Lilies and Butterflies

"Hunh !"

Kyle's lokken slashed empty air where Taemporo had stood four milliseconds before.

"I challenged you to hit me, Kyle-ai, not brush the dirt off my sleeves."

Kyle's face was ruddy and his expression serious. He was more than a little tickled with irritation now. Beads of sweat ran from his forehead and poised on his eyelashes, threatening to obscure his vision.

Taemporo had not even moved his feet, merely dipped his left shoulder backward to avoid the diagonal downward slash of the lokken. His torso, then, was bent at an angle to the plane of his legs.

No way can he move fast enough to right his body and move his feet if I reverse direction. As he thought it he was doing it, and the end of the lokken stopped, began to move horizontally right to left. He had closed the distance between them to an arm's length, there was no way he would miss this time.

Just when the staff should have been stopped in its progress by smacking into human flesh, there was a hissing "whiff" as it sliced again through empty air. Kyle's muscles automatically worked to stop the swinging staff; his eyes swung back to center, to Taemporo. Didn't he just hit him ? Why couldn't he hit him ?

Taemporo's arms were folded behind his back, adding insult to (Kyle's persistent non-infliction of) injury. His eyes danced with a private mirth. He had leaned further back to avoid the second blow. His torso was now bent at an incredible forty-five degree angle to the plane of his feet, supported only by the muscles of his stomach and back. His bare feet remained planted where they had been since the beginning of the practice session, a shoulder's width apart, toes inward.

By the hang of Taemporo's cloak Kyle realised after a moment that master was not supporting himself with his abdominal muscles, that he was actually still moving. Taemporo was falling to the floor with his arms extended downward and behind him. Those arms flexed as his hands hit the floor, his face all the while fixed on an astounded Kyle's.

Kyle's astonishment increased rapidly as one of those previously immobile feet lifted from the ground and drove itself with blinding force into the underside of his chin.

Shit that hurts ! Holy seed of demons that hurts..........shit shit shit how does he do that shit -

The sweat had filled Kyle's eyes and the force of the blow had blurred his vision. His brain felt to be swimming in a viscous bubble, neurons misfiring wildly as the jarring impact dislocated their liquid moorings. He lashed out wildly with the staff, blindly pounding the floor in the general last known location of his tormentor.

His wide arcs very soon gave way to shallow stabs at the air and finally, to a few half-hearted thrusts. His wearied hands could no longer support the staff - it felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. His vision began to return, with the added benefit that he could now see two of everything.

Kyle bent his head and heaved sweet gulps of air, supporting his weight with hands on his knees.
"Alright, enough. Why can't I hit you ? I should have been able to hit you just now."

"Why do you think you couldn't hit me ?"

"I know I can hit you !"

His note of defiance sounded out of place given his poor display, and he knew it. He closed his mouth.

"Temperance must shadow valor. Without temperance, valor will always be overpowered by an enemy's superior skill. Do you understand ?"

"I think so."

"Think on this. But first..." Taemporo motioned with his head toward the baths, "... eliminate that odor."

Kyle grinned, mouth covered with clasped hands as he bent at the waist to match Taemporo-anen's bow.

An abrupt turn on his heel and Taemporo was on his way out of the jyoro.

Wonder what kind of father he is. Does he beat up on his son too ?

Did he have a wife and child ? Did he even favor the opposite sex ? That last thought, for some reason, caused Kyle to erupt in outright laughter as he walked to the bath. His mirth resounded from the walls of the training hall, empty now save for him.

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Bare feet slapped the gymnasium floor as Kyle's peers, the -ai cohort, left their practical instruction to attend to the strict regimen of hygiene demanded of each warrior. The gymnasium was a large building, in external appearance akin to a hollowed obelisk. Thin blue veins grew tendrils within the white marble floor and around the two rows of columns that supported the vaulted roof thirty feet above.

Straight ahead, between the wide corridor limned by the rows of columns, a thin mist floated lazily, reducing the to-and-fro of the figures within to the meanderings of lost souls in a soft-focus rendition of some imagined underworld. Black and white, bond and free, all were indistinct shadows temporarily freed from the rigid strictures of the society which ended at the gymnasium's black basalt-bricked walls.

Kyle loosened his robe as the steam enveloped him, let it slide from his shoulders as the sound of lapping water grew louder. Presently he was fully nude, the robe discarded in a basin to be retrieved by the servant girls who would replace them every hour.

