[fic] A Good Morning
Title: A Good Morning
Game: Post-Binding Blade (FE6)
Characters: Fir, Karel
Word Count: 1723
Prompt: Fir, Karel - the next Sword Saint
Warnings: None
Summary: Fir thinks she's half a world away from perfection, and she certainly shouldn't be teaching. Her uncle believes otherwise.
The birds were singing, the air was clear, and the pale spring sunshine sparkled off the morning dew. Wind whipped unhindered through the long grass carrying horsey scents, but no hooves broke the morning peace. The Plains of Sacae had been awake before the sun got around to chasing away the occasional pockets of frost, but as the fog rose it felt as if the fresh spring day was just beginning.
Fir rotated her shoulders, and cracked her knuckles. That had been a good exercise routine. She had felt as though she was really flowing with the air in the last few movements. Maybe before five years were up she would have found the right rhythm for the sword styles she admired so. Ten years at the latest.
As the realization came crashing down on her, Fir hung her head. “Ah, I'm useless.”
“I don't think so,” her uncle's voice was soft as the morning air.
Maybe that was it. Fir had felt the air of spring entering through her lungs, and had shifted into it. She had become part of the sunlight, the air, the water rising from the ground, and the earth far below her feet. Just like her uncle, she had become all that for a few heartbeats, and that was how her sword had flashed with such ease. Was that how Uncle Karel felt all the time?
She tried to cover her surprise at the epiphany to appear as calm and cool as the sword saint. “Well, you're biased, Uncle.”
“I am at that. Would you like some tea?”
“It's a little early,” Fir ran her fingers along the threading on her hilt. Well, it was early for tea in Etruria and the Isles, where it was used as an afternoon stimulant. Maybe her uncle's morning tea wasn't meant to wake you up as much.
Uncle Karel frowned for a moment. “You didn't pick up the Missuri habit of coffee while you were out traveling, did you? It's very expensive around here.”
“Oh no! Coffee's really,” Fir paused, trying to think of a good way to say 'yucky,' “not my thing.”
“I could get you some water, then. But, well, I was boiling it while you were out practicing. I thought you would have wanted tea.”
Fir glanced at the well that served this ger. It seemed far distant, at the center of the half circle of ruined gers and old grazing grounds. It was really only a short run from the doorway of the forge, where her Uncle was leaning, but it seemed like a day's march through grass that should have been tamped flat by a whole tribe going about their daily business. The well and the forge were the only part of this campground that had survived the war intact.
“I'll take tea, if the pot has already been made,” Fir said brightly, deciding that it was too much effort to get more water from the well.
Her uncle and his latest student had been using it all winter, so if it was going to kill them without having been boiled, if would have done so already, but why bother risking it when she could have a full mug of fresh tea instead. If it ended up giving her too much energy, and the made her feel sick, well she'd know next time not to be so indolent.
As her uncle turned away, she thought she caught a twinkle in his tired eyes. He probably knew how lazy she was being. Uncles were not as easily duped as fathers. “Where's Rutger?” Fir called into the darkness of the forge. “I was kind of hoping that I'd see him.”
“He needed to disappear for a while. I believe he will return.”
Probably left because someone else arrived. Fir felt her mouth work in exasperation. She had once thought Rutger was very like the uncle she half remembered as a young girl, and had half dreamed up from those memories. It figured that Rutger would choose to disappear. The war had ended last summer—was it really almost a year gone now? All those good friends had gone their separate ways, even when she thought she might have caught up with them.
Uncle Karel tinkered in the dark, before returning with two gently steaming mugs. They sat on the wide circular step that made the threshold of the forge. Fir leaned back against the flaking whitewash on the hard mud of the ger. She could see the husks of burned out circles that had once been gers, but the Plains were reclaiming them with a vengeance of grass and weeds.
With the mist rising, it was almost like one of her early dreams. Her mother sitting
in the cool morning light, waiting for the right time to begin her exercises. Maybe it had really happened, or maybe it was a fancy plucked from what her father had told her. Like her uncle, like the plains themselves, when she got down to it, she wasn't certain what was real, and what had been created out of whole cloth.
