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haebinThere it is.
The first chapter of my second book. And I really, really hope all of you will enjoy the new paths we will hopefully walk together.
♥️
Notice: I changed the name Coran (The Half-Elf) to Conall because it was just too similiar to Anwyn's Father.
The sun was high in the firmament, giving Blackwater Bay its first warm rays after the long and depriving months of cold and darkness. Anwyn stood in the middle of the courtyard with her head back and her eyes closed, concentrating on feeling the warmth on her skin and ignoring the still chilly wind from the sea that tugged at the fabric of her dark green ankle-length dress.
She listened to the waves breaking on the beach, the screeching of the seagulls, the grunting and scratching of the animals in their runs when suddenly the boy's delighted laughter reached her ears. With a smile on her lips, she opened her eyelids and saw the little half-elf running happily towards the gate, his teddy bear in his arms. Anwyn was at his side in just a few steps, lifting him into her arms and pressing her face into his soft hair.
“Ah ah ah,” she said with a slight shake of her head as the child gurgled happily. “We're not walking down the beach alone, are we?”
“Ad ... Ad ... Adar,” the boy called out excitedly, raising his chubby little arm to point in the direction of the beach.
“I see, I see,” Anwyn replied tenderly and slowly opened the gate, making sure that she carried the small, sharp knife she needed to process the daily catch of fish on her belt. Another dagger was attached to her boot in a narrow, sewn-on leather pouch, which she could fall back on in an emergency.
Anwyn never left the house or the farm without a dagger on her. When the second winter of her relationship with Trálír had passed and they were in each other's arms again for the first time, the elf broke away from her with a serious expression on his face and insisted that she had to learn how to use a dagger, short sword, bow and arrow.
Trálír tried to find a few hours every day between all the tasks that kept him busy to be near Anwyn. It was a hard battle he had to fight against his father in the first months after the second winter to win the right to spend at least a small part of his life with his beloved companion.
Anwyn was a great thorn in the side of Trálír, the Elder, and only reluctantly had he allowed his firstborn to spend time with her. A wedding was out of the question, but as long as Trálír had not yet reached the elven adulthood of 100 years, he allowed his son to have a human lover in order to “get his teenage edge off”. It had taken Trálír endless hours of arguing and trying to persuade until his father had finally given in. As long as he would fulfill his duties, Trálír the Elder gave his son permission to “waste” his time with the human woman.
Trálír knew that his reputation had plummeted in his father's eyes and he had no solution for himself and Anwyn for the future, but at that moment they were both satisfied with the current outcome.
As Anwyn opened the gate with the child in her arms and walked down the path towards the sea, she thought back to all the weeks she had spent learning how to use the weapons presented to her.
Trálír began with some light exercises in self-defense without using weapons such as the palm of her hand to thrust it against her opponent's nose with a jerky forward movement. Poking her opponent in the eyes with her fingers could also throw him off balance and give her the opportunity to escape. Anwyn listened to Trálír's descriptions in detail and with a sense of surprise that such simple movements could be so effective.
But Trálír not only talked about these possibilities but also demanded that Anwyn put them into practice and try them out on him.
Anwyn's first reaction was to shake her head in denial, for everything in her spoke against physically attacking Trálír, but the elf did not budge from his demand until she finally gave in and hesitantly began to perform the exercises. Her own insecurity and the worry that she might hurt Trálír made Anwyn act timidly. After she had made a few half-hearted attempts, he interrupted her exercise and asked her the reason for her reluctance.
Embarrassed, she pulled her lower lip between her teeth and after a moment confessed to Trálír that she feared to hurt him by accident. A tender smile slid across his face as he reached for her hands and assured her that he had been exposed to these attacks in daily training since childhood and knew how to avoid them.
He then took a step back and asked Anwyn to thrust her palm forcefully upwards in the direction of his nose.
She complied with his suggestion with a heavy heart and when she saw how Trálír easily avoided her movement, she took courage.
For three days, Anwyn practiced thrusting her palm upwards for about an hour. Until then everything had gone without a hitch, but on the last day they were so engrossed in their training that Anwyn didn't hear her father calling for her and Trálír was distracted for a fraction of a breath. A pained grunt escaped him as Anwyn's palm bumped violently against his nose, which immediately began to bleed. Eyes widening in horror and face pale, Anwyn began to apologize and tears welled up in her fawn eyes as she watched Trálír press the back of his hand to his nose to stop the flow of blood.
