Guest Quarters, Brunnhold Campus
But this –
Nkemi threw open the window of her small guest room, peering out wide-eyed. The world was blanketed in white, crisp and fresh. Red slate roofs just barely showed through the edge of it, and trees were dappled with white like a blanket, with all the strange gray patterns of nature beneath highlighted by the contrast. Nkemi’s breath clouded the air, and she shivered in her bedclothes against the cold wind that whisked in; reluctantly, she closed the window, and dragged the heavy chair close to it, wrapped herself up in the blanket from the bed, and watched, wide-eyed, as the snow fell.
It was cold; it was strange. It was, Nkemi realized, with a strange little flutter in her chest, beautiful.
But Nkemi could not simply sit and watch all the day. She left the blanket folded on the chair, and shoved it further back out of the way, all the way against the long rectangular window. The bed, too, she pushed cheerfully back out of the way, and she rolled up the rug, kneeling and pushing it over itself one by at a time. Nkemi took her thick purple wool socks off, bare toes wriggling against the floor; it was unexpectedly cold, and send strange little jolts through her toes and up her ankles, but it was bearable.
The Mugrobi washed her face and brushed her teeth down the hall; she came back, and dressed in her thick warm brown sweater and pants, and wrapped her rich red scarf around her head, tucking it carefully into itself to keep her arm.
Then, feeling the stillness of the last few days and the faint lingering ache of her cast the day before, Nkemi took out her baton, and looped its leather strap over her wrist. The heavy wood gleamed; it was made of two pieces, fitted together invisibly inside, with only the thinnest of seams running around the edge to show where they went. Nkemi spun it around her wrist, once, and settled it into the grasp of her hands.
Practice, Jubo had told her, was the difference between being able to use the baton when she needed it and being helpless. You need to drill until there is no thought, Jubo had said, sternly, only memory. The muscles and body must know what to do even when the mind is unsure. You will be ahead of your mind, at times; this is just as well. Trust the body; trust your instincts. They know what to do.
Nkemi ran through several of her training forms, steady and careful, trapped in an imaginary, one-sided fight against an invisible opponent. She used the baton like an extension of her arm; she snapped it out drive the wind from her opponent’s stomach, and to break their nose. She rolled with it, and brought it up to tangle in another invisible opponent’s legs, to bring them down with her. She spun, and flicked it up and down, from side to side; she chased it around her arm, and caught it and brought the momentum down, sharp and hard.
There was enough space, for a small Mugrobi and her baton, and Nkemi did not shy away from using any inch of it. Her training took her up onto the bed with a quiet crash and the groan of springs; she marched up and down it, spinning the baton as she went. She pressed forward, coming up onto the headboard, bare toes holding tight, and wobbled, just a little, baton pressed forward steadily, the bed creaking under her slight weight.
Nkemi giggled, holding there; she eased back, carefully, retreating halfway onto the bed. She turned to the door, then, and grinned, sheepish, at the passive standing there wide-eyed. “Good morning,” Nkemi hopped down from the mattress and bowed, politely; the baton tumbled down alongside her hand, and rose back up with her when she did. She grinned. “You may come in, if you like,” Nkemi offered, her eyes dropping to the tray and lifting back to the passive. “Is this for me?”