that she did not know how to live in peace.
Restlessness painted the mare’s untamed movements, her breath culminating in a cloud of mist about her nares as she distractedly follows the cobbled paths that laced the Court like spider webs. Pillars rose all around her, flowers decorating neat little sections even near the training yard. Each day the picturesque little city felt more and more like home. Yet Castalla felt oddly ill at ease, bored perhaps. She’d never been stagnant for so long, as though peace did not agree with her. Once, perhaps, when things had been different she might have welcomed the monotony of peace, the quaint life of each day spent wandering and patrolling and getting to know the Court. But Castalla’s blood thrummed with the unquenchable desire for action; for battle. She had been fighting for so long that she did not know how to live in peace.
The whisper of a blade through air permeated Castalla’s enhanced senses, pulling her from the mire of her mind. The following thunk of wood against the target and then metal on stone told her someone was throwing knives. And that the thrower had missed. The Wolf approached the grey mare, who was dressed in the mist of her ice cold breath as she stared intently at the target. For a moment Castalla watched, silent and out of sight as she examined the young mare’s technique. Each throw was more irritated than the last, the thump of wood a symphony of frustration.
Allowing her hooves to sound on the cobble stones, Castalla emerges from the stone corridor bordering the pavilion.
“Breathe to a rhythm,” she offers, stepping up to the younger woman, “if you count it as you breathe it helps focus your mind. Try breathing in for four counts, hold for four counts, out for six counts and hold for four. And exhale as you release knife.” She gave the grey girl a kind smile, for the assassin saw something of herself in the equine, before the blood of others stained her hooves. It may have been many years ago that she had been a girl throwing daggers in anguish, thrusting her pent up anger into each distracted throw. Yet it felt like just yesterday.
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