."
""Not much"? I don't get how that could be so little to you. I think you could win with Minks. We'll work on anything else. Can you climb?" she asked checking off a list.
"Yes, when my sister and I would look for fruit after a big hunt, I would go up high enough to get the really ripe fruit. The branches were too flimsy for her," I answered.
"Hand-to-hand combat, ever been good at that?" She asked me hopefully.
"I brought down my older sister last March because she had said I was useless, I was too angry to use words, so I simply took her down on the ground, dug my feet into her calves and pulled her arms until they crossed so far that she screamed," I said in a string of words which sounded a bit like a buzz since I wasn't happy that I had done it.
"And she is a good 3½ years older than you," Lanille said checking off a probable hand to hand box. "Can you cook a squirrel without a pan?" She asked me.
"Yes, I can start a good fire and know how to make it not smoke. I can also do fish, if there's a river; just plop a bit of dark wood bark in front of them, and then they'll float to the top, paralyzed. For the squirrel, I would definitely take the skin off with the head. I would probably take the skin and add it to wherever I had set up camp, to make it look legitimate. I would definitely put some leaves around it to make it look real, and rig it to blink." I told her.
"If four dirt walls encased you, with a ceiling over top and you found a small hole, twenty feet up, that you could surely fit through, but you only had two knives and from somewhere, poisonous snakes started to appear, how would you get out?" She asked me challengingly.
"I would use my knives to stab into the dirt wall with the small hole, and continue pulling myself upwards releasing one knife from the wall, and then stabbing it in higher, until I reached the top, where I would stab in my knives close to the opening and heave my body so I could grip to the outside of the hole, place my feet on the knives, shimmy through, turn, grab the knives out, and do the same with the knives, but going down, until the drop is easy enough to not kill me." I explained.
"Perfect," Lanille said. "Now it's time for physical training."