Several baths filled the western end of the gymnasium, segregated by rank. The blue-green of the tiles at the waterbottom lent the mist an otherworldly hue. Sound was curiously refracted and compressed here, but he knew this voice instantly.

"Aye, brother - how goes the battle ?"

Esmorai's grinning features floated above the gentle man-made waves of the bath. His eyes drank in the full length of Kyle's lean musculature as he slid into the water, as Kyle knew they would. Behind Esmorai a lean youth cradled him about the neck, another hand moving invisibly below the waterline.

"Aye, brother - I am well." Esmorai dismissed his companion with a not-unfriendly shove to the chest and half-floated, half-paddled closer to Kyle. His long lashes seemed, for a moment, discomfitingly feminine, though set in a face of strong jaw and pleasant ruddiness.

"Oil ?"

"Yes."

Esmorai floated to the edge of the bath, dipped his hands in the basin of olive oil treated with Scythian spices, and returned, hands cupped as if to capture falling treasure, with his bounty. Kyle turned and felt aching shoulder muscles relax as the astringent lotion delivered subcutaneous healing. Esmorai's massages were expert indeed, he reckoned.

"I must be short today. I promised Amasa I would meet her in the Garden if my class finished early. Want to come along ?"

"Only if you will teach me the neck strike today. You promised me four days ago and you still haven't."

Kyle grinned without turning. "I did teach you, but it apparently didn't take. I am not to be held accountable for your thickheadedness !" He steeled himself for a playful blow but it came from the left, not the right as he expected.

"Ay ! To the arena with you ! I'll give you a lesson indeed !" The mock outrage prompted a flurry of open-handed slaps from each, punctuated by hearty laughter from all in the pool. The lapping waves made themselves heard again as the laughter subsided.

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Scurrying servant girls set about to gather discarded robes from the large metal basins along the edge of the baths. Eyes lowered, their brown skins beaded instantly on contact with the steamy air. Most of them were slaves from the newly conquered lands to the Near East; taught their new place in society by their elders (many of them also born slaves, save the odd noblewoman fallen into ruin through illicit affair). With luck, they might move later into the ranks of the primerannerae, the women whose sole purpose in life was attention to the pleasure of the warrior class.

Similar to the temple prostitutes in function, they were much more highly regarded as a matter of caste. If waging war was so noble a pursuit of the young citizen, should not some degree of honor accrue to his consort, she who sated his physical needs and bolstered his spiritual strength, keeping the fighting machine well-lubricated ?

Their motion spurred Kyle to wakefulness from Esmorai's lullaby minstrations, absently noticing for the first time the fine detail on the carved lion's heads looming from the columns above.

"I'll be late !" He motioned for Esmorai to follow and grasped a fresh robe from the hand of a startled servant girl. As Esmorai had earlier, she stole a look at his dripping, unclothed body. "Let's go !"

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[ed.: conversation with classmate goes here, centering on the upcoming trials to move from -ai to -rai. Classmate and Kyle decide to head to the contemplation pond, where Amasa said she would meet him if he finished practice early. He catches glimpse of her half-nude, bathing in the dying rays of the sun. His ardor is kindled, but no words pass between them. In fact, he returns to his dormitory without letting her know of his presence. Amasa knew he would be coming, so why did she choose that time to sun herself ? Was it done consciously ? Let the reader discern.]

In lockstep, they turned the final corner in the path. Beyond the gate, Kyle knew, lay the contemplation pond, and behind this hedgewall to his right it continued to reflect the dying rays of the evening sun. His gaze had followed his thought and he found himself looking over his right shoulder, through the dense shrubbery, yet somehow catching a glimpse of her. Had he known she was there, would be there ? Esmorai continued to walk ahead, but Kyle was transfixed by the billowing red beauty of her hair as it cascaded over her bare shoulders.

He sucked in air, involuntarily, as through the close-knit tapestry of vine and leaf his gaze continued to traverse her prone form. The reflecting pond lent her its halo, proferring her image as an earthbound angel might appear in mirage to an itinerant dying of thirst. Her red nipples pressed free of her red hair to stand erect, like twin warriors guarding the milky-white mounds they had conquered. Her breasts, a handful each, were perfect curves of unblemished symmetry. They rose and fell gently as she breathed, her eyes closed.

Dared he to look further ? That white skin, seemingly unkissed by the sun but not the white of those bound to serve indoors, narrowed at her hips. Kyle's loins birthed a sudden explosion of heat - he was sure that if he ran a hand along his thigh to test its source that he might scorch himself. His breath came in short gulps, and he did not notice that Esmorai had walked back to where he stood.