A reason to stay (Attn: Talavin)

[Blade]

Davian stood at the edge of one of the reflection pools...ironically enough reflecting on things. To anyone else, he was training on balance. The edge around it was very thin and he had already fallen into the pool a couple of times, but mostly he was thinking on things. Life with the Warders really hadn't been going anything like planned. Well...to be honest, this wasn't exactly a plan anyways. When he pictured warders though, he had always thought that you got taught to fight in a couple of days, then you just went at it, none of this forms classes and fitness classes and you're going to class because I say to classes.

 

Well, maybe this was the creator's way of punishing him for lying and getting his surrogate father's home burned down. He was really going to have to figure things out soon though because he wasn't enjoying himself in this place. He didn't have a real reason to stay. Learning the sword just to learn it really wasn't going to be enough. It just wasn't worth it to spend years learning to only have to use it occasionally, if then. It was a real conundrum all right, nothing like working at the shop.

 

With the shop Davian had learned how to read people, to understand what they were thinking, what they wanted, and ironically, he couldn't read himself right now, read what he was thinking or what he wanted. Kiss a flaming goat! Life wasn't that great when you didn't have a purpose. All the angry thoughts though made him miss a step and he went plunging into the water. He slapped at it angrily..."The Light take me for a fool, why am I still here?!" Davian shouted to the air in frustration as he pulled himself up out of the water.

[Talavin]

Arath wished that he could say that he had been having a nice day, but really he couldn't. He had late guard duty on the walls and hadn't gotten that much sleep, but couldn't sleep in because he was so used to getting up early. On top of that he had stubbed his toe getting out of bed, and had fallen on his rear trying to put on his socks. Arath was grumbling as he walked, muttering oaths about his room trying to kill him and about too-happy trainees. It was because of that that Arath was stomping through the woods to the reflection pools. He was planning on going there to meditate in the Oneness. After all, his fighting style depended on him being calm and collected.

 

To his surprise, he found that the refection pools were already occupied. Usually these ones were fairly barren, because many people preferred the waterfall to the pools. Arath studied the person (a trainee) for a little bit. It appeared that he wasn't doing too well in... well, whatever it was that he was doing. It almost looked like he was practicing forms, but then he would go try to balance. Arath felt for the trainee, remembering his own trainee days where he trained alone. It appeared like the trainee didn't exactly know what to do with himself.

 

"Hmm, I think it would help if you dedicated yourself to one thing, instead of trying to do five different exercises at once. With half the effort." The trainee jumped, obviously unaware of his presence, and looked a little guilty. "So, do you need help with your forms?" Arath was usually willing to give a hand to a trainee if he didn't have anything else to do. After all eventually the trainees would be his brothers in combat, and he wanted to make sure they were well prepared.

[Blade]

Davian was brought out of his self indulgent rant by an interruption from what from another person who seemed to be a warder. At least, he had the movements of one. Apparently his little charade had worked in that the man thought he was training, unfortunately he didn't seem to impressed with the whole thing and wanted to help out. Irritation flashed across his face, though quickly supressed. Hopefully the other man hadn't seen. Davian put on his best smile. "Yes, any help would be appreciated, though I'm not too great at this, I don't seem to be getting the hang of anything here. I'm Davian by the way"

 

Davian walked over to the man, and put his mind on auto respond as he continued to move through the forms. He wasn't really sure what the man was saying, but he didn't really care, he just kept moving, never really changing his motions. The main thing in his mind was still about why he was there. To think he was standing here working through some stupid forms when he probably wouldn't still be here come tomorrow irritated him, but in his experience it had always been best not to let anyone know what you were thinking until it was too late, and besides...there was maybe a slight chance that he'd stay. It took a long while for Davian to realize the man was getting angry at him. What had he done wrong? Wracking his brains, Davian realized that during the whole time the man had been giving tip after tip, and he hadn't implemented a single one of them. Davian's mind snapped immediately back to attention. He was gonna have to think fast if he was going to get himself out of this one.

[Talavin]

OOC: Sorry that it took me a few days to get to this, I was crushed by homework/studying in the past few days.

 

IC: Arath was starting to get irritated. At first he thought that the trainee was just lousy. He wouldn't have minded if the trainee was horrible, because everyone started out skill-less. From the responce that Davian had given him, he had thought that he was willing enough to learn. Davian's forms had made Arath mentally cringe, but he had still been hopeful that he could help at least a little. He didn't have too much experience in helping trainees, but he had enough to give him a few tips. "Hold your sword a little higher when you do that, so that you can keep better ballence." Davian nodded and mumbled something that sounded like an affirmative.

 

Arath kept giving little tips, and the longer they went on the more he could see that the trainee wasn't putting any effort into it. Not only that, but he was completely ignoring the tips that he was given. Arath felt himself getting a tic in his forehead; the insufferable trainee wasn't trying at all. Weakness was excusable; laziness was not. Apparently the trainee noticed it at the same time that he did, and looked guilty. Arath's face was a little tight, but otherwise he appeared more strict than angry. He didn't know the trainee well, so Davian could just be in a slump, but that didn't excuse the outright disrespect shown towards a superior.

 

"I don't know what is going on, but laziness is not acceptable. If you're just distracted today, or something happened to upset you, then snap out of it. If you're just lazy..." Arath let the sentence trail off, letting Davian's imagination fill in the blank. "But the true infraction is that you have been ignoring every word I've said. If you did that with the Mistress of Trainees you would be worked into the ground, but she's not even the worst case scenario. You are living amongst Aes' Sedai, if you don't pay attention to them... well you don't want to know what happens then."

 

He scowled at Davian, making sure he had his full attention. "Luckily for you, I'm a lot nicer than any of them." And he didn't have the athority to punish Davian, but he didn't need to know that. "Now tell me what it is that is so distracting?" If it was a girl than that could be taken care of easily, but in any case the first step to solving the problem was the figure out what it was.