The high elf watched as Anwyn ran quickly to the house and a moment later ran back in his direction, a wet scrap of cloth in her hand. She anxiously asked him to lean forward to place the cold cloth on the back of his neck. The flow of blood stopped shortly afterwards and she asked Trálír to sit up again. Carefully, she wiped the smeared blood from the lower half of his face and his hands with the damp cloth. When Anwyn gently pushed some moss she had picked at the spring that morning into Trálír's nose, he began to laugh.
It took many words of comfort from Trálír to soothe her guilty conscience and convince her that such mishaps in training were normal. When the bleeding had stopped and Anwyn held the bloody cloth in her hands, she still felt bad.
Trálír couldn't help but admit that he liked it when Anwyn tried to comfort him with tender kisses. As his fingers pressed into the curves of her waist and he pulled her closer to him, he decided to be a little more careless on purpose in the future. How could he resist his companion's comforting attempts to make amends when they were so sweetly tempting?
Since stabbing the enemy's eyes with his fingers required no real practice, the next unit was to teach Anwyn how to defend herself if someone attacked her from behind. If an enemy were to grab her like that and it was possible for Anwyn to do so, she should throw her head backwards forcefully so that she would hit him in the face, which would surprise the attacker and possibly cause him to loosen his grip.
If she did not succeed, the next option would be to bend forward, put all her weight into this movement and grab her opponent's knee or calf. If this was successful, Anwyn would be able to pull them forward powerfully and unbalance the enemy. All the exercises that Trálír taught Anwyn served to give her the opportunity to escape.
Anwyn repeated this technique for several days until Trálír was so satisfied with the results that they moved on to the first weapon.
It was not always easy to have a short sword or similar weapon at hand if you were not practiced in it, so he concentrated on the fish knife Anwyn always carried with him and a dagger he had brought from the castle's armory.
A knife or dagger had the disadvantage that you could hardly keep any distance between yourself and the attacker, so Trálír taught Anwyn how to throw the dagger in the direction of the attacker. Although she was practiced with the knife and knew how to hold it, where to feel the weight distribution of a knife, Anwyn had difficulty hitting the piece of paper that Trálír had pinned to the tree. She tried again and again and he watched as her lips pressed together in annoyance, her brows furrowed in displeasure and her frustration grew.
Trálír could understand the feeling of frustration only too well, because it reminded him of the time when he had started practicing weapons as a child and of all the moments when the sword had been knocked out of his hand, how he had been knocked off his feet with the shield that had been hurled at him or how he had lost his balance when he had tried to avoid his opponent.
When, after numerous attempts, Anwyn still had no success, her frustration broke out and she threw the dagger to the ground, cursing. Trálír smiled sympathetically at Anwyn's emotional outburst as he also knew this emotion only too well from numerous training sessions. He reached for the dagger, put it in the sheath on his pants for now and stood behind Anwyn.
He placed his left hand gently on her side, then leaned close to her ear and whispered that she should close her eyes. As he reached for her wrist, Trálír felt the tension in her upper body ease.
He patiently explained to Anwyn that she should put her body weight on her dominant leg and bend her elbow so that she could hold the dagger above her head. Since Trálír was standing so close to her, he felt her comply with his suggestion and shift her body weight. He interlaced his fingers with hers and then made the next move. As he brought his arm into a straight outstretched position with her, he told her that she would let go at this point to throw the dagger.
Anwny's arm and her whole posture was soft and relaxed, so he repeated the exercise with her for a while, standing behind her, feeling her body lean gently against his and letting him take the lead.
Over and over again, the two of them practiced the required movements together until Trálír had the feeling that Anwyn had mastered them and would no longer need his help.
When the elf suggested that she try this exercise without his help, he saw the open reluctance in her gaze. But Trálír only nodded encouragingly.
Anwyn took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly to concentrate, opened them again and performed the exercise as she had learned it from Trálír.
She then looked at him with her big brown eyes in a mixture of expectation and uncertainty and when a confirming smile grew on his lips, Anwyn's whole face beamed with joy. With each successive exercise, Anwyn radiated more confidence, gaining more assurance in the way she moved her arm, strengthened her stance, straightened her back. The next step was to place the dagger in her hand, to let her feel where its center of gravity was.
Anwyn closed her eyes as Trálír unsheathed the dagger and placed it in her open palm. She slid her fingertips carefully over the sharply honed blade, cradling the dagger in her hand before proceeding to perform her now familiar exercise over and over again. She was completely focused on her movements, unaware that Trálír was standing only a few steps away from her, watching her with pride in his blue-green eyes.