“You're lucky you caught me. I was planning on moving on,” Uncle Karel broke the silence. “Sometime this summer, I hope.”
Fir glanced over at him, and discovered they were reclined in the same position. “Oh? Where to? Will you be honing your skills in Bern again?”
“No. Not for many years, I think. Too many bandits are interested in picking that country over to give me peace.”
Oh. Fir bit back her offer, but then decided to make it, just in case. It was half-confession, anyway. “You know, even if it isn't good for your peace, those people in the mountains need some kind of help. You could be useful there, if you chose to go. I'm teaching, you know. I mean, people, I'm teaching them how to use swords. I go around to villages high up in the mountains with crews of people to ready defenses and the like. It's not much, but I teach them the basics until the new walls, or whatever needs to get rebuilt gets rebuilt.”
“Well, that sounds as though you have your work cut out for you, then.”
She had half expected mockery. Or anger. She wasn't sure, but in all those stories of master swordsmen, weren't they supposed to get really angry when amateurs like her tried to teach? Uncle Karel just kept his eyes on the Plains, watching the world wearily.
Fir tested the oddly calm waters. “Aren't I too young to be teaching anyone?”
Her uncle raised his tea in salute. “Anyone who asked your father would know you've been teaching him something new about the world almost every day of your life.”
“But—the sword is a serious path, and I've barely begun to walk it. Not really. I mean, I thought I knew what I was doing when I was fourteen, and I didn't know the first thing. I'm not three years away from that girl, and I can't know—”
As dry and soft as a snakeskin in the grass, Uncle Karel began to laugh. It was such a phenomenon, whether for her imaginary uncle or the real one that Fir stopped babbling. As she stopped the volume rose, creaking and vibrating like dead grass in the wind. It didn't sound as though Uncle Karel was very much given to laughter.
“You're not teaching them the way of the sword. You're teaching them the way of surviving from one season to the next, and that is something you've done and know, and can teach anyone. But even if you were to become a teacher of the next person who desires to take your path to being a sword master, even if that were to happen tomorrow, you're no more ready for it, or unready for it than I ever have been, or any teacher who has come before. Just knowing the ways of the sword isn't enough, you know, even if you weren't developing new paths toward that final goal with every swing you make.”
It wasn't exactly comforting. Fir had heard the 'no one ever knows what they're doing' speech before in many different forms. Noah's version was the best, because he always followed it up with 'but I prepare and try to learn from what I did wrong the first time.' She suspected no matter how good she ever became with a blade, Noah would always be a better teacher.
Still, she was glad her Uncle was happy. “Well, at least I can make you laugh. Have you ever just about burst out of your skin with worry that you're doing everything wrong, then?”
Uncle Karel sipped his tea quietly. “No. I remember thinking what a great inconvenience students were, and how much I didn't want them in my life. You're worried about failing them.”
“Hey! And that's funny?!”
“No. The fact that at sixteen, you're this wise, when at twenty five I was so foolish is funny,” Uncle Karel looked across the Plains with misty eyes. “I'm glad that you're better than I ever was.”
“Wait—at teaching, or,” Fir hesitated, “sword work?”
“When you continue to train your blade, both.”
The sun was now two whole handspans above the horizon, and the fog had almost burned away. Still, the air was not yet a warm as the grin that broke out over Fir's face. “I'm going to be the best swordsman the world has ever known, Uncle.”
She had told him that once, long ago, she was sure. Maybe even the same morning she had seen her mother rise with sword in hand. Shin had been shocked by her ambition, she knew Rutger still thought she was foolish, and her dad was so busy trying to find someone to take care of her that he hadn't noticed she took care of herself very well, thank you. Maybe all these reactions came from declaring her intent with such honesty that more complicated people ignored it. Somehow, though, she knew with the next creaking, sadly disused chuckle that her uncle had never doubted her or her goal.