The first chapter of my second book. And I really, really hope all of you will enjoy the new paths we will hopefully walk together.
♥️
Notice: I changed the name Coran (The Half-Elf) to Conall because it was just too similiar to Anwyn's Father.
The sun was high in the firmament, giving Blackwater Bay its first warm rays after the long and depriving months of cold and darkness. Anwyn stood in the middle of the courtyard with her head back and her eyes closed, concentrating on feeling the warmth on her skin and ignoring the still chilly wind from the sea that tugged at the fabric of her dark green ankle-length dress.
She listened to the waves breaking on the beach, the screeching of the seagulls, the grunting and scratching of the animals in their runs when suddenly the boy's delighted laughter reached her ears. With a smile on her lips, she opened her eyelids and saw the little half-elf running happily towards the gate, his teddy bear in his arms. Anwyn was at his side in just a few steps, lifting him into her arms and pressing her face into his soft hair.
“Ah ah ah,” she said with a slight shake of her head as the child gurgled happily. “We're not walking down the beach alone, are we?”
“Ad ... Ad ... Adar,” the boy called out excitedly, raising his chubby little arm to point in the direction of the beach.
“I see, I see,” Anwyn replied tenderly and slowly opened the gate, making sure that she carried the small, sharp knife she needed to process the daily catch of fish on her belt. Another dagger was attached to her boot in a narrow, sewn-on leather pouch, which she could fall back on in an emergency.
Anwyn never left the house or the farm without a dagger on her. When the second winter of her relationship with Trálír had passed and they were in each other's arms again for the first time, the elf broke away from her with a serious expression on his face and insisted that she had to learn how to use a dagger, short sword, bow and arrow.
Trálír tried to find a few hours every day between all the tasks that kept him busy to be near Anwyn. It was a hard battle he had to fight against his father in the first months after the second winter to win the right to spend at least a small part of his life with his beloved companion.
Anwyn was a great thorn in the side of Trálír, the Elder, and only reluctantly had he allowed his firstborn to spend time with her. A wedding was out of the question, but as long as Trálír had not yet reached the elven adulthood of 100 years, he allowed his son to have a human lover in order to “get his teenage edge off”. It had taken Trálír endless hours of arguing and trying to persuade until his father had finally given in. As long as he would fulfill his duties, Trálír the Elder gave his son permission to “waste” his time with the human woman.
Trálír knew that his reputation had plummeted in his father's eyes and he had no solution for himself and Anwyn for the future, but at that moment they were both satisfied with the current outcome.
As Anwyn opened the gate with the child in her arms and walked down the path towards the sea, she thought back to all the weeks she had spent learning how to use the weapons presented to her.
Trálír began with some light exercises in self-defense without using weapons such as the palm of her hand to thrust it against her opponent's nose with a jerky forward movement. Poking her opponent in the eyes with her fingers could also throw him off balance and give her the opportunity to escape. Anwyn listened to Trálír's descriptions in detail and with a sense of surprise that such simple movements could be so effective.
But Trálír not only talked about these possibilities but also demanded that Anwyn put them into practice and try them out on him.
Anwyn's first reaction was to shake her head in denial, for everything in her spoke against physically attacking Trálír, but the elf did not budge from his demand until she finally gave in and hesitantly began to perform the exercises. Her own insecurity and the worry that she might hurt Trálír made Anwyn act timidly. After she had made a few half-hearted attempts, he interrupted her exercise and asked her the reason for her reluctance.
Embarrassed, she pulled her lower lip between her teeth and after a moment confessed to Trálír that she feared to hurt him by accident. A tender smile slid across his face as he reached for her hands and assured her that he had been exposed to these attacks in daily training since childhood and knew how to avoid them.
He then took a step back and asked Anwyn to thrust her palm forcefully upwards in the direction of his nose.
She complied with his suggestion with a heavy heart and when she saw how Trálír easily avoided her movement, she took courage.
For three days, Anwyn practiced thrusting her palm upwards for about an hour. Until then everything had gone without a hitch, but on the last day they were so engrossed in their training that Anwyn didn't hear her father calling for her and Trálír was distracted for a fraction of a breath. A pained grunt escaped him as Anwyn's palm bumped violently against his nose, which immediately began to bleed. Eyes widening in horror and face pale, Anwyn began to apologize and tears welled up in her fawn eyes as she watched Trálír press the back of his hand to his nose to stop the flow of blood.
The high elf watched as Anwyn ran quickly to the house and a moment later ran back in his direction, a wet scrap of cloth in her hand. She anxiously asked him to lean forward to place the cold cloth on the back of his neck. The flow of blood stopped shortly afterwards and she asked Trálír to sit up again. Carefully, she wiped the smeared blood from the lower half of his face and his hands with the damp cloth. When Anwyn gently pushed some moss she had picked at the spring that morning into Trálír's nose, he began to laugh.
It took many words of comfort from Trálír to soothe her guilty conscience and convince her that such mishaps in training were normal. When the bleeding had stopped and Anwyn held the bloody cloth in her hands, she still felt bad.
Trálír couldn't help but admit that he liked it when Anwyn tried to comfort him with tender kisses. As his fingers pressed into the curves of her waist and he pulled her closer to him, he decided to be a little more careless on purpose in the future. How could he resist his companion's comforting attempts to make amends when they were so sweetly tempting?
Since stabbing the enemy's eyes with his fingers required no real practice, the next unit was to teach Anwyn how to defend herself if someone attacked her from behind. If an enemy were to grab her like that and it was possible for Anwyn to do so, she should throw her head backwards forcefully so that she would hit him in the face, which would surprise the attacker and possibly cause him to loosen his grip.
If she did not succeed, the next option would be to bend forward, put all her weight into this movement and grab her opponent's knee or calf. If this was successful, Anwyn would be able to pull them forward powerfully and unbalance the enemy. All the exercises that Trálír taught Anwyn served to give her the opportunity to escape.
Anwyn repeated this technique for several days until Trálír was so satisfied with the results that they moved on to the first weapon.
It was not always easy to have a short sword or similar weapon at hand if you were not practiced in it, so he concentrated on the fish knife Anwyn always carried with him and a dagger he had brought from the castle's armory.
A knife or dagger had the disadvantage that you could hardly keep any distance between yourself and the attacker, so Trálír taught Anwyn how to throw the dagger in the direction of the attacker. Although she was practiced with the knife and knew how to hold it, where to feel the weight distribution of a knife, Anwyn had difficulty hitting the piece of paper that Trálír had pinned to the tree. She tried again and again and he watched as her lips pressed together in annoyance, her brows furrowed in displeasure and her frustration grew.
Trálír could understand the feeling of frustration only too well, because it reminded him of the time when he had started practicing weapons as a child and of all the moments when the sword had been knocked out of his hand, how he had been knocked off his feet with the shield that had been hurled at him or how he had lost his balance when he had tried to avoid his opponent.
When, after numerous attempts, Anwyn still had no success, her frustration broke out and she threw the dagger to the ground, cursing. Trálír smiled sympathetically at Anwyn's emotional outburst as he also knew this emotion only too well from numerous training sessions. He reached for the dagger, put it in the sheath on his pants for now and stood behind Anwyn.
He placed his left hand gently on her side, then leaned close to her ear and whispered that she should close her eyes. As he reached for her wrist, Trálír felt the tension in her upper body ease.
He patiently explained to Anwyn that she should put her body weight on her dominant leg and bend her elbow so that she could hold the dagger above her head. Since Trálír was standing so close to her, he felt her comply with his suggestion and shift her body weight. He interlaced his fingers with hers and then made the next move. As he brought his arm into a straight outstretched position with her, he told her that she would let go at this point to throw the dagger.
Anwny's arm and her whole posture was soft and relaxed, so he repeated the exercise with her for a while, standing behind her, feeling her body lean gently against his and letting him take the lead.
Over and over again, the two of them practiced the required movements together until Trálír had the feeling that Anwyn had mastered them and would no longer need his help.
When the elf suggested that she try this exercise without his help, he saw the open reluctance in her gaze. But Trálír only nodded encouragingly.
Anwyn took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly to concentrate, opened them again and performed the exercise as she had learned it from Trálír.
She then looked at him with her big brown eyes in a mixture of expectation and uncertainty and when a confirming smile grew on his lips, Anwyn's whole face beamed with joy. With each successive exercise, Anwyn radiated more confidence, gaining more assurance in the way she moved her arm, strengthened her stance, straightened her back. The next step was to place the dagger in her hand, to let her feel where its center of gravity was.
Anwyn closed her eyes as Trálír unsheathed the dagger and placed it in her open palm. She slid her fingertips carefully over the sharply honed blade, cradling the dagger in her hand before proceeding to perform her now familiar exercise over and over again. She was completely focused on her movements, unaware that Trálír was standing only a few steps away from her, watching her with pride in his blue-green eyes.
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